The French you will have always

A sampling of the deliciousness over at First Things. You really should read the whole thing, it's just delightful.

Be nice to the French, they feel so very misunderstood. That is kindly advice, and you should get started on it tomorrow. Meanwhile a friend sends a sampler of observations to be enjoyed before going on the wagon:

“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes.”
—Mark Twain
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“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.”
—Norman Schwartzkopf
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“Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada.”
—Ted Nugent

“The favorite bumper sticker in Washington now is one that says ‘First Iraq, then France.’”
—Tom Brokaw
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“It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us.”
—Alan Kent
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“Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day—the description was, ‘Never shot. Dropped once.’”
—Rep. Roy Blunt (MO)
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The AP and UPI reported that the French government announced after the London bombings that it has raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide. The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The rise in the alert level was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively disabling their military.

French Ban Fireworks at Euro Disney (AP)
Paris, March 5, 2003
The French government announced today that it is imposing a ban on the use of fireworks at Euro Disney. The decision comes the day after a nightly fireworks display at the park, located just 30 miles outside of Paris, caused the soldiers at a nearby French Army garrison to surrender to a group of Czech tourists.

Adding to Mr. Nugent's remarks, the only thing worse than a Quebecois is one driving a truck in the U.S.. When a reefer blows by me doing 20 over the limit, tailgating, and making lane changes apparently without mirror use it is almost always a member of the Oppressed French minority .

Truth

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (translated into English by Yermolai Solzhfnitsyn) Bring God back into Politics
Hat tip to Brothers Judd

It is up to us to stop seeing Progress (which cannot be stopped by anyone or anything) as a stream of unlimited blessings, and to view it rather as a gift from on high, sent down for an extremely intricate trial of our free will.

The gifts of the telephone and the television, for instance, when used without moderation, have fragmented the wholeness of our time, jerking us from the natural flow of our life. The gift of lengthened life expectancy has, as one of its consequences, made the elder generation into a burden for its children, while dooming the former to a lingering loneliness, to abandonment in old age by loved ones, and to an irreparable rift from the joy of passing on their experience to the young.

Horizontal ties between people are being severed as well. With all the seeming effervescence of political and social life, alienation and apathy toward others have grow stronger in human relations. Consumed in their pursuit of material interests, people find only an overwhelming loneliness. (It is this that gave rise to the howl of existentialism.) We must not simply lose ourselves in the mechanical flow of Progress, but strive to harness it in the interests of the human spirit; not to become the mere playthings of Progress, but rather to seek or expand ways of directing its might toward the perpetration of good.

Progress was understood to be a shining and unswerving vector, but it turned out to be a complex and twisted curve, which has once more brought us back to the very same eternal questions which had loomed in earlier times, except that then facing these questions was easier for a less distracted, less disconnected mankind.

The human soul , or if you prefer the human animal, is still vexed by the same torments in the 21st Century as the 17th, only we now have more ways to distract ourselves from reality. Of course a lifetime passes all too quickly in the the blaze of pixels and wall of sound we are immersed in every day. Perhaps our unwillingness or inability to face the reality of the human existence is why so little great writing graces our age. It is not just that our skill with words has succumbed to our Instant Message and eMail style of communication, it is that our connection to the deepest needs and failings of humanity is crowded out by the historically incredible lives we live today. We not only cannot write , more critically we have nothing to write [i}about[/i]

Good Deal

Atlanta Injury Law Blog:Court orders stronger training standards for commercial truck drivers

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s regulations governing minimum standards for entry-level truck driver training are inadequate based on the record developed during the rulemaking process, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The minimum requirements adopted last May by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration involve only classroom education and in only four areas: medical qualification and drug and alcohol testing; hours-of-service regulations; wellness; and whistleblower protection.

The court said: “The (FMCSR staff's) Adequacy Report determined that effective training for CMV drivers required practical, on-the-road instruction on how to operate a heavy vehicle. But FMCSA ignored this evidence and opted for a program that focuses on areas unrelated to the practical demands of operating a commercial motor vehicle.”

Most of the time Public Citizen and their ilk are just bozos when it comes to trucking, but this is a case where they are on the side of the angels. The FMCSA seems to have set a pattern of doing the very least possible, or less, and only after being sued into action. There has to be a happy medium between trying to put the industry under and giving it carte blanche. The industry is right that few folks want to be without income for a couple of months while they train, but that doesn't outweigh highway safety (and getting drivers fully trained might cut down on the number of new drivers who quit or fail because of accidents or needless tickets.

