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Lifestyle Newbies Trucker News

Is Truck Driving suited for You?

Truck driving is not for the faint of heart. You must be able to manage your stress, time, and energy well to succeed. I have seen many, many times the simple mistakes that can be made when a driver gets cocky or is stressed or distracted. Accidents happen, people get hurt, and drivers lose their jobs. Depending on the severity of the accident, some even lose their license. It’s not something to take lightly. The following advice will help to keep you on the road and on track.

Stress management is very crucial. Whether it’s something as simple as changing the radio station or pulling off the road for 30 minutes, you must remember to take time for yourself, no matter how hot the load is. Many companies will tell you safety comes first, but then once you sit down in the driver’s seat, they tell you otherwise. “The load has to be there. Why are you not moving?” Don’t be afraid to tell them you’re tired. Talk to your dispatcher.

If something is going on at home that you need to address, tell them. Most will work with you or refer you to someone you can talk to about what is bothering you. The main thing is to get it off your chest. Take a moment to breathe. Take a nap if you need to. Take a walk around the rest area or go inside the truckstop for a cup of coffee. It’s amazing what a little fresh air can do for your stress levels.

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Lifestyle Trucker News

$5 million in DOT funds for North Dakota

The U.S. Department of Transportation on June 27 announced $5 million in emergency funds available to the North Dakota Department of Transportation to begin restoring federal-aid highways damaged by flooding.

Minot damage was just the latest in relentless flood events throughout the state caused by snow melt and heavy spring rains of unprecedented magnitude affecting at least 43 of the 53 counties throughout the state. In Minot, at least 10,000 people were evacuated as water began spilling over the town’s emergency levees.

The Souris River, which flows from Canada through north central North Dakota back into Canada, reached uncharted levels and inundated thousands of homes and businesses. Crews continue to work to protect homes and critical infrastructure.

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Lifestyle Newbies Trucker News

FMCSA plans driver onboard monitoring study

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration plans to assess commercial motor vehicle drivers’ responses about onboard monitoring systems via a questionnaire as part of a field test study.

FMCSA plans for 500 CMV drivers to participate in a questionnaire.

The goal of the questionnaire and study is to determine whether onboard monitoring and feedback will reduce at-risk behavior among CMV drivers and improve driver safety performance. The purpose of the questionnaire portion is to assess CMV drivers’ acceptance of onboard monitoring systems being evaluated in the study.

A series of four questionnaires will be conducted in the baseline (no feedback), intervention (receiving feedback) and withdrawal (no feedback) periods. These questionnaires will address the CMV drivers’ expectations, experiences and attitudes toward onboard monitoring systems and assess changes in their perception over the 18-month study period.

All study questionnaires will be available in both paper and electronic form. The results will be summarized and integrated into the rest of the larger study report that evaluates the effectiveness of onboard monitoring systems in improving safety and driver performance.

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Lifestyle Newbies Trucker News

Trucking Routing Software

Truck routing software enables trucking companies to run operations that make the best use of equipment, personnel and resources. The result is a saving of time, reduction of the cost of fuel and better customer servicing.
With routing software, employee time is utilized effectively, from regulation considerations to routing administration. In addition, the environment is helped through reduced emissions due to routes that are efficient. Local road condition information can be current and observance of routing regulations in multiple areas preempts fines.

Factors
Routing for trucks involves more than just finding the best roads. It also means making sure that the truck will fit on the road. It also includes knowledge of regulations of such things as permits and taxes. The efficient use of the truck includes limiting the number of trips with no loads to carry. Routing can be regional, national or international.

Benefits
Customers are better served due to an enhanced ability to accommodate and coordinate customers’ wishes. Greater delivery-time efficiency and accuracy is possible. Input allows for increased quality of company decisions.

Considerations
The software company provides installation, training and maintenance. An inventory of the trucking company resources is made. These include the trucks and personnel. The internet can be used for current planning. The software program should adapt to the the company’s way of operating, not vice versa.

Prevention/Solution
Use of GPS as an integrated part of the routing software provides real time tracking. If the directions turn out to be wrong, then correcting the information and providing new information can be quick and efficient.

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Lifestyle Trucker News

Nevada bans all cell phone use while driving

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a new law June 17 that prohibits talking or texting on a cell phone while driving.

The law makes Nevada the 34th state to prohibit texting behind the wheel and the ninth to prohibit all handheld cell phone use while driving.

The new Nevada law makes it illegal to text or talk on a handheld cell phone while driving. Under the new law, violators face a fine of up to $100 for the first offense, up to $200 for the second offense and up to $250 for the third offense. In addition, third-time offenders also can have their driver licenses suspended. The law is due to become effective on Jan. 1, 2012; law enforcement officers will begin issuing warnings on Oct. 1.

With the addition of Nevada, 34 states, the District of Columbia and Guam have banned text messaging by all drivers. Nine states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have prohibited all handheld cell phone use while driving.

States that haven’t yet banned texting while driving are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia. Some localities in those states have passed their own distracted driving bans, but Florida, Mississippi, Nevada and Oklahoma prohibit localities from enacting such laws.

