Citizen Driver couple honored for careers that include 6 million safe miles

ta-petro.com

Article thanks to Mark Schremmer and tandemthoughts.landlinemag.com. Links provided:

June 26, 2018  In 1978, Danny George’s sister worked as a waitress at a truck stop in Wheat Ridge, Colo. Forty years later, his sister attended a ceremony to name that truck stop after her brother and sister-in-law.

As part of the TA & PetroCitizen Driver awards, the TA in Wheat Ridge was officially named the Danny and Cindy George Wheat Ridge Travel Center during a ceremony on June 20. Danny’s sister, Holli Martinez, returned to her former workplace to witness the honor.

“She and her husband were able to attend, and they were kind of blown away by the whole thing,” Danny said. “I warned her when she came that they might put her to work again.”

Friends and family of the Georges witnessed a lifetime achievement award of sorts for the truck driving couple.

Each year, the Citizen Driver Program honors “exceptional drivers who demonstrate values of citizenship, community involvement, health and wellness, leadership and safety.” The program, which started in 2014, has rewarded 31 truck drivers by naming a truck stop in their honor. OOIDA members Danny and Cindy George join OOIDA member Ingrid Brown, Roland Bolduc, and Carol Nixon as the honorees for 2018.

The Georges have combined to drive 6 million safe miles. During their 29 years as a driving team, they have earned 14 U.S. Xpress safety awards.

In addition to their success as drivers, the couple works to help their community and promote a positive image of truck drivers. They are involved with such organizations as Insight for Living, Samaritan’s Purse, KTLF Christian radio, Denver Rescue mission and the Salvation Army. They also donate money to help children in Kenya.

Danny and Cindy also tout the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. Danny completed a marathon in 2006 and a half Ironman, which consisted of a combined 70.3 miles of swimming, cycling and running, in 2016. Cindy participates in cycling and has competed in several 5-kilometer races. The couple also completed a sprint triathlon together.

Their Adventure Trucking Blog details their adventures on the road, and they use the platform to share dietary tips, exercises and healthy choice recipes for the road with other professional drivers.

Whether the Georges like it or not, all of these accomplishments were put in the spotlight by winning the Citizen Driver award.

“We don’t like to brag on ourselves,” Danny said. “Our fleet manager nominated us for this award, and we didn’t know. But this is an important thing that TA & Petro is doing. This award sets a high standard to achieve for truck drivers. Their need to be good examples, and this places a positive light on the industry.”

“The award is something truck drivers can strive for,” Cindy said.

The Georges said the ceremony was a top-notch event. Danny said they spent three or four days cooking to make a meal that catered to their tastes.

“They were so accommodating and did everything that we could have asked for,” Cindy said. “They really went the extra mile in terms of the menu.”

“The way they treated us was tremendous,” Danny said. “What more could you ask for?”

https://tandemthoughts.landlinemag.com/life-on-the-road/married-couple-honored-for-truck-driving-careers-that-include-6-million-safe-miles/

The Best Guardian of Your Rights? You..

Article thanks to The National Motorists Association. You can join for free at the links provided: 

June 10, 2018  This caution comes from a New Jersey member: We should warn NMA members that their auto insurance company lawyers work to protect the interests of the insurer. The insured is wise to considering contracting an attorney for protection from . . . his own insurer.

Most of us aren’t naïve enough to believe that our insurers put our interests over theirs. But this member backs up his warning with an experience that drives the point home. In his words:
 
Many years ago a damaged vehicle─one that didn’t look safe to be on the road─passed me on the right so close that our side mirrors contacted. The other driver’s mirror broke. Mine was unscratched. She demanded we wait and have a state trooper make an accident report. While waiting, several times she offered to settle on the spot not for a few hundred dollars as nuisance value but for thousands.

The trooper arrived, took our statements, noted no injuries or significant vehicle contact, wrote something up and told us we both could leave. I left and described the incident in a report to my insurance company and highlighted that this might be an instance of insurance fraud.

Unbeknownst to me, the other driver stayed behind and called local police, an ambulance and a tow truck. My insurance company found no record of the trooper or his accident report. The only information available was that I hit her car and left her injured at the scene, backed by some eyewitness statements about seeing her being carried to an ambulance.

I was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident. “My” insurance company lawyer agreed to pay damages to the other driver rather than to pursue a claim of fraud. My insurance coverage was dropped and a hard and lasting lesson learned.

There are certain steps to take after being involved in an accident if you are physically able, particularly if you believe it may have been a staged accident with you as the targeted victim. Among them: 

·       If you have a camera --- a smartphone will usually serve the purpose --- take photos of the cars and people involved to document the damage and physical condition of the others involved. Also capture the images of bystanders.

·       Get names, contact information, driver’s license numbers, and auto insurance details from all parties.