Don't roll, roll, roll your truck...

eTrucker: Wide single tires may lower rollover risk

One of the study leaders, H.E. "Bill" Knee, said researchers put a tractor-trailer with traditional duals, dynamic sensors and outriggers through a series of tests to emulate three events that lead to rollovers: evasive maneuvers, driving around curves with a constant radius, and running off the road. The same tractor-trailer was re-equipped with singles and a wider slider trailer suspension in various configurations and put through the same paces.

The result? In most cases, new generation single tires and slider suspensions reduced rollover propensity, at least in van operations. In evasive maneuvers, the new-generation combination decreased the maximum trailer roll angle per lateral acceleration ratio by 45 percent, a significant amount, Knee said.

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Some anomalies need further investigation, Knee said. For example, a truck equipped with duals coupled to a trailer equipped with singles and a wider slider suspension performed best in the evasive maneuver test. That may have something to do with driver feel from having dual tires on the tractor, Knee said.

My theory would be that the tractor's suspension width did not change and so the wide based singles didn't have much of a positive effect. Now what would be real interesting would be to see a tractor custom built with wider rear suspension attachment points and Super Singles, my hunch is it would perform very well. Of course another theory could be that the tractor suspension/ tread width is a relatively unimportant rollover factor, since the typical turn rollover starts with the trailer tandems tipping and then the trailer pulls the truck over.

But do they know where the money comes from?

Univ. of Kansas Takes Up Creation Debate

LAWRENCE, Kan. - Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

"Creationism is mythology," Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."

Earlier this month, the state Board of Education adopted new science teaching standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory, defying the view of science groups.

The Universities go out of their way to belittle the folks who ultimately pay the bills and wonder why they can't get any traction in the funding debates. Talk about willful ignorance about how the world works.

But the FMCSA said it was safe!

Risk Higher for Truckers in the 11th Hour

The crash risk for truck drivers in the last hour of a now legal 11-hour day behind the wheel is more than three times higher than during the first hour, a Penn State research team has found.
For 60 years, federal rules limited truckers to driving 10 consecutive hours. However, in January 2004, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration raised the limit to 11 hours and reaffirmed the change in October this year.
Dr. Paul Jovanis, professor of civil engineering who led the Penn State study, says, "Our analysis of data from three national trucking companies during normal operations in 2004 shows that the crash risk is statistically similar for the first six hours of driving and then increases in significant steps thereafter. The 11th hour has a crash risk more than three times the first hour."
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Jovanis notes, "Our findings, using data from 2004 and from the 1980s, establish a consistent pattern of increased crash risk with hours driving, particularly in the 9th, 10th and 11th hours."
In their most recent study, the researchers also found that multi-day driving schedules, over 7 days, were associated with significant crash risk increases similar in magnitude to extended driving time.
In addition, separate analyses of the records of drivers who operate trucks that have sleeping compartments with those that don't have sleeping compartments show that there is a strong association of crash risk and driving time for sleeper operations, especially in the 8th, 10th and 11th hours. Non-sleeper operations associate crash risk with multi-day driving somewhat more strongly than with driving time.
Jovanis says, "Considered as a whole, these results reveal important differences in crash risk associated with the two different types of trucking operations. One tentative conclusion is that the rigors of sleeper operations appear to result in a greater decline in performance at extended driving hours than for comparable non-sleeper operations."
The study was supported by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) but represents only the views of the authors.

Amazing that working more hours makes you more tired.....

Interesting tidbits from the Fuel Economy front

Transport News Network (UK): Happy Trucking

A further enhancement of the I-Shift box is Eco-roll. With cruise control selected, if the truck is maintaining the set speed under the effects of gravity, Eco-roll will disengage the drive to the rear bogie allowing the engine revs to drop to tick-over. If power is required, the drive instantly re-engages and revs zip back up. The same happens if the brakes are applied or the set retardation speed is exceeded. The system is designed to save fuel and reduce wear and tear.
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The Scania P340 8x4 tested in August had a nine-speed manual box and although it was noticeably slower around our route it did return a route average of 9.21mpg.

The truck tested here, with its 12-speed I-shift box, returned 8.83mpg as an overall average, the lowest sectional figure being 6.98mpg recorded on the testing A339 rural route between Basingstoke and the A34 at Tothill. But 7mpg is not bad in the heavy going and was compensated for by a high of 9.42mpg on the motorway.

So on balance, driving as ever for economy, we achieved better fuel results from a slightly lower powered manual 32-tonner but paid the penalty in terms of journey time; so critical for most tipper operators. But if your drivers are heavy with the right boot, racing to get in that extra load, we believe the evidence is now overwhelmingly in favour of the auto. Recent reports that Summerfield has asked Volvo to lock out the manual override on its I-Shift-equipped trucks speak volumes. In fuel economy terms, this truck's performance at the pumps is among the best we have encountered from an automatic, which must make it a serious contender for consideration.

