Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

This is Clark Schoeder from Cerberus Subrogation Professionals, LLC ( www.cerberussubro.com ). We are a company that helps commercial trucking companies, owner/operators, and commercial auto insurance companies recover money that is owed to them by other insurance companies. We are writing a series of articles about trucking insurance issues. Last week, we discussed what you can do to protect yourself and your company when you are involved in an accident. What to Do When You Are In an Accident

This week, we are going to discuss “What does the insurance company owe you when you are in an accident?” The answer to that question depends on whether you are filing a 1^st party or a 3^rd party insurance claim. Let me explain the differences.

1^st Party Claims

A 1^st party insurance claim is a claim that you file with YOUR insurance company under your “collision” or “comprehensive” coverage. These coverages are a contract between you and your insurance company that states that the insurance company will pay to fix your vehicle regardless of which party caused the accident. Under this contract, the insurance company does not owe all of the damages that you suffered; they only owe certain damages that are stated in the policy.

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Popularity: 43% [?]

Since this was something brought up as a response to the Transportation Broker Survey Results, I thought I would elaborate on something that I do know to be true.

First to address one of the comments:

Comment by Robert Blair

2008-05-15 10:16:13

While a bidding system has its merits, ultimately shippers want to deal with people. They don’t want their freight and its proper handling to become a tracking number in a faceless, paperless and impersonal system.

Shippers may want to deal with people but in all reality,  the bigger companies have a series of processes by which they receive their loads and even by how they go down a chain of command in order to end up being brokered by Joe Driver.

A big company will receive a load from say a soda distributor. Do they know it’s going to be a brokered load? No. Someone in customer service handles that part. First checking capacity of their own fleet, then their owner-operators, lease purchase, and power only trucks. Then it is decided if they are confident enough to be able to broker the load out for the shipper. Customer service negotiates the price (which may or may not have been given to customer service set up as a sliding fee scale or perhaps they refer to rates that the broker will want in order to sell the load) and then puts in the company system.

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Popularity: 29% [?]

As I mentioned before, I was really shocked to find out 75% of people that took the survey did not know what Power Only was. So I am here to shed a little light on exactly what it is and what it entails.

Power Only means that you provide only the power to pull a load. In other words, you provide the tractor the company provides the trailer AND freight. Sounds like a great deal right? No worries with having to buy a trailer, insure it, or make repairs to it. Oh but wait a minute, that also means by pulling a company’s trailer you are strictly to confined to pulling their loads. And most of the time they run a power only driver (or fleet) as if they were a company driver. Ouch. I don’t know if I like the sounds of that!

I can guarantee if you are an owner operator, you will not either! Speaking from the experience of running a small fleet of power only drivers, it is just like being a company driver. The person (at the time I was a broker running power only) works as a dispatcher. You book the loads, you dispatch the loads, you keep track of the drivers, and you hope all goes well. All of the wonderful headaches are included in it to like late loads, bad pickup numbers (there goes the start of the long chain of calls to make!), drivers wanting more miles, and drivers wanting to be home since it IS their truck.

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Popularity: 28% [?]

Not really, but they’ve figured out that by connecting all of their to do list to the Green movement, they think they can convince people they want to save the environment.

Slower Trucks Could Save 31.5M Tons Of CO2 Emissions
The American Trucking Associations has launched the first-ever industry-wide environmental sustainability program under the banner Trucks Deliver a Cleaner Tomorrow.

ATA has produced a report (exec summary) and is making six recommendations to reduce fuel consumption.

The plan calls for governors on new trucks to limit speeds to no more than 68 mph, a call to reduce the national speed limit to 65 mph for all vehicles, and industry participation in the U.S. EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership Program. Also on the list is reducing engine idling, improving highways, using more productive truck combinations, and setting fuel economy standards for trucks.

I’ll have to admit, I didn’t read the executive summary, I tried but couldn’t get past the first page. There’s only so much BS I can handle. But I did sit through the video on the same Trucks Deliver A Cleaner Tomorrow website. Cleaner and Greener the latest buzzword catch phrase. The part about how they want to be proactive and not wait for directives? What? The ATA are the ones that want these directives, not the government or anyone else.

They’ve even given their long time request of longer and heavier trucks a Green argument saying it will not only be more efficient, but more fuel efficient, will relieve congestion and reduce emissions.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

As I wrote in a previous post. Fuel prices are high and they’re going to STAY high.

And this is a GOOD thing.

(boink!!!!!!!???, this is a good thing? How can that be? Stay tuned, more on that later)

Whatever can we do?

Well, buying a new truck is right out. I checked into that this last month. To replace my old KW it would cost me just about TWICE what I paid for it about nine years ago. Not quite but almost. I paid ninety something thousand in the year two thousand and the local KW dealer wants almost a hundred and seventy thousand for a very similar replacement.

And the new truck get’s worse fuel economy.

So no thank you. I’ll overhaul and rebuild for a while.

How long a while?

That’s kind of what THIS post is about.

Things are being done. It’s possible to get diesel from other places than an oil well,

from plants, algae and trash.

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Popularity: 53% [?]