·       Call the police yourself, be satisfied that you are dealing with legitimate law enforcement, and be certain to get a copy of the police report before leaving the scene.

·       Stay until the (real) police release you.

·       Don’t trust people who pop up on the scene almost immediately after the accident to recommend help from specific towing companies, doctors, attorneys, or car repair shops.

·       Do not sign a blank claims form.

·       Advise your insurance company immediately after the accident of the details and of any suspicions of a scam.

·       Never admit fault at the accident scene. Assume that if you are in public view, anything you say will be heard and repeated.

The immediate aftermath of an accident is a trying time. Consider keeping a checklist like the one above in the vehicle with you and use it. It may help you from being victimized a second time by your own insurance company.

https://www.motorists.org/alerts/the-best-guardian-of-your-rights-you-nma-weekly-e-newsletter-491/

Police issue more than 1,000 tickets to tractor-trailer drivers failing to take I-77 detour

en.wikipedia.com

Article thanks to Greg Jordan and bdtonline.com. Links provided:

PRINCETON, WV — June, 2018  While many tractor-trailer drivers are taking a mandated detour around a major interstate project, more than a thousand others have been ticketed for skipping that detour and driving through a construction zone.

Deputies with the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department and troopers with the West Virginia State Police Princeton Detachment have been patrolling Interstate 77’s northbound lanes between Bluefield and Princeton ever since a contractor started repaving those northbound lanes. Highway signs direct truckers to leave I-77 at Exit 1 near Bluefield. The tractor-trailers then travel east on Route 460 to Exit 9 near Princeton and turn to the interstate there; however, plenty of drivers are staying on I-77 and getting ticketed.

Records at the Mercer County Magistrate Clerk’s Office showed that between May 21 and Monday afternoon, deputies and troopers had written 1,066 tickets for traveling through a construction zone; and that number was expected to rise before the day was over.

“We’re slammed with them,” Deputy Clerk Karmin Richmond said. “And there are so many that are pleading not guilty to them, so our court dockets are going to be packed.”

Chief Deputy Capt. Joe Parks of the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department said the deputies are writing multiple tickets every shift. Some deputies have issued up to 15 tickets during an eight-hour shift while other deputies on longer shifts have written up to 40. When two deputies are on duty, each often stop 20 to 25 tractor-trailers during their shift. Off-duty deputies have been contracted by West Virginia Paving, the contractor working on I-77, to do traffic control.

“We turned in 221 hours this past week, and I think the tickets were 230 that week,” Parks recalled. “That’s roughly one an hour.”

Some of the truck drivers who were ticketed said they didn’t understand the detour instructions, but signs warning that a detour is ahead start as far away as Wytheville, Va., and some are in Bristol, Tenn., Parks said. One driver who was avoiding the detour one day and was pulled over the next day.

Other drivers avoiding the Route 460 detour are “trying to save 10 minutes and hope they don’t get caught,” Parks added. 

State troopers are issuing just as many tickets and hearing the same excuses from drivers. One, Trooper K.A. Filer, wrote 41 tickets in one shift, Sgt. A.P. Christian said at the Princeton Detachment’s barracks.

“It’s pretty much the same old story,” Christian said. “They say that they don’t see the sign.”

Other drivers have different excuses.

“I had another say he didn’t see the safety issue,” District Commander First Sgt. J. Tomblyn stated. “It was actually two of them. They didn’t feel the need to detour.”

Signs alerting motorists about the I-77 construction and the Route 460 detour start appearing at the 85 mile marker, and Tomblyn said three of those signs can be seen after drivers go through the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel.  

The tickets have led to other charges besides going through a construction zone. Tomblyn said two fugitives have been arrested, and there has been one arrest for DUI. One tractor-trailer overturned on Saturday morning, but there were no injuries.

Back at the Mercer County Courthouse Annex, the magistrates’ administrative assistants and the magistrates’ phone system have been dealing with hundreds of calls from tractor-trailer drivers wanting to deal with their cases.

“It is a huge, colossal event that we did not see impacting the court as much as it has. We knew that it was going to be a headache and an inconvenience for the detour, but I don’t think anybody knew of the tremendous work load that it’s shifting to the magistrate court system, “ Magistrate Mike Flanigan said. 

“Our traffic line really hasn’t changed much ... the only time it’s changed was two and a half to three years ago when the county commission bought a new phone system for the courthouse,” Flanigan recalled. “So we did an updated information on the phone that essentially said the same thing, and it gives fines with court costs for speeding tickets only; everything else had to be assessed by a magistrate. The magistrates got together and we decided what the fines were going to be in uniform for speeding violations in a 55, 65 or 70 mph zones. So that was all that was on the recording, and that was almost three years ago was the last time it was updated because it’s just quietly churned away.”