Just a word about Eco-roll. We had no way here of proving the benefits of this system, but in theory it saves fuel. It takes time to feel comfortable with it because we are all taught never to free wheel in a heavy goods vehicle. Well Eco-roll does not actually take the truck out of gear, it electronically disconnects the drive, allowing the engine revolutions to return to idle. During our test it activated numerous times on long gentle descents - where braking or retardation is required it will not function - so if it contributed to our average fuel consumption figure all well and good. But our jury is out, awaiting more evidence.

I have always daydreamed about replacing the Jake brake with a regen braking system (so the job of holding the truck back is spread over all the wheels rather than just the drive axle(s) and some of the "G-Force" can be recovered for climbing the next hill. Batteries and many other parts of the tech are not ready for prime time yet. But this system, obviously, can be implemented today and there are no energy losses from energy conversion and storage.

Daimler Chrysler: Sustainability

Predictive Cruise Control.
One particularly intelligent means of saving fuel is currently being tested by our researchers in the USA. Back in 2002, they began taking a closer look at the potential of existing cruise control systems in Freightliner’s heavy trucks and tractor vehicles, searching for ways to combine the comfort already provided by electronic systems with fuel-saving control programs. The outcome of their efforts is “Predictive Cruise Control” (PCC), a cruise control system that not only maintains a preset speed, but also regulates the engine by assessing driving conditions ahead and adjusting speed accordingly, delivering significant fuel savings. The benefits are clear on up- and downhill routes, for example. At the beginning of an upgrade, a conventional cruise control system would try to compensate for the truck’s deceleration by boosting engine output to the maximum. Then, on the downgrade the system would have to shift down drastically to prevent the truck from rolling too fast. PCC instead makes optimum use of the truck’s kinetic energy by allowing it to build up momentum before the hill and then, at the top, gearing down even further in anticipation of the truck’s rapid acceleration as it moves downhill. The PCC computer can do all this because it has been fed the topographical data for the route and, thanks to the GPS navigation system, also knows the truck’s precise position. Initial tests have confirmed the research engineers’ estimates: Depending on the specific route, PCC can bring fuel savings of two percent or more.

Hopefully this will come to fruition. of course while you are plotting all the topographical features, why not put speed limits in the system as well. It wouldn't be too much of a reach to do the state/province level even if one didn't go to a road by road system. Many downgrades have much lower speed limits for trucks, perhaps those could be hard coded in.

Fleet Owner:maximizing MPG

“Eight or nine years ago, the thermal efficiency of a heavy-truck diesel engine was around 54%. Now, with the introduction of EGR [exhaust gas recirculation] and Caterpillar's ACERT [advanced combustion emission reduction technology] systems, engine thermal efficiency is down to 40%,” he explains. “That all translates into reduced mpg for heavy trucks.”

According to Routbort, “The main goal of the MET [MorElectric Truck] program is energy security. Today we're importing 53% of our oil; and based on current trends, we'll be importing 68% by 2025. Of the current $540-billion U.S. trade deficit, 22% is for oil expenditures alone. That's a lot of capital going overseas to pay for oil,” he says.

Of the 22-million barrels of oil consumed in the U.S. every day, two-thirds of it, or 13-million barrels a day (b/d) is used for transportation, with trucks burning 8-million b/d in their fuel tanks. DOE trend lines indicate that by 2025, transportation demand for oil will top 18-million b/d, with trucking consuming 12-million b/d.

That's why Routbort is so enthusiastic about the potential benefits of the MET project. “From a global standpoint, the technologies developed in this project can help reduce our reliance on imported oil, contribute to emissions reduction, and from a trucking perspective, position the industry to remain competitive,” he says.

Launched in 2000, the MET program represents a joint effort between DOE and private industry to reduce parasitic loads on heavy truck engines. Caterpillar provided engine technology, mechanical design, electronics, controls and overall system integration; Kenworth supplied a T-2000 Class 8 truck; Emerson offered electric motor and power electronics knowledge; and Engineered Machined Products developed electrically-driven water and oil pumps According to Routbort, the key to the program is the use of electrical power to enable a variety of truck systems to operate independently of the engine. Specifically, the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, brake air compressor, and oil and water pumps on the MET vehicle all operate on electricity. The accessories are powered by a generator inside the flywheel housing, which also serves as the starter motor, along with an auxiliary power unit (APU) and shore power plug-in capability.

Preliminary results indicate a 2% decrease in over-the-road fuel consumption for the MET test vehicle and 6% during engine idling. This means a saving of more than $2,000 annually per truck in fuel and engine maintenance costs.

