How do we get un-stupid?

I guess it’s pretty apparent that our economy is a blasted disaster. All day, all night the media expound on what is wrong and why. Panels of pundits weigh in and try to out-yell each other in the process. The arguing makes me nuts. I have to turn the channel.Funny, while so many can’t come up with answers, my mom – who just turned 90 – explained it all to me last week as we were grinding

Thumbs up for transparency

Mike Goldberg couldn’t decide if he was more disgusted at the federal government or at his broker.Goldberg – an OOIDA member who runs a fleet out of Cincinnati, OH – had recently booked a load to haul about 1,500 pounds of landing gear from Maryland with stops in Arizona, ending up in California. The shipper – the Department of Defense – was paying a broker, who in turn paid Goldberg’s 247

Right Reorge

Would you cede control of your car or big truck if the government virtually guaranteed (I know, an oxymoron) safety, and possibly lower insurance costs?Your vehicle would stop on a dime, talk to other cars and trucks and wheel around under layers of “crash-avoidance” systems. Maybe you’d decide to put your car on autopilot and let the state’s automatic highway systems guide your vehicle while you

Extraordinary Bette

The legendary truck photographer Bette Garber died last week. She had been ill for some time, but kept it quiet, close. That was Bette – she never liked a lot of fuss about herself, was always more concerned with how others were doing.Bette was a friend of mine, during more than 15 years of my hanging out with truckers and writing about their lives. I met her at the 1994 Mid-America Trucking

Gasp – sleep study market growth slows!

Land Line Magazine and Land Line Now have focused a good deal on sleep apnea the past several months, and for good reason.As more Americans have learned and been diagnosed with sleep disorders like apnea, powerful medical regulators within FMCSA are kicking around the merits of requiring CDL-holders with body mass indexes of 30 or greater from having mandatory sleep labs performed.You can read

Locking loads

Cargo security experts estimate that between $20 billion and $30 billion of commercial goods are stolen annually from big trucks.Of course we don’t know an exact figure.Because retailers aren’t interested in pointing to the value of their highest-priced loads, and due to the relative ease by which some thieves take trailers and occasionally $40 million in pharmaceuticals, we may never know how

House divided

People feel so passionately about this presidential election;I hope that after it’s over, we can reunite behind one administration. I say this with the most personal of experience. Right now, I am living in one of those homes divided by political allegiances.I hope that after the election, my husband and I can get back to being married people instead of complete and total foes. How the heck do