Each magistrate is allowed one assistant, and when the magistrate is on night duty, his or her assistant is still at the courthouse annex during the day, Flanigan said. Magistrate assistants normally answer the traffic line.

“How it used to be it would hold and it would be forwarded to an assistant. That way if it was anything other than a speeding ticket, it could be assessed by a magistrate at the time or given instructions on how to contest their citation,” Flanigan stated, adding that this routine changed when the new series of tickets started to arrive.

“When the tickets started rolling in in mass, the first assistant to suffer the traffic line was literally on the traffic line from the moment she walked in (8:30 a.m.) until 4:30 (p.m.) when she left,” Flanigan said. “She was on the phone the entire day. It was insane.”

This assistant’s magistrate was on night duty for a week.

“She was absolutely hammered by these phone calls,” Flanigan stated. “She was on the phone constantly. We started getting reports from the county commission that people were calling there wanting to know why people weren’t answering the magistrate court phone, or traffic line. We started to get calls from the (state) supreme court wanting us to know that they’re getting complaints that no one was answering the traffic line, and I knew she was because she was literally on it all day. The amount that were coming in was actually worse than what we had expected.”

The magistrate court has worked to adjust its answering system to help alleviate the call volume. In many cases, the system has hung up on people because it was overwhelmed. About 200 message left by callers could not be reached because the pass code was unavailable. The phone provider, Frontier, was contacted about the problems.

“What was happening when they would call the traffic line number, they wouldn’t necessarily be in a queue, but they would get some hold music, about 30 seconds of hold music, then it would ring twice, and then it would cut them off,” Flanigan said. “I understand why people are getting upset and angry because I would, too. Personally, I don’t like talking to robo calls. I don’t know anybody who enjoys it.”

The magistrate phone system has been “revamped and updated” so callers will have multiple options. They now can get instructions for pleading “not guilty” to their citations or pleading “guilty” or “no contest” on the tickets they’re issued by law enforcement. These tickets can then be mailed or faxed to magistrate court.

“If they want to contest the citation, it’s very simple. There’s a place on the citation that says ‘not guilty.’ They sign that. There’s two different types of tickets. There’s the traditional citation ticket; the not guilty part’s on the back,” he said. “Then there’s the e-tickets, which is a very long printed out strip of paper, and that ‘not guilty’ section is at the bottom. If they want to contest their citation, they sign where it says not guilty, they put on a piece of paper their correct address and phone number, and send that to us. Then we set a court date.”

“At that point, ticket comes in, it’s sent to the clerk’s office, and they’re evenly distributed among the magistrates. The assistants set it for a hearing,” Flanigan said. “To get that information before, you had to talk to an assistant. We automated that. The vast of majority of the charges that we’re seeing from the construction is failure to obey traffic device or failure to detour. That means if a tractor-trailer fails to take the (Route) 460 detour, law enforcement will stop them for violating the sign.”

Truck drivers found guilty or pleading guilty or no contest face paying a total $200 in fines and court costs.

“We get a lot of questions dealing with points (on licenses), but magistrate court doesn’t deal with that,” Flanigan said, adding that this is the job of the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

http://www.bdtonline.com/news/police-issue-more-than-tickets-to-tractor-trailer-drivers-failing/article_a5309af6-686e-11e8-b0ac-8b3b52fd6a0c.html

Indiana state trooper’s tweet about ‘slowpoke law’ goes viral

bgr.com

Article thanks to whnt.com and the Tribune Media Wire. Links provided:

June 18, 2018  A simple tweet from an Indiana State Trooper got an overwhelming response after reminding people about the state’s so-called “slowpoke law.”

Sgt. Stephen Wheeles with the Versailles District in southeast Indiana tweeted a photo after pulling over a driver for going too slow in the left lane on I-65.

“I stopped this vehicle today for a left lane violation on I-65. The driver had approximately 20 cars slowed behind her because she would not move back to the right lane,” Wheeles tweeted Saturday.

“Again…if there are vehicles behind you, you must move to the right lane to allow them to pass.”

Wheeles’ tweet has nearly 15,000 retweets and more than 49,000 likes.

The state’s “slowpoke” or “move over” law went into effect in 2015. It says that drivers traveling in the left lane must move over if the car behind them is going faster. Police have said a driver going too slow in the fast lane can be just as dangerous for traffic as a speeding vehicle.

Wheeles was overwhelmed with responses to his post, with many applauding him for enforcing the law and expressing their frustration with drivers who go too slow.

In one response to a Twitter user, Wheeles acknowledged that the law can apply even if you’re going the speed limit—it all depends on how fast the traffic behind you is going.

