Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

I am a parent, and a protective one at that, I will admit.  I am also a parent with gray hair, having added a child to our family when I was 45.  So I have the advantage of remembering how life was way before most of today’s parents were even born.  This is a curse and a blessing at the same time.

The world has changed a lot since I grew up in the midwest suburbs in the late 50’s and 60’s.  There is far more violence in our everyday world if you let it in.  I am talking about the media, and then the repetition of this violence by those who watch the media.

There has been a loss of innocence at the expense of the well-being of our young people.  Let me supply some specific examples.  My children are eight and six years old, and here are the things they have been exposed to without my permission.

1. My son was messing around on his little acoustic guitar and I heard him singing, “Viva, Viagra!”  Whoa - hold the phone!  “Where did you hear that song?” I asked him in as calm a voice I could muster at that surprised moment. “Oh I heard Katie singing it.”  Turns out some children watch the evening news at home, learn the song from the commercial, and end up repeating the catchy little diddy all the next day.  I know my six year old son has no idea what he is singing about, but he should be singing about the itsy bitsy spider or the cow jumping over the moon instead.  Even though I don’t allow my children to watch the news on Tv at home, my son has learned this song through a playmate.  Commercials for erectile dysfunction were not even on the air when I was growing up, so it was never an issue. I cannot keep my son from being exposed to these messages when other parents allow my son’s playmates to watch these commercials. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time coming, roughly twice as long as the FCC normally takes to perform a merger review, but it looks like a decision is finally on the horizon.

The primary factor in prolonging the review has been the fact that the FCC originally granted licenses to XM and Sirius on the condition the companies never merge; and government regulatory bodies are loathe to make 180 degree reversals. Their thought, back in 1997, was that a merger would stifle competition and result in a condition in which satellite radio consumers weren’t well served.

But the Department of Justice Anti-Trust Division, the folks charged with reviewing proposed mergers, so as to prevent potential monopolies, issued a statement that begins with the following statement:

“Evidence Does Not Establish that Combination of Satellite Radio Providers Would Substantially Reduce Competition”

I’m not entirely sure, with a decision by the DOJ (issued March 28, 2008) indicating a lack of anti-trust issues, why it’s taken so long for the FCC to bring this matter to a head but it may be that they had additional concerns. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said, on June 15th,

“As I have indicated before, this is an unusual situation. I am recommending that with the voluntary commitments they (Sirius and XM) have offered, on balance, this transaction would be in the public interest.”

Soooo…just what might those voluntary commitments be?

Read the rest of this entry »

When Life hands you a Lemon, make Lemonade. Or When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Or It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the DOG

and like that.

Winston Churchill said…..”"never, ever,ever, give up

Comprende?

However, not giving up, not quitting may not be the same thing as continuing with the same old thing.

Tactics they call it. The strategy is the same (make more money) but the tactics might change.

If one thing doesn’t work, try something else.

Almost every truck driver started out pulling a dry box. Of those few that didn’t many of THEM started by pulling a standard Flatbed. (of course there are the exceptions like me. I started out hauling bombs during the VietNam War, Police Action, Conflict)

Dry Vans have the highest turnover in the Industry. It’s no wonder a HUGE percentage of folks who think they “have what it takes” to be a trucker don’t. Just about EVERY trucker is “one in a hundred”. THAT many drop out, more maybe.

Read the rest of this entry »

You wouldn’t think a company would have this picture on their support page. A person scratching their head, looking off into space, perhaps looking for a clue?

Beginning Saturday with server problems and hopefully ending today with Domain routing issues, we may be at 100% right now.

I would name the hosting company, but it doesn’t do any good. We have plans to move to bigger, better and more reliable equipment where we have more control over what happens and better support. We were almost finished moving everything over before we came back online and if the outage had lasted any longer, we would have been up and running this afternoon on a very current backup.

Sorry for the interruption, we are implementing plans so it doesn’t happen again. If you were one of the lucky ones that didn’t even notice, ignore the part about the interruption, but the rest applies, because we’re still moving to better equipment soon.

