Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

All too often, it seems like our efforts fall on deaf ears up in Washington. It doesn’t take long to figure out we aren’t very effective lobbyists in our own interests. So, sometimes, we have to get a bit sneaky. As Sun Tzu said, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Truer words were never spoken. You have to figure out who is as upset as you are at those who are influencing the rules. I started thinking about that when I was helping out a friend on his sleep apnea fight with a major carrier. His doctor said he didn’t have any evidence of sleep apnea-his employer said he did. . .simply because he’s over 50 and over ideal weight. Now, I have no problem with a driver who actually HAS sleep apnea getting treatment, but I’ve known several who got tested again privately and DIDN’T have it-after the company said they did. (Most of them then left the carrier before they could be sucked into any more company-sponsored ‘medical interventions’).

When the Landline Radio Show disclosed that a member of the National Sleep Foundation was on the Medical Review Board and there might be some conflicts of interest, I started thinking about who fights conflicts of this sort. I found them-in the Center for Science in the Public Interest. It seems one of their pet peeves is how businesses get legislation passed that benefits them, using supposed science to do so. I found their website and, gathering up all of my web research I had done, sent them an email from their website.

Sure enough, a few days later, I got a call from them. They were appalled that the National Sleep Foundation, which is funded by CPAP makers, had infiltrated the FMCSA Medical Review Board and how they were trying to force this on all drivers, thus making a huge profit in sales while drivers got the shaft. They had no idea of how this could impact a driver’s career when I told them they were attempting to have this mandatory and how it would become a restriction on a driver’s CDL. It seems they were already concerned about this push to determine everybody in the world is fatigued and needs either medication or a machine to survive. So, I pointed out that the big sleep clinics that are touting this to the carriers aren’t even focusing on safety, but on the health insurance and liability insurance discounts they can get if they test all their drivers. One of the main sleep clinic firms actually brags that they are a member of the ATA and that CPAP treatment will save employers big bucks because it will prevent diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. Since less than 3% of all accidents are caused by fatigue, the safety factor is just being given play to use safety as a catchphrase to disguise what it is they REALLY want to accomplish: save insurance costs.

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Sitt’n here at the T/A Elkton, MD. eating a bagel. 88 degrees and clear skies. Santana on the Jazz channel on Sirius 71. Four and half days out and I’m ready to go home. I’m lonely. At the “J’ down the road in North East, MD where I was last night - I asked for Heinz 57 steak sauce, and they said sorry, no more. Seems Cisco, the food distributor, raised the prices on steak sauce, so Flying J decided that they’re not going to reorder. Just what the heck is happening to the world. I can put up with a financial collapse, but no Heinz 57? - well, that’s just not American. I guess I’ll just have to carry ’round my own damn bottle. It just ain’t right, I tell ya.

Speaking of just ain’t right, let’s talk about truck’n out West. I’m watching the weather and see that where I was just a couple of weeks ago, it’s now cold and snowing. Where I’m parked right now, it’s still “pool” weather. I’m in shorts and a “t” and I’m not going to change for a few more months. But, what’s the deal with you “Western” drivers. Here’s my list of “impressions” in no particular order.

- Chains. What the hey? Chains hanging off just about every truck out “there.” At the fuel desk there are white bags and bags of chains for sale. Sorry, but I don’t “do” chains. My truck has ‘em - they’re in my tarp box and have been there since I got the truck and there they will remain - rusting - until I trade the truck in. If I’m unlucky enough to be driving anywhere where chains are required, then I’m just pull’n over ’til Spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Is that proper English? Who knows. But that’s what I am. I actually made my decision about two years ago when I heard my choice for President speak on a radio show. When it was over, I said, “Damn, this guy should be President.” I’ve been waiting, watching and listening ever since - looking for affirmation that I was correct. And I now believe I was.

Today the Republicans want me to forget about most of the problems in the world - top of the list being the potential collapse of the stock market.  They prefer I focus my attention on a group called Acorn and domestic “rabble rowser” turned college professor, Bill Ayers. And according to Sen. McCain, “friends, that one”,  referring to Sen. Obama, is, in fact, a flaming leftist Communist “loon” who, if elected, will unite with Hugo Chavez to bring down our capitalist society as we now know it.