As promised I’ve actually read the bill. Todd Spencer (Exec VP OOIDA) was good enough to send me a copy after we talked on the phone. Something about that last post he wanted to talk about.

It probably sounded like I was against it, but I said that unless there’s complete visibility it’s not going to work. Guess what’s in this bill? After this bill everything is supposed to be right there in the open.

Here’s the intro to the bill s.2910 IS (pdf) -

To require brokers to disclose and pay independent truckers for any fuel surcharges received from shippers that relate to fuel costs paid for by the truckers.

I would change “independent truckers” to say all carriers, but later on it does broaden the scope -

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Popularity: 39% [?]

I remember first hearing about the ATA in truck driving school. The instructor told us that they were for trucking companies, not drivers. I just forgot about them as I thought he was just saying that’s an associations for owners. Then I noticed all large companies are members. Then I noticed any company associated with them destroyed many careers and always had a bad reputation. Now I was starting to dislike them.

I have been learning more and more about them as I try to figure out what drives the industry to support legislation that is harmful to it’s own well being. The trucking industry seems to me like child that will beat it’s head on the floor when it’s mad. The more I learn about what drives the poor legislation, the more I uncover about the ATA. Bad things, like speed governers and DAC, just seem to point to the American Trucking Assocation everytime. Most truckers are well aware that the ATA is bad for the industry, but I don’t think we all understand the extent.

First and foremost, it’s ran by a pure politician, CEO Bill Graves. The guy’ has important guy hair and all, but does he know trucking? Alright, the hair thing is a cheap shot, but how many trucks has the leader of the self-proclaimed “association with the most clout” driven? He’s got a hell of a record for human resource management, but its the American Trucking Association, not so much need for HR guy to solve the companies trucking ills. Would an HR person be happy that a trucker was involved in legislation concerning Human Resources?

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Popularity: 23% [?]

As Everitt mentioned in his comment here, I also received OOIDA’s “Call to Action”. This is where OOIDA sends out Legislative alerts so you can write your Congressperson and support OOIDA’s cause. Here’s the excerpt from the email

Last night U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced legislation which will require that 100 percent of fuel surcharges paid by shippers be passed through to whoever actually pays for the fuel to haul the shipper’s goods, obviously in most cases that’s truckers.
S. 2910, the “Trust in Reliable Understanding of Consumer Costs Act” or “TRUCC Act” will ensure that middlemen will no longer be able to skim or pocket fuel surcharges that should be going to truckers. Senators Snowe and Brown worked closely with OOIDA on this legislation.
Please call the offices of your 2 Senators to ask them to support S.2910. Ask your Senators to commit their support for S. 2910 by signing on as cosponsors of the bill.

The legislation was just introduced so the Senators and their staff may not yet be familiar with the bill; this may be a great opportunity for you to educate them on fuel surcharges and the trucking industry.

Like most things that have come out of Congress, this will only cause more paperwork for shippers and brokers and it’s not going to help truckers unless complete visibility is inserted into the bill. And what broker or logistics company is going to allow that?

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Popularity: 36% [?]

One of the many trucking blogs I read is Dan Goodwill’s. Dan is a transportation consultant and has high level experience in trucking and many insights into Canadian and American trucking markets. His latest post Wal-Mart and Target Stores Prepare for Capacity Crunch explains shippers need to pay attention to what Wal-Mart and Target are doing now, to prevent transportation problems later.

The overall capacity in the market is experiencing a decrease as some companies suffering through the freight recession close their doors. In fact, he indicated that trucking company bankruptcies are up significantly from previous years.

Currently this is not a problem for shippers as a host of economic issues have had a negative impact on demand. The lower supply of trucking capacity is in line with the drop in demand.

So, things should be picking up. If the freight demand is starting to match the truck supply, maybe rates will start being reasonable enough for the rest of us to survive.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

All that we here about are the losers in the high fuel price situation. I came across this article and it caused me to think about who the winners are going to be.

Last week, his employer, Walkenhorst Transportation of Lee’s Summit, Mo., reset the maximum speed of his rig to 68 miles per hour from 75 to squeeze out a few extra miles per gallon. While he can still reach most posted speed limits, it now takes an extra 45 minutes to complete the 641-mile daily round-trip hauling auto parts from Nashville, Ill., to a Ford plant in Kansas City. That means Montgomery must leave home at 8:45 a.m. instead of 9:30 — with no extra pay.

So, the public is a winner in a safety aspect. We are running slower. My truck is now governed where previously it was my decision on how fast to run. Drivers are going to lose money in the short run, but my opinion is that my overall productivity is higher when I run reasonable speeds, it’s less stress.

“This is going to put every small trucking company out of business,” he said, filling his truck with $482 of fuel at the Mr. Fuel station off Interstate 70 in Foristell.

ATA companies rejoice. I haven’t heard any complaints from them about fuel yet. No longer will they have to worry about the little guy undercutting them and taking the drivers that they trained. I’ve even seen them taking over union jobs with private companies. Krogers grocery chains used to have highly coveted union trucking jobs that are now gone to U.S. Express. Granted high employee costs played a bigger role, but fuel is going to push the remainders out.

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Popularity: 13% [?]