An answer to trucker bombs?

Pee bottles have hit the mainstream, no pun intended. At least for children: If you want to relive the thrills of victory and agonies of defeat from toilet-training your own brood, just cruise over to this site, which will likely make anyone cringe.Capitalizing on the growing national phobia of the bacteria and viruses our kind have lived with for eons, the creators of My Pee Pee Bottle make a

Speed limiters put ‘cart before the pony’

I wish I could have attended Truck World 2008 during the festivities on April 19.I would have enjoyed witnessing Ontario Transportation Minister Jim Bradley and Ontario Trucking Association President David Bradley posing for the cameras while “activating a speed limiter” on a Kenworth. We can guess it was a real dog and pony show.Both Bradleys – one lobbying the other – continue to push for a

Dialing (down) for dollars

Rocker Sammy Hagar famously protested the speed limits of the ’70s and ’80s with his “I Can’t Drive 55.” Eventually, of course, those restrictions largely gave way, and we’ve enjoyed 70 and above on much of the Interstate system since.The double-nickel feels like a crawl to anyone who’s not Amish, but with $4-plus diesel and soon gasoline, how would you feel about 65 mph (and would we call that “

Jim Hebe is back

Last week I wrote in a daily news story that former Freightliner CEO James Hebe had a new job with Navistar International as senior vice president of North American sales. He’s accepted a high profile position with the company he started out with way back in 1971. Yep, he’s going back into the executive thick of it. And he seemed so happy pheasant hunting.
I am getting a load of e-mail from

Bad brokers and bottom feeders

It’s not hard to find a raw nerve in the trucking industry right now. But the Special Report I wrote on Tuesday, April 22, really set off a firestorm of sorts.A long-time trucking analyst Donald Broughton reported that 935 trucking companies with five or more trucks went out of business in the first quarter of this year. You can read the whole article here.What seemed to capture the attention of

Oregon continues smear campaign

There’s really nothing else you can call Operation Trucker Check conducted by the Oregon Department of Transportation. It’s a smear campaign.Results aren’t in from the 72-hour enforcement blitz that ran from April 15-17 are out, but guess what – they’re still touting drug tests from the last one where basically 10 percent of all truckers are doped up, driving bad equipment with no

High cost of fallout

During the past few years, I have written a couple of times about biofuels – making diesel or gasoline out of stuff other than oil. Most anything that contains hydrogen, oxygen and carbon can be turned into fuel – including old tires, and even diapers.Recently, we’ve seen an upsurge in ethanol production, fueled by a strong push from the Bush administration and strong lobbying by companies that

Witnesses called in case of Gas v. Diesel

Your honor, we would like to see the case of Gasoline v. Diesel resolved.It seems that a number of major media, when reporting about various trucker protests in recent days and weeks, said truckers were protesting over “gas prices.”Many truckers own personal vehicles fueled by gasoline, but I would argue that the protests were not about gas but concerned the price of diesel fuel.Although both

McCain breaks ranks on filling the SPR

Another U.S. senator has come out against buying up more and more oil for our emergency store while prices are so high.This time, it’s from the other side of the aisle and you might call him a guy with some standing these days. Sen. John McCain addressed the economy last week in a speech before a small-business roundtable in New York.The most important item in my opinion was his comment on adding

Why insurance companies love red light cameras

I confess that I have a lot of mixed feelings about red-light cameras. On the one hand, I can’t count the number of times I have almost been T-boned by a red-light runner, much less the number of times I have seen it almost happen. On the other hand, people still run the monitored lights in high enough numbers that cities – and companies – keep using the systems.A lot of folks think the cameras

Stashing more oil into SPR ludicrous

OK, sometimes the Congressional Record is not the most thrilling read, and sometimes it is. Monday’s comments from Sen. Bryon Dorgan land in the latter category. His topic was the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is of course the DOE’s own emergency petroleum store and the largest emergency supply in the world.In his rant regarding an announcement made by the Energy Department last week that it