And, “friends”, those pesky Democrats want me to turn the other way and forget that Barnie Frank, Chris Dodd and Nancy Pilosi need to accept a lot of the responsibility for the economic mess where in, along with a bunch of CEO’s, senior executives and lobbyists. At minimum, Frank, Dodd and Pilosi need to resign from their committees. I like the idea of either candidate appointing someone like Giuliani, the former Mayor of NY to be the next Attorney General and go after those responsible. Too bad, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly came up with it and not the Democrats. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’ve been living in the root cellar, you as a driver know there are big challenges facing all truckers these days. Everybody tells you to call your congressman, or comment to FMCSA on pending regulatory changes. You should do these things, and you should vote. When you call your local congress-critter’s office, they can tell immediately whether or not you’re registered to vote. If you’re not, they’ll just chalk it up to a solitary, not very credible call.

So, you MUST be registered, doesn’t matter who you vote FOR. And if you voted for one guy and the other guy won, do NOT believe your voice doesn’t count: that office has no way of knowing who you voted for, all they know is you vote and maybe you’re one of their voters. Even if the opposition won, you are still a constituent. You should be calling regularly enough that the office staffers start to recognize your name when you call, making them put some recognition behind your views goes a long way toward being listened to. If they’re not running for election, they’re running for re-election. That’s a given.

Letters, E-Mail and Fax

You can use all of these, with email being the least effective. Some officials who know they’re taking an unpopular position on an upcoming vote simply won’t read the emails (Senators are worse about this, elitists that they are). Letters and faxes turn up as a real piece of paper, they’re far harder to ignore. The standard feeling is, for every letter someone writes and actually takes the time to send, a thousand more people felt the same way but didn’t make the effort. That doesn’t mean they won’t make the effort to vote, though. Keep them scared. Read the rest of this entry »

The stock market is currently a giant mess right now.  We saw a 600+ point drop yesterday in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to put it below 9,000 points for the first time since 2003.  You would think hey it’s got to bottom out sometime right?  The Dow took close to a 700 point plunge right after the market opened this morning putting the Dow below 8,000 points.  I can remember not to long ago when the Dow had surpassed 12,000 points for the first time.  This is a massive downturn in the market. 

If you recall from a post earlier this week talking about how the Dow has dropped below 10,000 points this week for the first time since 2004.  It has lost nearly 2,000 more points all in the same week.  Investors have pulled out nearly $50 billion in investments just in the past week alone and they have not invested it elsewhere.  How bad is this going to get before it gets better?  The Federal Reserve made an emergency cut to key interest rates dropping them down to 1.5%.  The government is trying to prevent a recession here, but it doesn’t look like it can be stopped.  Economists yesterday stated that the chance we will be in a recession by next year is now around 80% up from around 60%.  Some economists say we have already hit recession.  The bad part is that this is most likely going to be a consumer led recession. 

So what does this mean for people like you and me?  Well that question depends on lots of factors.  Do you currently have investments in the stock market?  Do you have a retirement account, and if so where are all your funds sitting?  How secure is your job?  Will you be able to keep working or are you in an industry that could be affected by job losses.  Read the rest of this entry »

phone…well, kind of. You see my “cell” is old. It cost about $49 a few years ago at Verizon. It was on sale as part of a “two-fer” deal. It’s not as thin as a credit card. I wouldn’t want it to be because I’d lose it. It had a camera, but it doesn’t work anymore. Some of the keys stick which makes sending text messages difficult, but then I don’t send many textes, or texts or however you say or spell it.

It doesn’t connect to the net, but I can play a mean game of bowling waiting for my dinner to come. It can’t remember anything, because it has no memory. You can touch the screen, but that doesn’t do anything. You actually have to press “buttons” to make a call. The screen is tiny and not bright at all, but then who needs “bright and clear” when all I need is to see boring telephone numbers. Forget e-mail, that’s what my laptop is for.

It has choice of 5 plain rings and I have yet to be successful trying to get other tones to work. I tried once to get a song from Sugarland, but when my cell rang, it sounded like Jennifer Nettles (the lead singer) was drowning. Poor girl. As far as security, well, if anybody tries to steal it, I’ll hit ‘em over the head with my tire iron. Besides no one else can operate it but me.

My cell bears no resemblance to a Blackberry or Blueberry or IPhone or EPhone or whatever new fangled devise is today’s latest flavor. It’s just an old plain grey flip cell phone. And for a poor trucker like me, it is perfect. Because more important than anything it works. I can reach anybody I want, anywhere at anytime without a problem. And as Wayne can tell you, I’m not a phone kinda guy. I rarely call anyone unless I absolutely need to. As long as I can talk to my wife, I’m happy. I will pay $299 - $399 for a short cruise somewhere, but never a phone, especially one that thinks it knows and can remember more than me.