If you have ever had a problem keeping your composure when it comes to aggressive drivers then you can definately say you are human. It’s a natural reaction to become aggitated at motorists who seem to have no respect for themselves or others around them. But when it comes to trucking and truck drivers, we as professionals need to set the standard when dealing with these types of situations.

I have noticed over the course of my driving career that many truckers seem to think that they are king, so to speak, of the road. I am sorry to tell you, but trucks are no longer sterotyped as “kings of the road”. I remember 20 years ago riding with my father in his truck that cars and other motorists would actually give right of way to big trucks. And even, sometimes, do so with the friendly wave of a hand. Now, those types of people still do exist, but they are few and far between. Now a days most common motorists do everything they can to be in the front of everyone else, including trucks, and they could care less who they have to cut off or run off the road to achieve it.

As professional drivers, it is up to you to keep your composure and deal with these types of motorists by backing away from them if possible. Keeping yourself out of harms way is key in an aggressive driving situation. Do not let aggressive drivers get the best of you. I know it’s hard to do sometimes but you can control yourself. Remember that no matter where you are, there are going to be drivers around you who neglect the dangers surrounding them and it’s up to you to make predictions and adjustments to keep the road a safer place to travel.

How do you share things you find on the Internet? Fill out our poll on the right. At the bottom of each post I’ve listed the more popular services, but if you don’t see the bookmarks you use, the AddThis option has just about every bookmarking service made or leave a comment and tell me what you use.

If you enjoy reading Life on the Road, help pass the word, email or share your bookmarks in del.ico.us or digg.com

If you don’t enjoy reading Life on the Road, click on the Contact Us option and let us know what you want to write and read about.

Here’s a quick explanation of del.icio.us (my favorite and the easiest to use).

What is del.icio.us?
del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else’s. You can use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite — they’ve already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.

What’s Digg.com?
Digg.com is a place for people to discover and share content across the web, from the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog. Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.

Every article submitted to Digg has a count of how many Diggs the story has received. You need to be signed-in to Digg a story. For every registered user that clicks “Digg it” the count goes up one. If a story reaches the tipping point, then it gets promoted to the homepage.

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 »

One of the biggest reasons why blogging has been such a phenomenon over the years is the sharing of information between people that write. Most of the writers for Life on the Road write for their own blogs as well.

• Mickey’s Heavy Haul wrote Intro to Heavy Hauling for us and now has written about his latest heavy haul with plenty of pictures.
• Porter lives in Mexico and is our expert about NAFTA and the Mexican Truck issues. His site Mexico Trucker is recognized by the FMCSA and is on their official press release list.
• Renee’s husband, Mark, was trucking in Iraq as a contractor.  Their site is American Truckers At War. She has also contributed to OOIDA’s Landline Magazine and several other sites.
• E. Phil Haley has published a book Over-the-Road Wireless for Dummies and keeps up with gadgets and technology for us and his own site The Cyber Truckstop
• Don keeps us up to date with the all things Government and politics here and at his Truckin’ Blog.

As you can tell we have an all-star line up of writers. The difference between us and a trucking magazine website is -

A truck magazine has writers that only write about trucking.

We are drivers and owners that work and live in the industry and the lifestyle every day for our livelihood, and we enjoy writing about it.

Are you a news junkie with an opinion, especially a trucking news junkie with a passion for everything trucking? Don’t want to hassle with a website? Join our team by clicking here. It’s that easy.

Are truck-drivers literally a dieing breed? Are we working ourselves into an early grave? In a poll by Knoxville-based Professional Drivers Medical Depots finds that 65 percent of truckers surveyed rated their health fair or poor. The poll also sights that 70 percent of those responding to the survey knew a truck driver who died between age 40 and 60. It seems that the already stressful driving lifestyle has gotten worse instead of better. With high stress levels, poor food, and just living in an idling tin-can for weeks at a time, are creating a crisis in the industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Blow things up and get paid for it
The science of Fireworks

If you want a little historical perspective, Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse, is Live-blogging the Continental Congress of 1776.

For those like me who are working today, be safe and give yourself a little extra time. They say there are over 41 million Americans hitting the roads for the holiday and most of them will have their minds on something besides driving.

Happy Birthday America;
Don Rogers