Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

From the desk of Captain Obvious:

 

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I have my locking fuel caps, they were about $80 each. I took them off during the winter because they would freeze up and even in the summer I have to keep shooting WD-40 in the lock to keep it working. When I was at the Louisville truck show I saw a great idea for locking fuel caps for trucks with a built in cover that looked like a great idea, but I now I can’t find my flyer I had from them.

Locking fuel caps are expensive and tough to keep dirt out of and to keep working in the winter, but right now, worth every penny.

No comments about the trucker the reporter found to comment, we’ve been through all that before.

Source: Fox Chicago

Popularity: 30% [?]

As I wrote in a previous post. Fuel prices are high and they’re going to STAY high.

And this is a GOOD thing.

(boink!!!!!!!???, this is a good thing? How can that be? Stay tuned, more on that later)

Whatever can we do?

Well, buying a new truck is right out. I checked into that this last month. To replace my old KW it would cost me just about TWICE what I paid for it about nine years ago. Not quite but almost. I paid ninety something thousand in the year two thousand and the local KW dealer wants almost a hundred and seventy thousand for a very similar replacement.

And the new truck get’s worse fuel economy.

So no thank you. I’ll overhaul and rebuild for a while.

How long a while?

That’s kind of what THIS post is about.

Things are being done. It’s possible to get diesel from other places than an oil well,

from plants, algae and trash.

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Popularity: 45% [?]

You’re really, really not going to like this. The gloom and doom folks are getting pretty prevalent. Pretty well positioned and fairly authoritative too.

High Gas Prices are here to Stay.

says, in part, that:

“NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - CIBC (CM: TSX; NYSE) -
Increasingly tight oil supplies will continue to push the price of oil
higher with the cost of crude hitting US$150 a barrel by 2010 and soaring
to US$225 a barrel by 2012, forecasts a new energy report from CIBC World
Markets.”

Home in Texas the Houston Chronicle reports:

< There’s more to $120 oil than speculation

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Popularity: 26% [?]

As promised I’ve actually read the bill. Todd Spencer (Exec VP OOIDA) was good enough to send me a copy after we talked on the phone. Something about that last post he wanted to talk about.

It probably sounded like I was against it, but I said that unless there’s complete visibility it’s not going to work. Guess what’s in this bill? After this bill everything is supposed to be right there in the open.

Here’s the intro to the bill s.2910 IS (pdf) -

To require brokers to disclose and pay independent truckers for any fuel surcharges received from shippers that relate to fuel costs paid for by the truckers.

I would change “independent truckers” to say all carriers, but later on it does broaden the scope -

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Popularity: 37% [?]

Kyle Busch wins at Talladega! Man what a race! I love this track more than any other track on the circuit and not just because it is only an hour and a half from my house. If you have never been to The Talladega Super Speedway, you are missing one heck of a race. It may get boring at times but to tell you the truth, I only get bored with it when I am watching it on Television. There is no way you can get bored with it while in the grandstands.

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Popularity: 24% [?]

I remember first hearing about the ATA in truck driving school. The instructor told us that they were for trucking companies, not drivers. I just forgot about them as I thought he was just saying that’s an associations for owners. Then I noticed all large companies are members. Then I noticed any company associated with them destroyed many careers and always had a bad reputation. Now I was starting to dislike them.

I have been learning more and more about them as I try to figure out what drives the industry to support legislation that is harmful to it’s own well being. The trucking industry seems to me like child that will beat it’s head on the floor when it’s mad. The more I learn about what drives the poor legislation, the more I uncover about the ATA. Bad things, like speed governers and DAC, just seem to point to the American Trucking Assocation everytime. Most truckers are well aware that the ATA is bad for the industry, but I don’t think we all understand the extent.

First and foremost, it’s ran by a pure politician, CEO Bill Graves. The guy’ has important guy hair and all, but does he know trucking? Alright, the hair thing is a cheap shot, but how many trucks has the leader of the self-proclaimed “association with the most clout” driven? He’s got a hell of a record for human resource management, but its the American Trucking Association, not so much need for HR guy to solve the companies trucking ills. Would an HR person be happy that a trucker was involved in legislation concerning Human Resources?

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Popularity: 22% [?]

If you are in the transportation business, you have heard of the term “JIT Freight.” To those who are not familiar with the term it simply means “Just In Time.”

Just in time freight was created to cut costs for manufacturers. With this type of freight movement, the manufacturer does not need to worry about warehousing (or the costs associated with having a warehouse) nor do they have to worry about inventory costs because there is no inventory sitting around.

The idea of JIT works like this: a product is made - in order to make this one product there are several materials that are needed to make it and the materials are to arrive ‘just in time’. A lot of the automakers use JIT freight. A driver may pick up parts (say something like door handles) in the morning and he has to drive straight thru to the manufacturer because as soon as his appointment time arrives (or perhaps even when he arrives at the manufacturer) he is unloaded because they will need the freight he is hauling in order to manufacture whatever they are working on.

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Popularity: 19% [?]

As Everitt mentioned in his comment here, I also received OOIDA’s “Call to Action”. This is where OOIDA sends out Legislative alerts so you can write your Congressperson and support OOIDA’s cause. Here’s the excerpt from the email

Last night U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced legislation which will require that 100 percent of fuel surcharges paid by shippers be passed through to whoever actually pays for the fuel to haul the shipper’s goods, obviously in most cases that’s truckers.
S. 2910, the “Trust in Reliable Understanding of Consumer Costs Act” or “TRUCC Act” will ensure that middlemen will no longer be able to skim or pocket fuel surcharges that should be going to truckers. Senators Snowe and Brown worked closely with OOIDA on this legislation.
Please call the offices of your 2 Senators to ask them to support S.2910. Ask your Senators to commit their support for S. 2910 by signing on as cosponsors of the bill.

The legislation was just introduced so the Senators and their staff may not yet be familiar with the bill; this may be a great opportunity for you to educate them on fuel surcharges and the trucking industry.

Like most things that have come out of Congress, this will only cause more paperwork for shippers and brokers and it’s not going to help truckers unless complete visibility is inserted into the bill. And what broker or logistics company is going to allow that?

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Popularity: 33% [?]

This country’s fuel prices has gotten so out of hand, that our “American” truckers are going to “Mexico” fuel stops to fill up. It’s approximately $2.00 cheaper in Mexico per gallon than it is here in the USA. I do not know about you all, but this is making me sick to my stomach. What kind of country do we live in where the Government is pushing our Transportation industry to such an extreme as to fuel their vehicles in another country? It’s cheaper for owner ops to purchase the permits for Mexico, then drive to Mexico to fill up.

 

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Popularity: 47% [?]

One of the many trucking blogs I read is Dan Goodwill’s. Dan is a transportation consultant and has high level experience in trucking and many insights into Canadian and American trucking markets. His latest post Wal-Mart and Target Stores Prepare for Capacity Crunch explains shippers need to pay attention to what Wal-Mart and Target are doing now, to prevent transportation problems later.

The overall capacity in the market is experiencing a decrease as some companies suffering through the freight recession close their doors. In fact, he indicated that trucking company bankruptcies are up significantly from previous years.

Currently this is not a problem for shippers as a host of economic issues have had a negative impact on demand. The lower supply of trucking capacity is in line with the drop in demand.

So, things should be picking up. If the freight demand is starting to match the truck supply, maybe rates will start being reasonable enough for the rest of us to survive.

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Popularity: 16% [?]