“The spirit of the law is that since many people drive well above the speed limit, it creates an ‘accordion effect’ as traffic starts backing up behind the slower vehicle,” Wheeles wrote. “This is where many of our crashes occur on the interstates. It’s all in the name of safety.”

But he also said that the law isn’t intended to encourage anyone to break the speed limit.

“This is in no way encouraging people to speed. Those speeders are definitely in violation also. Vehicles all travel at different speeds. It was put in place to keep left lane drivers (or the family ten cars back) from getting run over by faster traffic while in the left lane.”

Commentary: A Driver Shortage by Any Other Name

protrans.com

Article thanks to Deborah Lockridge and truckinginfo.com. Links provided:

June 1, 2018  Media ranging from Fox Business News to the Washington Post to the Journal of Commerce last month were warning shippers and consumers that the driver shortage is going to drive up costs for everything from retail prices to Amazon shipping.

The American Trucking Associations expects the number of drivers the industry is short of to rise from some 36,000 in 2016 to more than 63,000 by the end of this year, and projects that by 2026, that number could swell to 174,000.

But the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has long claimed there is no such thing as a driver shortage — that if trucking companies simply paid drivers enough, and carriers treated drivers better, the laws of supply and demand would ensure there were plenty of drivers. It most recently made this argument in response to bills in Congress to establish pilot programs or special training/apprenticeship programs that would lower the minimum age for interstate commercial drivers from the current 21.

In a letter to the heads of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, OOIDA said Congress should “instead be focusing on the causes of the staggering driver turnover rate,” claiming that “drivers who leave the workforce are immediately replaced with less-experienced individuals in an effort to keep labor costs as low as possible and avoid improving working conditions.” Teenagers, they contend, would be viewed as even cheaper labor.

I think there’s a place for properly trained younger drivers, who already can drive intrastate in many states. But OOIDA rightly points out that driver compensation has remained relatively stagnant, “failing to increase at a rate that even reflects inflation.” While carriers have been announcing hefty pay raises in the last year or two, even moving to minimum pay guarantees and in some cases hourly pay or salaries, it can’t begin to make up for the years of stagnation.

But there’s an even more insidious problem that simple per-mile rate increases can’t fix.

The roots of the problem stretch back to trucking’s deregulation in 1980. While there were certainly concerns about driver recruiting and retention before that, economic deregulation led to a booming irregular-route truckload sector and forced the industry to get more efficient.

A lot of that efficiency, it turns out, has been borne on the backs of truck drivers. Paid by the mile, they did whatever it took to get the loads there on time, turning the paper logbooks with which they tracked compliance with federal hours of service regulations into “comic books.” This was not new, of course; the song “Convoy” spoke of “swindle sheets” in 1975. But deregulation and the burgeoning truckload industry widened the practice of “fudging” on log books. One of the most common reasons for those hours-of-service fibs? Masking hours-long, unpaid or underpaid waits at shippers and receivers.

Mandatory electronic logging devices, which went almost fully into effect the first of April, have begun to make the extent of this very clear.

As my owner-operator friend Jeff Clark posted on Facebook: “So here is the deal: kind of. With paper logs we were able to work 16 hours a day, and make it look like we were working 13, in order to get paid for 10. Now, those extra 3 hours have been taken out of the supply chain. My friends, that is not a driver shortage. That is an efficiency shortage.”

It’s an issue that has garnered some attention in Washington, with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Ray Martinez saying the agency is open to the idea of increasing flexibility within the hours-of-service regulations (not by extending the hours), now that we can base changes on real ELD data. And lawmakers such as Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) are talking about holding shippers and receivers responsible for making drivers wait hours at the dock.

On the fleet side, if you haven’t already been raising driver pay and talking to your customers about ways to reduce detention time, it’s past time to start.

https://www.truckinginfo.com/303547/commentary-a-driver-shortage-by-any-other-name?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=20180604-NL-HDT-HeadlineNews-BOBCD180529003&omdt=NL-HDT-HeadlineNews&omid=1000129208

'Bus and Dump': Drivers expose industry's dirty practice

cantruck.ca

Article thanks to Larry Kahaner and fleetowner.com. Links provided:

Drivers share stories of being promised a truck driving job only to be bused to an unfamiliar city, where they are left to fend for themselves.

May 30, 2018  When 28-year driving veteran Troy Moran received a bus ticket from a major carrier to travel from Wisconsin to Nebraska for orientation and a promised job, he was excited. So were 40 other potential drivers on his bus. When they arrived, however, the carrier only accepted eight of them and the rest were left to fend for themselves. Several of them had no money, no hotel, no credit cards and no way to get home.

Moran had to sleep in a homeless shelter because there were no accommodations available. Some of the others, Moran says, had to beg on the streets for enough money to eat. He doesn’t know how they returned home – if they did.