So one could say, use a "smart" GPS integrated cruise control to anticipate which hills could be "coated" down, the electronic driveline disconnect kicks in at the top of the hills, and the engine cut off, while the Morelectric system keeps the power steering, cooling, HVAC, and air compressor running. Near the bottom of the hill or if the driver applies the brakes the engine is restarted and revved to the appropriate place to pull the next hill or take a downshift. There are a lot of good ideas out there, they just need to be put together into solutions for the industry and society.

Busloads of trouble

San Antonio Express-News:Fatal Bus Fire Raises Accountability Issues

Last month's bus fire that killed 23 elderly nursing home patients who were being evacuated from Houston to escape Hurricane Rita left plenty of blame to go around.
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Global Limo Inc. was allowed to continue operations despite the fact that its drivers had been found in violation of federal safety regulations numerous times in the past two years. Gutierrez alone had been stopped by DPS troopers three times in the seven months before the accident, the Washington Post reported.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an arm of the U.S. Transportation Department, also failed in its job to protect the public from unsafe transportation companies.

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It is inexcusable that federal agents would allow Global to maintain a satisfactory rating although, media reports revealed, its driver safety record was 97 on a 100-point scale — with 100 being the worst.

After the bus fire, a review of Global's fleet by federal inspectors found 168 violations of federal safety regulations, the majority relating to upkeep of its vehicles, according to the Washington Post. The review prompted federal regulators to shut down the company after it was deemed a hazard to the public.

The U of Wi (Eau Claire) Spectator

The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into the Oct. 16 bus crash that killed five and injured 30 found that two of the six brakes on the bus were out of adjustment.

Under these conditions, Lauren Peduzzi, a spokesperson for the NTSB, said the bus should not have been on the road because it violated the state's Department of Transportation regulations and raised safety issues.

"That would have been enough to place the bus out of service," Peduzzi said. "You never want a bus on the road (in those conditions)."

The NTSB also found the bus driver, Paul Rasmus, 78, of Chippewa Falls, was not wearing his eyeglasses during the crash, despite the requirement on his driver's license.

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Even with these findings, however, Peduzzi said there still is not enough evidence to prove these factors could have prevented the crash.

"We have to figure out at what point was the (the truck) visible to the driver and, based on that, how much reaction time he would have had and how long it would have taken him to stop," she said.

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It's just sad.

Global Limo had an unlicensed driver at the wheel of a very poorly maintained Bus.

A trucker with a Suspended License (granted it was suspended for a bad check, but the underlying offense 72 in a 55 [if in a commercial vehicle] is a suspension offense for a CDL driver in Indiana) runs off the road and runs along the shoulder for several hundred feet before jackknifing (and claims he wasn't asleep) and is struck by a bus with out of adjustment brakes driven by a guy who isn't wearing his glasses.

Brakes being out of adjustment is a common problem in Air Brakes. Late Model Air Brake Equipped Vehicles are equipped with automatic slack adjusters but those only work when there is a firm application of the brakes, if you are a cautious driver and do not do a lot of panic brake applications (and don't frequently do a "pump down" of the brake system) then they may not be in adjustment when you need them. There's lots of Safety Gear out there but it's only as good as it is maintained.

What happened to the Democrats

Commonweal:Goodbye Catholics

But nothing Dutton did was as influential and far-reaching as his work on a Democratic commission that ran from 1969 to 1972. Better known as the McGovern Commission, for its chairman, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, the twenty-eight-member panel became the vehicle by which a handful of antiwar liberals revolutionized the Democratic Party. Of this group, Dutton emerged as the chief designer and builder. His goal was nothing less than to end the New Deal coalition, the electoral alliance that had supported the party since 1932 around a broad working-class agenda. In its place, Dutton sought to build a “loose peace constituency,” a collection of groups opposed to the Vietnam War and more generally the military-industrial complex. To this end, Dutton recognized that Democrats would need to appeal to three new constituencies-young people, college-educated suburbanites, and feminists-while ceasing to woo two old ones-Catholics and working-class whites. As it turned out, the McGovern Commission became Dutton’s unlikely vehicle for renovating the party’s coalition. He used one proposal to engineer the emerging feminist movement into the Democratic fold. He used other measures to, in effect, help secular, educated elites wrest the party machinery from state and big-city bosses.
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As Greenberg concluded about the 2004 election, “The reason for the defection of these more blue-collar Democrats is rooted in their conservative views on cultural issues. Culturally, the defectors differ from other Democrats on abortion, gay marriage, and especially the National Rifle Association, the second biggest area of difference.”