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Lifestyle Trucker News

EPA seeks SCR alert system

The Environmental Protection Agency has updated its guidance for certification of truck engines using selective catalytic reduction to reduce emissions, calling on SCR engine makers to develop warning systems that alert drivers when the truck’s diesel exhaust fluid tank is nearly empty or filled with a liquid other than DEF.

The new guidance, mostly in response to claims made by Navistar Inc. that SCR technology can be circumvented, also urged OEMs using SCR to research methods that would inhibit tampering with SCR system operation and incorporate further inducements for drivers to comply.

Concerns about SCR’s environmental compliance were brought to EPA’s attention by Navistar, which uses a competitive technology, exhaust gas recirculation, to meet EPA 2010 regulations. Navistar had sued both EPA and the California Air Resources Board over their acceptance of SCR technology without stronger measures to prevent engine operation without DEF or an operational SCR system. The truckmaker last year settled both lawsuits by garnering a commitment for further review.

Navistar representatives contended that independent test findings showed new commercial vehicles that must contain liquid urea to meet federal NOx emissions standards continued to operate effectively when urea was not present. At such times, Navistar said, the vehicles threw off levels of NOx as much as 10 times higher than when urea was present.

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Lifestyle Trucker News

Truckers Unhappy With Pricing Model

Less-than-truckload carriers are broadly dissatisfied with LTL pricing models, but not at all optimistic about changing to a new method for matching prices to freight.

That’s one of the findings of an LTL pricing survey conducted by Auburn University for SMC3 unveiled at the SMC3 Connections Conference in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

The survey conducted over the past year found 52 percent of LTL carriers were dissatisfied with the decades-old and much-maligned tariff and freight classification pricing model.

That compares with 25 percent of shippers and 38 percent of logistics providers who are unhappy with the densely complicated system, said Professor Joe Hanna, chair of Auburn’s supply chain management department.

The study, sponsored by SMC3, was launched last year after the collapse of LTL rates during the recession. It is the first LTL pricing study to include 3PLS, or freight brokers.

The trucker dissatisfaction reflects decades of discounting off base rates that divorced pricing from the actual costs of transporting LTL freight, Hanna said. Carriers, 3PLs and shippers questioned in the survey’s first phase said discounts “are getting ridiculous, and as a result the base rates are ridiculous,” said Hanna.

Far fewer shippers were dissatisfied with the pricing model, but most said they had “adapted” to what they saw as an imperfect system.
“Is the marketplace ready for change? There’s no consensus,” said Hanna.

LTL truckers were the least optimistic that the shipping industry is ready to change.
More than 60 percent of the truckers surveyed in the second phase of the survey said the market isn’t ready for re-indexing base rates or a density-based pricing.
Shippers were more positive, with 60 percent saying they were ready for density-based pricing, and almost 60 percent saying they were ready for re-indexing.

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Lifestyle

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are paying up to $3.75 to $4.10 per gallon. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon:

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline.. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps. When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby
minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

To have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. It’s really simple to do.

I’m sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)… and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers !!!!!!! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If It goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. How long would it take?

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Lifestyle Trucker News

Shippers’ lot improves

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.

FTR Associates on June 14 reported a significant reversal in its Shippers’ Condition Index from the prior month.

FTR says the healthier environment for shippers is due to a slowdown in freight demand growth thanks to the current lull in economic activity, as well as further delays in implementing new federal trucking regulations.

The SCI sums up all market influences that affect shippers. Larry Gross, FTR senior consultant, said the current “soft spot” in the recovery is providing some breathing room for shippers as the growth in freight has slowed.

“At the same time, we have moved back our forecasts for regulation-based tightening of the supply of trucks, as the federal government has delayed the implementation of new driver regulations,” Gross said. “This is a temporary respite in our view.”

Gross sees the SCI starting to deteriorate once again as the economy begins to re accelerate later this year. As the new trucking regulations begin to kick in, shipping costs will increase through 2012, with transport costs such as fuel, equipment and labor rising faster than the general rate of inflation, he forecasts.

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Lifestyle Trucker News

Bill would close drug/alcohol

Nearly half of all Americans over the age of 12 are consumers of alcohol. Although most drink only occasionally or moderately, there are an estimated 10 to 15 million alcoholics or problem drinkers in the United States, with more than 100,000 deaths each year attributed to alcohol. Among the nation’s alcoholics and problem drinkers are as many as 4.5 million adolescents, and adolescents are disproportionately involved in alcohol-related automobile accidents, the leading cause of death among Americans 15 to 24 years old.

STOP! DRUG/ALCOHOL

“For over 15 years, commercial drivers have been required to submit to drug and alcohol testing to ensure they aren’t impaired while on the highway,” says Bill Graves, ATA president and chief executive officer. “However, a loophole in the system allows drivers who test positive to evade the consequences of their actions by failing to disclose their complete work histories and positive test results to prospective employers. This important legislation will close that loophole and will improve the safety of our highways.”

ATA says the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration both have found that a centralized clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results is preferable to the current system that relies both on drivers to self-report their failed tests and on previous employers to provide test results to future employers. Currently, these prospective employers only learn of test results when drivers disclose the names of past employers for whom they tested positive.