“I applied for a job online and they said ‘We'd like you to come to orientation for this job on a certain date. We'll send you a bus ticket.’ I got on the Greyhound and went there. I spent about two days in orientation when all of a sudden, they changed their mind. ‘Well, we're sorry we can't use you.’ They made up something and it sounded phony. I thought: ‘Okay, so you’re a little disappointed that you don't have the job. Fine, I guess I've got to go back home,’ and they said, ‘It's up to you to find your own way home.’”

Moran adds: “They came up with some kind of excuse. ‘Oh, we've found something on your record that we didn't like,’ or ‘It goes against our policy.’ You ask, ‘What’s the problem?’ and you don't get an answer out of them.”

Taken alone, this story may seem like the complaint of a single driver, but it’s not. We talked to eight other drivers to whom this scenario, or a variation of it, played out. When we contacted carriers mentioned by the drivers, they either did not return our calls or would not comment on individual cases citing driver privacy.

The eight drivers are only the tip of the iceberg as evidenced by calls received by Dave McMillan several months ago. He is a truck driver who hauls lumber in Northern Ontario and is co-owner, with his wife Catherine, of Smart-Trucking, a website that helps drivers navigate the industry. “A fellow got a hold of us and said this was happening to another guy he was in training with, and he asked me: ‘Can they do this? What should we do? Can you help us raise some money for them?’ They were completely stuck. I never even heard of such a dirty trick before.”

McMillan produced a video about this practice and asked people to contact him if they had been victimized. “All of a sudden I've got guys coming out of the woodwork saying ‘Yeah, that happened to me. That happened to me at this carrier, and this carrier.’ I guess it's quite widespread. I was stunned.”

In the month after the video aired, McMillan had heard from more than 100 drivers who had been promised jobs and been abandoned by carriers in an area often hundreds of miles from their home. He says he only heard from U.S. drivers. “I don't believe I've heard of a case in Canada.” McMillan said that all the drivers he heard from were Over-the-Road. He added that almost all of the companies they mentioned were among the largest U.S. carriers.

Was there a standard story?

“They varied,” McMillan says “It ranged from their skin color, to what sex they are, to whether the carrier has already reached their quota, whether they've found something on the driver while he's in orientation. There's all sorts of different stories. Some drivers didn’t get any explanation at all. Some drivers complained that they [recruiter or company representative] didn’t even talk to them. They just said ‘You're out.’”

He said in one instance, a carrier dismissed a driver over a case of mistaken identity. “This guy had just come out of a driving school, just gotten his license, so he had no offenses. This was the first job he'd ever gotten, and he didn't even get that job. By the time he got there [the terminal city], they rejected him saying he'd gotten ticketed in some other state or something about the truck, and he'd never even driven a truck to that point. The carrier made a mistake and they should have taken care of that guy. It’s just inhuman.”

Says McMillian: “I’ve been driving for over 40 years and I’ve never heard of this until now. I knew they played some dirty tricks on the guys down there [in the U.S.], but this takes the cake. I'm angered by the whole thing, because I can hardly believe that people would treat others this way.”

Casey Bundy’s story also is indicative of this "bus and dump" tactic. He received a job offer from a major carrier who bought him a bus ticket from Idaho Falls to Salt Lake City where he would transfer for another bus to Denver. “I was probably an hour out from Denver and the recruiter calls me and says: ‘There's an issue with your driver's license.’ I tell them that my license is OK and there must be a mistake. I called my DMV, because I saw the time and they were still open, and they said there was absolutely nothing wrong with my CDL. My medical card and everything else was current. I called him back and let him know, and he's says, ‘We still have something wrong with it on our end doing the MVR report.’ I get to Denver and say: ‘Well, do you guys have a hotel or something for me?' They say, ‘No we don't. Since you're not qualified we can't pay for a hotel for you.’ That's basically what happened. I waited two days in a hotel I paid for myself, and then I finally got a ride home. My wife came and picked me up.”

Bundy had received his CDL training at a truck driving school in Idaho. Like the other drivers we spoke with all eventually found employment with other carriers.

Carlton Washington was headquartered in Wisconsin when he got an offer from an oil company in the Dallas area. He received a bus ticket and hit the road. “I arrived, checked into the hotel and I was expecting to start orientation Monday and go out on the road on Friday. At least that's the understanding that they gave me over the telephone. I’m in orientation and day-two comes around and I get the surprise. They said something on the background check or something wasn't approved and essentially, I was just kicked out. It was some type of ambiguous safety violation that nobody else could identify. The only person that I had contact with was conducting the orientation, and I don't know who the other people were that made the decisions.”