Dutton, though a supporter of his loose peace constituency and the McGovern Commission to the end, harbored few illusions about them. “It might not have been politically shrewd,” he acknowledged to me in two interviews. “What surprised me is that young people didn’t vote until they were thirty-five years old. And black leaders talked a good game [about delivering the black vote], but they didn’t walk a good game.” Dutton, for all his errors in judgment, maintained a refreshing and admirable intellectual honesty. He might have been the shortsighted designer and builder of the modern Democratic Party, but he was hardly one of the bumbling mechanics who run it today.

It'd be nice if someone would drop Thomas Frank a line. The Democrats have long ceased being interested in the plight of working people. When you are convinced that most working people are lazy racist slobs (witness the typical sitcom's male lead) you aren't very motivated to do anything to help them. Of course, with the decline of the middle class we're all going down the tubes eventually. Nobody makes a good living in a subsistence economy, even the rich get poorer eventually. It's just the working stiffs who are feeling the first effects.

Evening in America?

OpinionJournal-Peggy Noonan:A Separate Peace

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."
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And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem.

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Our Friends the Chinese

Washington Times:Four Arrests linked to Spy Ring

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships.
U.S. intelligence and security officials said the case remains under investigation but that it could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 one of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years.
The Los Angeles spy ring has operated since 1990 and has funneled technology and military secrets to China in the form of documents and computer disks, officials close to the case said.
The ring was led by Chi Mak and his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, along with Mr. Chi's brother, Tai Wang Mak, and his wife, Fuk Heung Li, officials said.
Key compromises uncovered so far include sensitive data on Aegis battle management systems that are the core of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers.
China covertly obtained the Aegis technology and earlier this year deployed its first Aegis warship, code-named Magic Shield, intelligence officials have said.
The Chinese also obtained sensitive data on U.S. submarines, including classified details related to the new Virginia-class attack submarines.
Officials said based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines, a compromise that potentially could be devastating if the United States enters a conflict with China in defending Taiwan.
Mr. Chi, an electrical engineer, also had access to details on U.S. aircraft carriers and once was aboard the USS Stennis. A Pentagon report made public earlier this year said China's military is building up capabilities to attack U.S. aircraft carriers.

Hang 'em high
Nice to know we've blithely placed our economic future in China's ever lovin' hands.

Does the NY Times have a fact checker?

NY Times:Wal-Mart to seek Energy Savings

Embracing energy-conscious and environmentally conscious goals will help both the company's bottom line and its customers' needs, H. Lee Scott said in an interview Monday.
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His goals, he said, are to invest $500 million in technologies that will reduce greenhouse gases from stores and distribution centers by 20 percent over the next seven years; increase the fuel efficiency of the truck fleet by 25 percent over the next three years and double it within 10 years, and design a new store within four years that is at least 25 percent more energy-efficient.
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The trucks in Wal-Mart's fleet, the nation's largest, have a fuel efficiency of about 6.5 miles per gallon. "They can do at least 13," said Amory Lovins, chief executive of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit organization that serves as a consultant to companies on energy efficiency and has performed work for Wal-Mart. "They are a big enough buyer to get truck suppliers' undivided attention."

Transport Topics News: Wal-Mart Reportedly Set to Improve Fleet Efficiency

Wal-Mart is ranked No. 2 on the Transport Topics 100 listing of private North American carriers. According to company data, it has about 6,750 trucks and 44,500 trailers.

The largest truckload for hire carrier (Schneider National) Operates about twice as many tractors (14,000) and a few thousand more trailers (48.000 trailers and containers). The largest private package carrier (United Parcel Service) operates more than 10,000 tractors and 80,000 trailers (plus over 60,000 smaller trucks). The largest Less than truckload carrier (Yellow Roadway) uses more than 17,000 tractors and 88,000 trailers. In 2005 over 200,000 Class 8 trucks will be sold in the United States. The top 100 for hire carriers according to Transport Topics operate over 350,000 trucks. There are over 20 million Commercial trucks in the US.

Wal Mart is a big fish, but in a giant pond. Fuel is the second largest cost to motor carriers after labor. If the market has not moved trucks to better fuel economy how is a Wal Mart going to move it with its control of less than 1% of the market?

GM and the independent trucker

GM has been in the news a lot lately. GMs sales have been in the dumps for many years. Today they have to use incentives to move cars at a loss. Why do they keep making more cars than they can move at a profit? Because they have a lot of fixed costs that they can't get rid of. Under their contracts with the UAW they have to keep paying workers for the duration of the contract as well as the benefits and pensions for former workers have to be paid. So in order to keep the money flowing they have to move metal even if they lose money on the deal, sort of a slow motion Ponzi scheme. Your money for your new GM car is in part paying the costs for the cars GM sold years ago.

