Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

ATA is reporting a slight increase in freigth tonnage two months in a row following three straight months of decline. It appears to be temporary and the experts are predicting decliines in the coming months. So any upturn appears to be only temporary.

Trucking news: ATA says seasonally-adjusted for-hire Truck Tonnage Index is up for second straight month
Jeff Berman, Group News Editor — Logistics Management, 7/31/2008

ARLINGTON, Va.—After three months of declining growth, the American Trucking Associations reported this week that its advanced seasonally-adjusted for-hire Truck Tonnage Index was up for the second consecutive month, with a 1.3 percent increase in June. This rise follows a 0.5 percent gain in May.

ATA Vice President and Chief Economist Bob Costello said in a statement that despite tonnage being up again in June, it is a “close call” as to whether the economy will enter into a recession later this year or significantly slow down. He added that truck tonnage levels may possibly slow down later this year, with the overall economy expected to be weak in the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2009.

Capacity is the key to those of us that are left. If there are too many trucks going after too little freight, rates drop as truckers take anything to survive. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, it’s Internet radio. I’ve been invited to participate in an Internet Talk show put on by Allen at Truth About Trucking .com. Check out the show page here the date is August 19th. I’ll put out another reminder when the time gets closer.

The topic? Do Truckers have the right to strike? Most everyone here knows my position. I’ll be joined by Allen and a 21 year trucking veteran. Should be interesting.

Convenience on your key chain

Need to know where the Wi-Fi is? Now you can, with this tiny but durable little gadget that fits right on your key chain without bulking it up so much that it won’t fit comfortably in your pocket or purse. Sure, you can boot up your laptop and look for a signal. You can even walk around or drive around with it, but it’s time consuming and tedious. It’s much easier to just use the mobile Wi-Fi locator to hunt for a signal so you’re not using your bulky laptop and running your battery dead just trying to find a place that’s got a signal you can use. The mobile Wi-Fi locator is not only small, lightweight, and convenient but it also comes with an LED light so that you can see not only that you have a signal but how strong that signal is. You’ll know whether your newly found Wi-Fi is usable before you ever take your computer out of its case and push the power button.

Mobile Edge Wifi Locator

It’s great that people are getting motivated to do something about our energy crisis. And yes, it is a crisis, not only because of the high cost, but the security of the country shouldn’t be dependent on foreign governments. The global oil market is not a “market”, it’s a small group of countries that control the supply while everyone’s demand is going up and most of those countries don’t like us and now that China is becoming a huge consumer of their product, they really don’t care if we live or die anymore.

T. Boone Pickens is big into wind and solar energy and natural gas. Not sure where trucking fits into any of those, but he does show that Natural Gas powered cars can and do work and would be a big benefit. But even if every single four-wheeler was running on natural gas or electricity, diesel is still a world wide commodity and is in very big demand everywhere, not just in the US. But it would lower the overall demand for oil which would lower the price of oil which hopefully would also lower the price for diesel. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, millions of diesel users were able to enjoy a sigh of relief. According to the Department of Energy, the national average pump price on diesel decreased by 4.6 cents to $4.718 per gallon. This is the most significant drop on diesel fuel in the last six months. The first decline in three weeks, the new national average proceeds last week’s crude oil slide of well over $16 which ranked diesel fuel $1.829 per gallon higher than it was around the same time last year.

Meanwhile, gasoline dropped 4.9 cents to $4.064 per gallon though it remains $1.106 higher than the average last year at this time. Bloomberg reports that the decrease of both fuels are the result of a major drop in oil prices that occurred last week when the price plunged tremendously from a whopping $145.08 to $128.88 per barrel.

The West Coast region leads the nation in regard to these declines with an average drop of 6.4 cents - California was a major contributor with a decline average of 6.2 cents.

It seems as if World Bank isn’t placing 75% of the rise in fuel prices on biofuel. What was reported to be a secret appears to have been a draft, one that doesn’t reflect World Bank’s official position on the matter. While some have speculated that the report was suppressed due to political interests, Donald Mitchell, author of the draft report, states that the report has yet to be released simply because edits needed to be made. Representatives from World Bank contest that Mitchell is still receiving input from his peers and that the paper is in the process of being finalized. Furthermore, Mitchell claims that World Bank is looking to deliver a more polished version of the report which may be released as early as the end of this week.

Despite the confusion, World Bank stands firm on the belief that the increased production of biofuel has increased the need for food crops, which in turn has become the major contributor to steadily increasing food prices. This alone is more than enough to point the finger at biofuel whether the facts are derived from a draft paper or a full report.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of tractor-trailer drivers in the U.S. with valid commercial driver’s licenses. What makes this disturbing is the fact that a large number of them also qualify for federal disability benefits and have been prescribed medications to treat unconscious spells, seizures or heart conditions. Despite warnings from the government and the unsettling combination of injuries and deaths caused by commercial drivers with serious health issues, far too many of them continue to hop behind the wheel and endanger the lives of unsuspecting travelers.

According to a recent review by the Associated Press, truckers have been caught violating U.S. federal medical laws in every state. Violations compiled by the Transportation Department reveal that Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania make up the states where these laws were broken the most frequently.

Sadly enough, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration admits to not completing any of the eight recommendations proposed by U.S. safety regulators in 2001. At this point, it remains unclear whether any of these eight recommendations will be put into effect before the upcoming Presidential Election.

Michelin, one of the largest tire and automotive supply makers, has announced that their products and services can now be purchased in 32 more truck stops. When truckers need work done on their rigs or they need a tire, there are only so many places they can get that done. They come to rely on truck stops because most standard tire stores or mechanics can’t handle a big truck.

At a lot of truck stops though fuel, food and a shower are all a trucker can get – so they’re forced to call roadside assistance. It’s helpful in an emergency but it’s also very costly, and truckers and their companies lose money when problems occur. Michelin is helping truckers avoid this by expanding their services and their products to more places that truckers need them.

Most of the truck stops are thrilled to get Michelin as a partner. They know the reputation that the company has, and having a big business partner helps some of the smaller, independent truck stops get more business and put themselves on the map – that way, everybody wins.

The biggest win comes for the truckers, because they have more options and having more choices helps to keep the market competitive and the prices low.

Found this at Dan Goodwill’s blog. Dan has the best technical analysis of trucking on the net. Quoting a truck industry stock analyst, “The freight recession is over.” According to tonnage indices and demand trends, the freight economy is on an upswing.

Don’t start throwing parties yet. Dan goes on -

This view is supported by a number of trucking companies and shippers with whom I have spoken in the past six weeks. Several interesting events have been taking place. They include:

• Carriers are deciding to no longer serve certain accounts (e.g. “firing customers”) and are allocating capacity to better paying accounts.
• Carriers are no longer providing capacity to certain freight management companies either on specific lanes or no longer doing business with these companies altogether
• Carriers are submitting freight bids on specific blocks of traffic and then pulling their bids
• Carriers are submitting rates on designated lanes of traffic and then not showing up to meet with the shipper
• Shippers are finding a tightening of capacity and are experiencing more difficulty covering some of their loads

The upshot of all this activity is that there is a “buzz” in the industry that has not been there for the past year or two. There is an optimism that this incredibly difficult freight drought is coming to an end.

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It amazes and disgusts me at the same time to see how disconnected and stupid the government really is.

Trucking in general is in tough times, everyone agrees on that. Companies and owners are going under on a daily basis. The drivers that were employed by those companies and small fleets are now unemployed and are looking to drive for someone else.
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