Washington was told to leave the classroom. He sat in the lobby area with his duffle bag but he had no place to stay. He began making phone calls to other carriers to which he had applied to online, and one of them sent him a bus ticket along with fifty dollars for expenses. He arrived in Oklahoma City the next day and began driving with the new carrier. The job didn’t last very long, Washington says, “but it got me out of that homeless situation. I realized this is how veterans become homeless; this is how people become homeless.”

In a time when driver recruitment and retainment are so difficult, why would carriers dismiss potential candidates in such a seemingly cavalier and arbitrary way?

One insight comes from Greg Warner, Director of Safety for RCS Trucking & Freight in Bealeton, VA. RCS was not named by any ‘bus and dump’ drivers, but Warner says that a previous company he worked for engaged in such activity.

“The company would bring in 30 people every Monday. And when those 30-people walked in the room at 5 a.m., my job as a driver-trainer was to meet two other trainers and walk through that classroom with the instructor and look at people and say, ‘You're not going to fit the team. You wore shorts; you're not going to fit because you wore tennis shoes.’ So, we're going to dump five people in the first day. At the end of orientation week, this class that had 30 is down to 20.”

He also said that another company he knows about gave a driver three days of orientation then dropped him because they didn’t have a trainer-truck available. They said they would call him back in three weeks but never did. “That was about five months ago, and they still haven’t called him back. He’s now working for us.”

He adds that carriers do potential drivers an injustice by not telling them upfront what’s expected of them. For example, like how to dress for orientation, or their grooming, and then dismiss them because they don’t like their clothes or their hair. He also says that carriers often hire based on their needs and not a driver’s ability, a situation that RCS once did but doesn’t do anymore. “We want a person who has the ability [to drive and represent us] and we will design a route for them.

“We know every driver by their first name. The president of this company and I still go out and drive so we interact with our drivers daily. [Companies should] stop treating their drivers like a number. And pay them and stop deducting pay because they’re one minute late.

“Look at the turnover rate in the industry. I don't blame the drivers; I blame the industry. We have changed as an industry over the last 15 to 25 years but what hasn't changed is the poor way we treat our drivers.”

http://www.fleetowner.com/driver-management/bus-and-dump-drivers-expose-industrys-dirty-practice

Platooning is ready for prime time, but are fleets, drivers and governments?

fhwa.dot.gov

Article thanks to freightwaves.com. Links provided:

May 31, 2018  Five experts from around the globe put their collective heads together and offering a global perspective on where truck platooning is right now, and where it will be in the next decade as freight systems look for more efficient means of moving goods. According to the experts, platooning is a “now” technology ready for commercial operations, but there is still some resistance and operational challenges that must be overcome.

The panel was held during the Movin’ On by Michelin conference in Montreal on Wednesday.

A name familiar to most in North America, Mike Roeth, executive director of NACFE, kicked off the discussion with an overview of NACFE’s October 2016 Confidence Report on two-truck platooning.

“What we found was two-truck platooning was one step in the automation of trucks,” he explained. “It sounds coy, but we’ve been automating trucks for decades.”

Roeth pointed to collision mitigation systems, lane-departure warning and other advanced safety systems that are part of autonomous trucks, but also provide the foundation for platooning, which can generate a 4-5% fuel savings for the lead truck and up to a 10% savings for the rear truck at a 50-foot following distance. As much as 50% of all new truck sales in the U.S. include at least one advanced safety system, he said.

“We also think there is a benefit that if we’re saving that much money, it will help scale the technology,” Roeth added, before noting some of the challenges platooning faces, including regulatory concerns, whether drivers will accept traveling as close as 40 feet to the vehicle in front of them, and fleet acceptance and deployment.

Bill Brentar, director of maintenance and engineering for UPS, echoed Roeth’s point about driver acceptance. UPS teaches drivers safe following distance, “and now we are telling them it’s okay to travel at 40 feet,” he said.

Brentar also noted operational challenges to platooning as vehicles do not leave the yard at the same time. There are also questions about whether UPS – or any company for that matter - would be willing to platoon with a competitor vehicle.

“When you limit the opportunities of when you platoon and who you can platoon with, you limit the opportunity for fuel saving,” he said.

Currently, 17 states allow platooning covering some 45,000 miles. Peloton is the leader in developing platooning technology, and Shad Laws, director of advanced development, declared Peloton’s PlatoonPro system ready for commercial deployment.

“Getting fleet owners into what we’re doing is really easy,” he said. “Getting drivers to buy in is the real challenge.”

The buy-in of drivers is important, Laws said, because Peloton is paid on a per-mile basis. “If the driver never pushes the button, we don’t get paid,” he noted.

Laws explained that the Peloton system sets the following distance based on what is deemed safe, using cloud connectivity to make it work. For instance, in rainy conditions, the distance may be set further apart to where the system determines to be a safe stopping distance for the trailing vehicle. The system communicates braking instructions to the rear vehicle in 33 milliseconds, he said.