How does this tie into truckers? Independent Truckers have high fixed costs: truck payments (typically over $1k/month), insurance, plates and permits. The variable costs aren't cheap either (70-100 gallons of fuel a day at over $3 a pop), tolls (over $40 for a truck to get across Chicago), and an engine overhaul runs about what you'd pay for a decent used car. Yet they still run for less than their true costs. Why? the same reason GM does what it does. If they stop they will be steamrolled by their fixed costs. Freightliner doesn't care if you're making money, they just want their payment on the due date. The Independent doesn't want to lose their business that they have invested years in building so they just keep running faster on the treadmill. Of course sooner or later it will catch you, hence Delphi and the record truck repossessions the last two years.

That's Good

HURRICANE IMPACT: Truckload surprisingly good

Despite the massive economic shock of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which most notably led to a severe spike in diesel fuel prices, the initial spate of earnings reports from truckload carriers indicate the segment isn’t suffering financially in the third quarter.

The big fleets are collecting fuel surcharges that are keeping problems at bay for now. As shippers adapt to the new pricing environment freight flows will shift, taking many profitable loads off the market. Witness Intermodal reaching record levels even as rail traffic falls. The shift to shorter hauls (and thus lower utilization) and other realignments will pinch margins in the medium term. Of course small fleets and owner operators who do not have the leverage to pass on fuel costs will be leaving the industry involuntarily as the brutal economics of today's trucking industry catch up with them. Intermodal can't grow without more rail infrastructure and rail cannot generate sufficient ROI to attract capital. Long term the drop in competition will probably improve the profitability of the carriers left standing.

A real tragedy

Bus, Truck Crash kills five:AP

OSSEO, Wis. - A bus carrying high school students home from a band competition crashed into a tractor-trailer that had jackknifed on the interstate early Sunday, killing four adults and an 11-year-old girl, officials said.

Twenty-nine others were injured, some seriously, troopers said.

"It's a terrific tragedy and loss to our school and community," said Chippewa Falls schools superintendent Mike Schoch. "Our community is stunned by it."

The semi had gone off the shoulder of Interstate 94 and jackknifed, and was blocking the westbound lane, Wisconsin State Patrol Capt. Douglas Notbohm said.

"I don't know how much opportunity there was for braking action," he said. The bus slammed into the overturned truck, but it didn't roll or catch fire, patrol spokesman Brent Pickard said.

It was the first of four buses carrying about 140 students and 15 to 20 adult chaperones, Schoch said.

Bus driver Paul Rasmus, 78, of Chippewa Falls, died in the crash. The identities of the other victims — two men, ages 48 and 24, a 51-year-old woman and the girl — were withheld pending notification of their families.

The semi driver, employed by Whole Foods Market Group of Munster, Ind., was en route from Indiana to Minnesota, Notbohm said. The driver was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Officials didn't know why the truck went off the shoulder and overturned. The driver told investigators he had not fallen asleep, Notbohm said, and Pickard said the road was dry at the time of the crash.

Two things, Bus Hours of Service standards have not been changed even though freight standards have been tightened (though not enough). A driver hauling toilet paper is required to take more time off between shifts and to work shorter days than a driver carrying 16 to 90 souls. Second, Technology to prevent run off road accidents and improve night vision is out there. The costs to install such systems surely are less than the liabilities the Grocery chain that owned the truck and charter bus firm will incur from this tragedy.

Precisely!

Get Religion: Why is the Bush Burning?

Journalists must realize the leadership of the Republican Party knows that pro-life, traditional religious believers — Democrats, as well as Republicans — have nowhere to go in an era in which, to paraphrase Maureen Dowd, the Democratic Party’s only iron-clad value is the defense of Woodstock. So the Republican establishment can treat cultural conservatives the way the Democrats treat labor unions.

As Bush I learned to his sorrow eventually they get wise to it—for a while.

I'm game, are you?

Heavy Duty Trucking:August 2005 Will carriers and owner-operators heed the mandatory speed limiter call?

