Trucking News
Posted on Oct 12, 2009 - 12:24pm by Wayne Weisser in Trucking
A few highlights from the trucking news this week, starting with the Port of Oakland banning older trucks. If your truck’s engine was built before 1994, no matter how well you’ve taken care of your motor and how many overhauls, your truck will be banned from the Port of Oakland beginning Jan 1. (Another version of the story)
If you’ve been to or even driven around some of the ports in the country, most of the short haul trucks look to be older and are usually held together with wire and duct tape. This will probably have a large effect on the local truckers in the area, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with already.
The Port of Oakland says its drayage truck ban goes well beyond the requirements of the California Air Resources Board regulations…
Why? If you’re into conspiracies you may remember the stories of a super port being built in Mexico that is going to replace the California ports and ship everything on the super Nafta highway. If you’ve thought that far… just another piece that fits really well in that big puzzle.
Safe Driver Week in Florida
Oct 18-24 Florida troopers will be out in force to catch speeders, aggressive drivers and the dangerous person driving without a seatbelt. Plus, they will be targeting drivers that don’t move over for emergency vehicles on the shoulder.
They don’t say they’re targeting big trucks, but CVSA and FMCSA are involved in the press release and they mention last month’s safe driver program in Pennsylvania placed 86 vehicles and 73 drivers out of service. Pretty sure those weren’t four-wheelers.
The State of Trucking
The President of the ATA during his annual State of the Industry address at a “conference” in Las Vegas (conferences in Vegas are always in quotes), mentioned how the industry is in a transformational moment and the industry has faced economic challenges and global uncertainty.
“The nation’s infrastructure needs are staggering,” he said. “ATA has done an outstanding job of developing and communicating a list of reauthorization priorities – highlighted by calling for an emphasis on freight movement and the elimination of freight bottlenecks. And while we have made it clear that we are prepared to pay additional dollars in support of road and bridge construction, we are only interested in that possibility when our industry agenda is embraced.”
How about spending the transportation dollars on transportation? I wouldn’t mind them working on that agenda. Freight bottlenecks are everywhere, you can’t drive a full day without hitting some sort of construction zone. If someone was serious about bottlenecks, trucks would be in the HOV lanes instead of vegan cubicle workers trying to save the planet.
Want the State of Trucking?
I misplaced my invitation to the “conference”, but I do have the notes from my speech I was going to give:
The state of trucking is in shambles right now, but I feel there is some sort of recovery going on. It’s going to be a slow recovery and no one is going to notice it when it happens.
Even though the market has taken care of a lot of the bad apples there are still some left and would be low hanging fruit if the enforcement community wanted to do some enforcing. Someone like the ATA could fix the 3PL system while it’s at a place that can be fixed. While trucking companies go out of business and have their equipment confiscated, brokers only have to change their name and phone number and they’re back in business. How about making a broker’s bond something worth having and at an amount they wouldn’t want to lose very often? How about if they have liens on their bond, truckers would know about it without digging in some obscure database. How about making it a little tougher to become a broker so it wouldn’t be such a revolving door for a few crooks taking advantage of it?
During my company’s DOT audit, the officer said there was nothing they could do about brokers unless they actually broke the law and since there are hardly any laws on the books for brokers and the laws that are there are barely worth enforcing because they have no affect. Here’s a concept, let’s make some laws and enforce them!
Make a CDL Mean Something Again
If trucking companies have been hit so hard and even though I haven’t seen any real numbers, my guess would be there are fewer trucks on the road, why are schools pumping out students like it was the gold rush? Because they can get grants for their unemployed students and when they’re done, those students are not their problem anymore. How about some accountability for the CDL schools? How about forcing schools to train more than just 3 week wonders? How about making a CDL a little more difficult to get. You say you’re concerned about safety?
Why is it, that even now, the only people making money in trucking are not truckers? Hey! Here’s another concept, let’s make trucking a career worth having again? While the cream has risen to the top during the hard times, take advantage of it and get rid of the scumbags that prey on trucking and truckers and not about more state fund raisers disguised as a “Safety Week”.
Now go out and spend money, Vegas needs your support and more “conferences”.
Winner for the Fourth of July Photo Contest
Virginia Needs an Attitude Adjustment
RSS feed for comments on this post
We're on Twitter!
Standing “O” for you!
Thank you, thank you!
Good info, Wayne! The entire scheme with the California ports is designed to shove the independents out of port access. They’ve also worked on only allowing trucks in if the carrier passes some kind of screenings and has a huge credit rating. That means independents cant even access the permission unless they sign on with a large carrier. One of the large carriers said in a webinar last week that they’re having trouble getting their owner-operators to “invest in the equipment upgrades” they’re now wanting. What a joke! You’re making NO profit and they want you to take on huge debt to meet the requirements of a system they helped design so THEY can make decent profits! So, once again, the deck is being stacked against the independent.
As for the super port, Lazaro Cardinas has been open for about three years, I think. And there’s another one in the works. A lot of this freight is being shipped by rail into the States. Kansas City Southern is negotiating with the City of Laredo to build another railroad bridge across the border to move even more freight. This freight doesn’t meet a truck until it hits a rail yard near the final destination! I wonder how many tax dollars are quietly going into building this infrastructure?
They really dont want to fix the problems in trucking. . .they just want to make money at our expense!