Bernard Jacob, scientific director of IFSTTAR, a France-based consultantcy, noted that platooning can potentially add up to 6 hours of drive time in a day between two drivers. In Europe, drivers are limited to 9 hours of driving in a 24-hour period, so by alternating the lead truck in the platoon, drivers could see additional driving hours and move freight further, turning 466-mile runs into 590-mile runs.

IFSTTAR is starting Project “Ensemble” next week with six OEMs to work on developing platooning solutions that cross makes and models. He noted that if you can run a 4- to 5-truck platoon, you could increase by 1.2 to 1.5 times a road’s capacity.

Even with all the efforts surrounding platooning, it still requires cooperation among truck makers, such as noted with Project Ensemble. Scania, though, has taken to building its own autonomous technologies, said Christian Bergstrand, customer project manager. “As we see it, we are developing part of the technology to an autonomous transportation system,” he said.

But, Bergstrand said Scania no longer sees itself as just a truck maker, but on its way to becoming a “solutions provider.” Part of that is platooning, although Scania is also working on electrification and other initiatives as well.

Platooning, though, is the near-term technology and provides benefits beyond just fuel savings. As the technology improves, Bergstrand expects the gap between vehicles to close further and as it does, efficiency will improve and that will lead to better use of driver hours.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/technology/platooning-technology-is-ready-for-commercial-deployment?utm_source=FreightWaves+Daily+Newsletter+Subscribers&utm_campaign=95d19e0d1e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_31_04_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b16748ce6-95d19e0d1e-96725731

They dreamed of adventure in their new RV. But, they say, they got geysers of sewage.

rvt.com

Article thanks to Michael Gordon and charlotteobserver.com. Links provided:

May 18, 218  So much for the lure of the road.

Bill and Jennie Mangan say their dream of spending the first 10 years of joint retirement traveling the country inside their luxury RV quickly faded beneath a cloud of diesel fumes pouring into their bedroom at night as leaking hydraulic fluid seeped into a basement drawer.

Then there was the sewage, which they say pooled daily in their bedroom and geysered from their shower drain like an off-color Old Faithful each time they flushed the toilet. The combination, the couple says, left their new Thor Tuscany 44MT smelling like a $270,000, rolling outhouse.

Once upon a time, the Mangans hoped to join more than the 1 million estimated American retirees who have discarded permanent addresses for golden years of adventure made possible by roomy and tricked-out recreational vehicles.

No longer. This week, the couple sued Thor Industries, the Indiana company that built their RV, seeking a full refund of the sale price plus $100,000 in damages for the 160 separate defects that the couple says have crippled the vehicle during the short time they've owned it.

Today, Bill and Jennie's would-be chariot to a new way of life sits in a Lincoln County campground, not far from the conventional home they have under construction in nearby Denver.

"We bought the RV for fun, and all it's been is work, headaches, expense and horrible experiences," Jennie says. "We don't believe in this vehicle. There's no trust that it is going to stay put together for the next 10 years. I don't want it anymore. I'm done."

The lawsuit says the couple's highly anticipated life on five wheels instead bogged down into hours lost on the phone or laptop debating warranties and service claims. When they actually drove their 45-foot-long RV anywhere, they say, it was usually a two- to three-day trip to some RV service center in a distant state.

In fact, the Mangans say they took so many 1,000-mile drives to North Carolina-based RV garages from their former New Hampshire home that they found they actually loved the state. They hope to move into their new Lincoln County house by July. Sedentary living never looked so good, Jennie says.

Thor is a major name in the RV industry, with the Tuscany its premium model. Thor Industries is the parent company of Thor Motor Coach, which built and assembled the Mangans' model.

On the Better Business Bureau website, Thor receives 3.2 stars out of five. Several of the customer reviews posted closely track what the Mangans say has been their experience — multiple problems surfacing in the RVs soon after purchase. BBB says 36 complaints, most for problems with Thor's products or service, have been closed in the last three years.

T. Michael Pangburn, the attorney for Thor Industries, said in a Wednesday email to the Observer that the company has a limited one-year warranty along with a backup service plan to handle most problems that arise with its vehicles.

"While Thor Motor Coach, Inc. has legal defenses to the lawsuit, it wishes to seek an amicable resolution of the dispute if at all possible," Pangburn wrote. "It is disappointing to learn that an owner of a Thor Motor Coach product is dissatisfied."

The Mangans started searching for an RV in anticipation of Jennie's planned March 2017 retirement from her job as a software engineer. She says they hunted the country online for the best model and price, and believed they found it at a dealership outside Raleigh.