The American Trucking Association’s board of directors has voted to expand the ATA’s safety agenda as an effort to reduce highway fatalities, according to Transport Topics. Although ostensibly addressing all areas of highway safety, the ATA appears to have concentrated on “improved driver performance” far more than other indicators. A new focus will be on the improvement of the performance of non-commercial vehicle drivers as a factor in fatality reduction. This should be interesting as I certainly cant see government really listening to the ATA too much on improving over-all driver safety-but at least, they’re now making an attempt.

Some of the recommendations adopted include:

In the category of improving driver performance

• · Setting a policy on the use of non-integrated technologies while the vehicle is in motion; ( now, what do you suppose this means? Cell Phones? GPS? Laptop routing? CBs? None  of these would surprise me as carriers want complete control of their drivers and will use DOT regulations to get it if they can-drivers can have NO information except the information WE want them to have. . .)

• · Setting a policy supporting uniform commercial drivers license (CDL) testing standards; (I thought we HAD a national standard. . . .) Read the rest of this entry »

Blackberry Storm

In order for us to determine whether the Blackberry Storm will be able to compete with the Iphone we need to examine its features.  First off it looks great in my opinion; this is the first phone I have seen from RIM that has a beautiful high resolution screen.  That is something that is a huge draw to the Iphone, the beauty of how it looks.  The Blackberry Storm also has a full touch screen that looks amazing.  It looks just as good as any Iphone I have ever seen.  The size of the touch screen is 3.25 inches and has a screen resolution of 360×480.  The touch screen keyboard will have two separate layouts.  The first will be setup in landscape mode and will have a full QWERTY keyboard.  The second will be setup in the portrait mode and the keyboard will use the SureType layout from RIM.

One of the biggest draws to the Blackberry products are from corporate types or people that need constant access to their email.  RIM has built a huge client base just based on this fact alone and has built a whole line of products to benefit these types of people.  This will not change with the Blackberry Storm.  It will still have support for multiple types of email accounts and is said to have more security features available for it.  This will be a big draw as large corporations will want sensitive data to be protected.

The Storm will feature a full html browser similar to the Iphone.  It will be capable of viewing and editing files for Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.  It will have a 3.2-megapixel camera which is better than the camera featured on the Iphone.  It will have 1 GB of memory available on the smart phone and an expansion slot cable of handling of to an 8GB card.  The BlackBerry Storm is expected to be released sometime before the end of this year.  The price point has not been set yet, but it most likely won’t be cheap.  I imagine a price tag of somewhere around the $299 to $399 range.

Even after the signing of the bailout package last Friday by the President the stock market took a massive tumble on Monday.  At some points during the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen more than 700 points.  It also dropped below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004.  Now I’m sure you are probably thinking why the heck would the stock market continue to fall if the bailout plan has been signed into law.  Well like I said in a previous post it’s not just our economy that is struggling, the economies around the world are to.  With our credit crunch situation it is affecting other countries economies and their economies affect ours.

Europe is facing the same situation we are currently in.  Over the weekend there were talks that Germany would bailout one of their countries largest banks by injecting some $60 billion or so to keep it from failing.  Many banks around the globe are crumbling to the ground and that has a direct effect on our stock market.  In reality things are going to have to get worse before they can get better.  The bailout plan is going to take time for the government to buy the bad debt off of company’s books.  When that happens it is going to take time for the effect of that to start showing in the economy.

The Federal Reserve made a move to help unfreeze the markets.  They just announced a new program to buy loans that are essential to businesses across the country.  This is an attempt to get the markets flowing again.  One of the best things banks, financial companies, and businesses could do right now is to start to conduct business as close to normal as possible.  This is what is going to jump start the economy and the government is trying to do things to inject confidence back into businesses. It is important that investors and companies start to gain confidence that it will be ok and to try and conduct business as usual.

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The 2008 presidential race is coming down to its last leg and the temperature in the room is rising.  McCain vs. Obama is becoming an ugly battle between the two presidential candidates.  It seems the two campaigns have really stepped up the advertisements on television in battle ground states.  I suppose it is at the point where they are trying to discredit the other party in attempt to try and win those last minute votes. The candidate bashing has really begun.

The things that both campaigns are saying about each other are really quite scary in my opinion.  The McCain campaign has been talking about Barrack Obama’s affiliation with domestic terrorists when he was younger.  The Obama campaign has been talking about John McCain’s role in the “Keating Five.”  I for one really don’t like negative campaigning.  I don’t think I am the only one that feels that way as I have read several articles that have called for a stop to it.  On the other hand it is important to know what kind of person is running for President.  I think the character of the person running is one of the biggest quality factors that should be looked at.  The bashing that is taking place doesn’t show much for either candidate’s character.  The issues from the past that are being brought up are also something to not take lightly, but we must make sure we have a correct understanding of the facts before we make judgment.

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