Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you have seen the price you pay for a gallon of diesel fuel skyrocket; Oil prices have broken records everyday this week. Fuel went up 3.3 cents overnight and have set a new record for diesel at $3.909 a gallon. As I sit writing this article in Georgia, the sign on the truckstop says $4.01 per gallon, and there appears to be no end in sight for the run-up of prices.

Why the big jump, even with all of the gloom and doom stories about how bad the economy is? According to John Wilen, an AP Business Writer, Fed policy on interest rates, ignoring inflation to keep economy going, has driven down the value of the dollar, the same dollars we give to other countries for oil. It has also driven investors to put their money heavily into oil and energy, driving up the price even in the face of adequate supply.

“This cocktail’s been whipped up by the Federal Reserve,” said James Cordier, founder of OptionSellers.com, a Tampa, Fla., trading firm. “Until inflation is their number one concern, we have nowhere to go but up.”

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Popularity: 42% [?]

Today is make-it or break-it day for many of the Presidential hopefuls, its Super Tuesday. Citizens in 24 States will go to the polls today to express their right to decide who will represent their views and wishes in the next Presidential election. If you live in one of these States, take a few minutes and go vote. Even if your Candidate has little or no chance of winning, let your opinion be heard. Your vote tells your party how you feel on issues, your views are important in building the parties platform for November. Don’t think that just because the media has decided who they think should win, that they are right, just ask Harry Truman.(well you could if he was still around)

Get out and vote, if you are not registered then get registered, make a difference. As long as we let the media lead us around by the nose, then nothing changes.

One other thing before I head off to the polls, if a pollster ask you how and why you voted, let them know. Tell them you are a trucker and you voted for such and such reason. We need to show that we have numbers and influence.

Be Safe and Vote.
Don

Popularity: 24% [?]

How much is your vote worth? Apparently to the folks in Washington, its worth about $500 of your own money. In an apparent effort to boost public opinion and make themselves feel good, Congress and the President have offered up a $150 Billion “Economic Stimulus Package“. The key feature of this Bill basically takes the money that we pay in taxes and give us back a little bit of it, and also passes some of that money to people that don’t pay taxes. Think of the sixteen year olds with part-time jobs, that are going to get that new iPod from your taxes! The politicians will then crow about the great deal they gave us taxpayers and spout rhetoric on the great job they are doing up on Capitol Hill. Hmmm, must be an election year! Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 42% [?]

or…..How to Bake a Truck Driver

Heads-up for drivers that actually still go to California, starting in the New Year, California is changing its rules on idling. Drivers will no longer be allowed to idle their trucks while in sleeper, use of that expensive APU is prohibited if you have a 2007+ engine, and fines are going up. More can be found on the CARB website.

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Popularity: 36% [?]

…and maybe out!

Subscribers to the Siricomm Truckstop Wifi service may have noticed that they cannot get on-line through Sircomm at this time. A statement on their website reads:

Effective November 19, 2007, the SiriCOMM network is not providing service to customers. The outage is the result of a dispute between SiriCOMM and its network service provider, ViaSat. SiriCOMM is working to resolve its issues with ViaSat.

From Market Wire:

The network will remain inactive pending resolution of certain key issues, including non-payment. “We are very disappointed at the actions taken by ViaSat and we are continuing to work diligently to remedy the situation,” said Mark Grannell, President and CEO of SiriCOMM, Inc.

Siricomm stock closed at .04 today after a $1 high last December and has shown a steady decline since July.

I seem to remember an almost identical statement fromTruckstop.net a few years ago when they went belly-up. Siricomm provides wifi service mainly to Pilot and Loves truckstops. Hopefully they are able to resolve their dispute, loss of service for a second time in these facilities will leave a large hole in wifi access.

Popularity: 80% [?]

The Democratically lead Congress, who’s approval rating ranks third behind President Bush and the Ebola virus, has continued on its spirit of “Bridges to Nowhere” and excessive Pork barrel spending. Included in this years $106 billion bill are funds for the Houston, TX Zoo, an Art Museum in Huntsville, AL and a hunting and fishing museum in PA. (See the list of amendments here) Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 48% [?]

Easy for truckers to cheat drug tests

NBC news is running a story on drug usage by American truckers. The report is based on a GAO report that says that government agents were able to fool the system at some drug testing sites with fake I.D.s and synthetic urine.

From NBC:

Undercover investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, used bogus truck driver’s licenses to gain access to 24 drug-testing sites. They found that 75 percent “failed to restrict access to items that could be used to adulterate or dilute the [urine] specimen, meaning that running water, soap, or air freshener was available in the bathroom during the test.”

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Popularity: 71% [?]

I was having dinner with my family last night discussing an upcoming project here and the question came up of what is a podcast? Being the general technical support for my family and neighbors for years I have been listening to these things for a couple of years now and had figured everyone knew what a podcast was. Then it dawned on me, “What the heck is a Podcast?”. I really had no simple concise, concise answer, in fact I really couldn’t explain it in such a way to do podcasting justice. “Its like a radio show over the internet”, I said, which garnered blank stares, “They are automatically downloaded through RSS feeds”, which left my audience with a who-cares look on their face. So I decided to attempt to come up with something that better reflects what podcast are and the community behind them. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 56% [?]

Today we are going to take a look at owner operator expenses, in particular Variable Cost. Last time we discussed fixed cost, the cost that do not change on a day to day basis, now we will look at the cost that do change.

Variable costs include items like:

• Fuel
• Tires
• Wages paid
• Some permits and usage fees
• tolls
• Meals

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Popularity: 57% [?]

I recently pulled into a truckstop for a break and fired up a wifi connection and logged into one of the internet providers that broadcast to the parking lot. To my surprise I got a message stating that I exceeded my monthly bandwidth quota and if I wanted to use the net I would have to pay more for bandwidth. Well this struck me as odd since I had used this particular service very little over the previous month so I did some looking into my account. Someone had changed some of the info on my account! I then made a call to their customer service and found I had logged on in Oklahoma City earlier that morning, I was in Indiana, and had been their a couple of days!

So what happened? Apparently I had gotten sloppy in logging on somewhere and had not paid attention whether or not I had an https:// connection or just an open http:// connection. Someone had either sniffed my log on or had used a man-in-the-middle attack to snag my password. I had gotten sloppy and this is what these people are looking for!
Protect yourself, always check that you have a secure SSL connection(https://) whenever you send personal info over a wifi connection and get in the habit of changing your passwords on a regular basis.

Truckstops are a wealth of information to identity thieves, so many of us do business online from our cabs, credit cards and personal info can be easily intercepted by these people. Don’t let yourself become a victim by being sloppy.

Be safe on the road and on-line;
Don Rogers

Popularity: 55% [?]