When she climbed aboard the Thor in the store's parking lot in June 2016, Jennie says she was overwhelmed by the vehicle's sophistication and beauty. "Like a shiny penny," she says.

Still, the RV needed several days of final repairs before the Mangans could drive it off the lot, the lawsuit says. The first night they had it, they say, a water line broke. Jennie says she and Bill parked by an all-night Wal-Mart so she could use the store's bathroom.

By the time, they made it back to New England, the "big stuff," as Jennie calls it, began cropping up. On a trip to Florida, she says, sewage from a leaking bathroom pipe puddled on the ground beneath the RV. When the pipe was fixed and the overall water pressure increased, she says, so did the size of the excremental plumes firing out of the shower drain.

According to the complaint, the Mangans' RV has spent a combined six months at various shops and still has problems. A month and a half into ownership, the couple began asking for a full rebate, first from the dealership and eventually Thor; the company has never responded, the lawsuit says.

Without the help of an attorney, the couple has sued under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a 1975 law designed to protect consumers against misleading warranty claims. The couple also has filed a complaint in state courts against the Raleigh dealer.

The Mangans say Thor and its products "have ruined our dreams of ever traveling with any form of RV, now and in the future," the lawsuit says.

"This ... without a doubt has been the most horrible experience of our lives so far."

Researcher Maria David contributed.

Michael Gordon: 704-358-5095; @MikeGordonOBS

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article211157969.html

Snow Will Again Blow Off Trailer Roofs, But Henry Thissen’s Ready

Article thanks to Tom Berg and truckinginfo.com. Links provided:

May 18, 2018  Snow is spreading across much of the country, and maybe everyone’s biggest worry is just getting there. But if you’re motoring down the highway and a trailer ahead of you starts shedding sheets of snow and ice, that’ll make your trip even more interesting.

You might get angry at the rig’s driver, but what’s he supposed to do? He can’t crawl up on top of the van and sweep or shovel off the snow, even if various ordinances and laws expect it. Products that actively brush off the tops of vans are on the market, but they contact the roof and can damage it, causing leaks.

That’s the view of HenryThissen, of Shippensburg, Penn., was a truck driver for 45 years before recently retiring. He believes laws that require property owners to control rain-water runoff should also apply to snow because, after all, it’s frozen rain. He’s been talking to his representative in the state legislature and the lawmaker agrees. Something could come of that.Henry “Skip” Thissen, whom I wrote about four and a half years ago because he was working on a snow removal system, has been back in touch because he says he has perfected his device. He also has a new argument as to why truck stops, terminals, distribution centers and other facilities should be installing snow removal equipment on their properties.

“The owners have to use retention ponds and injection wells to keep water from leaving their properties, so I figured, why should snow be different?” Thissen says. “And that includes snow that’s laying on trailers and trucks.”

As we’ve noted in previous stories – and has been reported on local TV newscasts – clouds of snow and sheets of ice blowing off the roofs of van trailers often hit other trucks and cars and sometimes damages following cars and causes drivers to crash. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that illustrate this. Thissen says other trailer and truck configurations are also affected, as are school buses and motor coaches.

“I think these places should have snow- and ice-removal devices that will clean off vehicles before they leave the properties,” he says. “Not just my device, but other products that are also available.”

He also thinks extra snow and ice is blown onto roadways from trucks and buses requires extra plowing and spreading of deicing chemicals. And he cites this Smithsonian magazine article as proof that road salts also cause environmental problems.

Thissen calls his device Arctic Air because it operates in cold weather and uses compressed air to blow snow and ice off vehicles. He and associates had to experiment to perfect it.

“We weren’t getting enough velocity and volume so we tried several different types of blowers,” he says. “We finally found that a 10,000 CFM (cubic-feet-per-minute) blower produced a volume of air at 166 cubic feet of air a second and air speed over 220 mph. That did the trick.

“A video taken in March of 2016 shows over a foot of snow being blown off of the trailer roof… The air alone does the trick.” It also removes ice.

“The air gets under the ice and flips it up and away from the roof. The speed of the air and the volume of air causes the aluminum roof to ripple with the air speed and actually helps free it from adhering to the roof.”

Thissen offers electric- and diesel-powered versions of his Arctic Air device, priced from $15,000 to $30,000 each. They can be mounted permanently, like near exit gates, or mounted on wheels to move around and be stowed elsewhere in warmer months. There are various ways owners could recoup their investments, which he would happily explain to anyone interested. Information on the products are on his website along with the video, which I just watched again. Brrr! I’m keeping my winter gear close at hand.

https://www.truckinginfo.com/302451/snow-will-again-blow-off-trailer-roofs-but-henry-thissens-ready?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=20180521-NL-HDT-HeadlineNews-BOBCD180515003&omdt=NL-HDT-HeadlineNews&omid=1000129208