Jaws were dropping all across the land this past July when the Ontario Trucking Assn. – the largest trucking association in Canada and the third largest in North America – put out a call for mandatory speed-limiting devices on trucks.
Perhaps only slightly more surprising was OTA's call for continent-wide adoption of the policy.
In a statement, OTA indicated that while a North American-wide approach to mandating speed limiters would be optimal, it was prepared to "urge the Ontario government to ensure that at least all the trucks that operate into, out of, and within this province are speed limited."
OTA president David Bradley says this issue has been a topic of discussion around OTA boardroom for some time. It's nothing new, he notes, adding, "In addition to the specific issue of speeding, it is felt that speed is correlated with poor lane discipline, which we are also trying to begin to address."
Several members of the OTA board recently visited a number of European states including the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany and France on a fact-finding mission, concluding that speeding and lane discipline were not big issues over there.
"The use of mandatory speed limiters works. A speeding truck would stick out like a sore thumb in Europe," says Mark Seymour, CEO of Kriska Transportation in Prescott, Ont. "In the several hundred kilometers we drove over there, I never once saw a speeding truck. In my view, poor lane discipline is a by-product of speeding. In Europe, trucks stick to the inside lane for the most part. It was great to see."
Whether or not that policy can, or should, be adopted in North America is another issue. Critics of the OTA plan are quick to point out that trucks spec'd for efficient operation at higher speeds would take quite a hit being forced to operate at reduced speeds. Drivers, predictably, aren't very receptive to the idea, nor are owner-ops. That group is becoming quite vociferous in it's opposition.
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..... but just what constitutes speeding? Ontario's major highways have speed limits of 100 km/h (62 mph). Secondary highways are posted at 80 km/h (50 mph). The provinces of Alberta and New Brunswick have posted limits of 110 km/h (66 mph) on main arteries, while Nevada, New Mexico and seven other states have limits of 75 mph. Trying to achieve consensus on this one would be a monumental task, to say the least.
Ontario's solution? Bradley says he is prepared to urge the Ontario government to go it alone.
That, Bradley says, would require speed limiters on all trucks operating in the province, including outside carriers servicing or transiting the province. That would require some verifiable means of establishing that trucks had an active speed limiter, and it was engaged. So, how would Ontario verify the presence of an active speed limiter on a truck?
"Actually, it does not appear to be all that difficult," Bradley asserts. "Handheld PDA's are already being used that can tell you immediately what speed a truck limiter is set at. There may have to be some modification in terms of who has access to which codes to avoid tampering, but this does not seem to be technically insurmountable."
While Bradley wasn't able to go into a lot more detail, one can see roadside inspections in the province including a speed-limiter verification where the enforcement officer would plug a PDA into the reader port to check the codes on the ECM.
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"The direction of the board is clear – speeding trucks, and trucks that sit in passing lanes, should no longer be tolerated," says OTA Chairman Scott Smith, CEO of JD Smith & Sons, a Toronto-based local and regional hauler. "We'll talk to carriers, truck drivers, government, police and motorists to answer questions like what speed trucks should be limited to, how to avoid tampering, how to deal with the fact that there are 60 jurisdictions in North America. But we are of the strong view that mandatory speed limitation for trucks is overdue. The technology already exists on current electronic engines. It just needs to be turned on. We've got the ability, why not use it?"

The ideal would be for US to go to a 65 MPH limit and mandatory speed limiters on all late model trucks and all new vehicles. Given the oil supply issues we are facing, asking everyone to hold it to a mile a minute doesn't seem like much to ask. Speeding tickets are a lucrative business for the States and Municipalities, but I think safety would be better served by officers patrolling the highways than by hiding out staring at a radar gun. Speeding is a stupid problem to have when pretty much every engine is computer controlled and can be limited at almost no cost or complexity. I don't see when enforcement has to be complicated, once a phase in period has passed if a truck is going faster than 65 on flat land (or uphill!) it's in violation, the officer just has two tickets to write. Eventually GPS based "smart" limiters that would be able to match your location to the local speed limit will be available and proven but better to go with what we can safely implement today.

Most truckers' issue with the devices is that they are paid by the mile and so they are taking a pay cut by being limited to fewer miles in a day. Of course speeding increases the chances of career ending tickets and, if involved in accident, devastating liabilities. Driver Pay needs to go up, but letting everyone run at 75 is not the answer.

Why we need a 97K Weight Limit

(Note: I oppose the 51K Tridem/six axle tractor trailer usually associated with the "NAFTA 97K" proposal. A 44K tridem axle grouping weight limit would allow a 97K truck on 7 axles which would reduce pavement damage, increase braking, have a better fore/aft weight balance and still allow a productivity enhancement. Both would have added bridge costs.)

Trains newswire Sept 28 (not a direct link

Presently in Chicago, overweight containers must be unloaded at ports of entry and broken into smaller truckload-sized shipments to comply with federal and state regulations limiting the amount of weight that can legally be transported over public roadways. This leaves customers importing goods to the Midwest with two choices: Sending smaller shipments in containers (not capitalizing on the maximum container capacity), or unloading fully loaded containers at the port and shipping them to Chicago in smaller-sized shipments. Both alternatives are costly and result in additional handling and/or transportation expenses.

One of the inefficiencies in intermodal is the need to make a rubber tire movement to have the cargo split up so it can legally be taken to its destination (and for those that are not transloaded, running 90-97K on 5 axles increases road damage).

Fleet Owner September 05 Roads To Hell part 2

Petty argues that “going to 96,000 lb. GCW alone would add tremendous productivity. In fact, operators have shown that when running in Michigan, where heavier weights are allowed, they can deliver 20% more goods with fewer vehicles than in neighboring Illinois. [Note: Michigan's gross weight limits are much higher than 96K for trucks with enough axles]
“So to not allow heavier combinations makes no public policy sense at all,” he continues. “It's as if we have to reach a crisis in which products are not getting to market before we can force a change in these regulations.”
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ATA's Roth points out that the rest of the industrialized world, including Canada and Mexico, have gone to a 96,000- to 97,000-lb. GCW tractor with tridem (three axles at rear) trailer. “By next year,” he notes “ATA plans to have solid recommendations to talk about.”
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“The highway bill just passed is essentially a highway maintenance bill,” stresses ATA's Roth. “And the states will not make the kind of investments needed to increase road capacity.
“All this makes changes in size and weight attractive [as a means to increase freight-carrying capacity,” he continues. “And bear in mind that changes only need to be made to actual pavement if truck axle weights, not gross vehicle weights, are increased.
“Bridges are a little different,” Roth notes. “Depending on what vehicle weight and length is determined, some bridges may have to be strengthened or replaced to carry truck traffic. Most Interstate bridges would not have to be adjusted [to carry proposed 96,000-lb. GCW combination vehicles].”

Trucks are unfairly maligned as being subsidised by everyone else. The real story is the magic of deficit spending.
Fleet Owner August 05 Roads to Hell

Road damage caused by heavy trucks may be the most contentious part of the issue, as car drivers blame the big rigs for beating up roads and their owners not paying more money to fix them. The data belies this belief: Trucks and cars both pay about 80 to 90% of their total road costs. Although each group pays the same proportion, it is still short of the 100% each should be paying to keep roads in top condition.

New Toy

Heavy Duty Trucking: Test Ride in Peterbilt 386

We were alerted by Jim Park, our colleague on the Canadian HighwayStar Magazine that he had not achieved very good fuel mileage on his test drive. But he had taken the truck before the roof fairing had been fitted. With that fairing, plus some additional schooling in the optimum technique for driving the ACERT Cats, I did better. When we checked the fuel mileage we were astounded to find we had bettered Jim by 2 mpg, returning an overall of 6.88 mpg for our 346-mile round trip.

The trend seems to be on the new trucks that the RPMs have to be kept in a tight low range. Detroit wants 12-1500 for theirs. I don't know yet where the '07 engines are going to go on Drivability. MPG might have been boosted slightly by going to a direct setup (1:1 top gear and rear end ratio in the 2.6-2.9 range rather than the more traditional .7 top gear and 3.55 rears) and also wide base singles and extra trailer streamlining could make a small improvement. I hope Cat can move forward in MPG in '07 like Detroit and Cummins have indicated they will.

The 386 might be a decent compromise for fleets wanting to be able to convert the tractor to a daycab later on. The 379 is a nice piece of work (they've been building it for years so all the bugs are worked out) and is very popular with drivers. Being a traditional simple design the parts are cheap and easy to obtain (Windshield for Pete 379 is about $40, windshield for the Ultra Aero 387 is near $700 and requires the truck be Out of Service for 24 hours.)

Matthew Simmons again

Matthew Simmons comments at Rep. Roscoe Bartlett's Energy Conference 2005

Turns out the SUV isn’t the problem. It’s large trucks moving goods thousands of miles, getting three to five miles per gallon and clogging up our highways.

It'd be nice if he'd do a little research. I'm disappointed in my new truck (2006 Freightliner FLC 120 w/ 445 14L Detroit) , it only gets 7.5 MPG. On the same run a 2000 Freightliner FLC 112 w/ 370 11L Cummins got 8.5, and a 2000 Volvo VL w/ 270 11L got 9.2. I run light loads but have to run about 16% idle (liftgate) and hilly terrain.
Back in the bad old days before electronic engine controls 3-5 MPG was common, but anything in the last 10 years spec'd and driven properly will beat that. Cats run in the high 5s to low 6s, Cummins 6s to high 7s, and Detroits 6s to low 8s. If speeds are lowered those numbers will improve.
And as to which type of vehicle burns the most fuel a picture (or in this case a graph) is worth a thousand words (keep in mind that Distillates used in transportation encompasses diesel for trains as well as trucks [and diesel pickups and passenger vehicles, but those are a small share)


Graphic from EIA report on demand