Policy Activists: Truck Loads Already Too Large

Monday, May 4, 2009

As a transportation bill moves through Congress, activists petition to fight big
rigs carrying larger loads, calling it a public health crisis.

At a news conference on Monday, the Truck Safety Coalition led by advocate Joan Claybrook introduced families whose loved ones had been lost to highway fatalities due to commercial truck accidents. One victim's father expressed that larger trucks would be a greater hazard than currently exists.

Truck cargo industry group Coalition for Transportation Productivity instead calls for tractor-trailers to add an axle, thus giving them 22 wheels instead of 18. They are pushing for higher load limits as cargo demand increases and safer roads based on fewer trucks being on the road and more even distribution of weight.

Loans May Soon Be Available to Truckers Affected by High Cost of Fuel

Loans May Soon Be Available to Truckers Affected by High Cost of Fuel
October 3, 2008

After meetings with many truckers to discuss their challenges associated with the rising cost of fuel; US Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash) has proposed legislation to provide them with low-interest loans.

"Truckers provide the backbone of our nation's retail economy,” says Baird. In light of recent Wall Street disasters, Congressman Baird looks to support independent truckers and small businesses, not just the large corporations. “This legislation would...help keep them, and our economy afloat."

Under the proposed bill, transportation businesses affected by high fuel prices would be eligible to apply for emergency loans up to $250,000 via the Small Business Administration. This could prevent these firms from going out of business and serve to stimulate the faltering economy.

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Rep. John Salazar (D-Colo.), and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) have agreed to co-sponsor the proposed legislation in hopes that it should be included in the upcoming economic stimulus package. The Northwest Log Truckers Cooperative and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association also support this bill.

In Trains We Trust

In Trains We Trust
August 20, 2008

With the end of the current business sessions of the 110th U.S. Congress on the horizon, farmers across America and their representatives are doing their utmost to bring pressure on U.S. lawmakers to grant one more vital bill.

The average consumer has surely noticed that prices of food, both domestic and imported, have been on the rise. There are various reasons for the price hikes. However, one factor that has been common to most markets is the effect of high fuel prices.

How does the price of a barrel of crude oil from the Middle East affect the price of hamburger rolls made from U.S. grown wheat?

In factoring the wholesale and eventual retail prices of food items, transportation is a key factor. Local grown tomatoes sold at a farmer's market will have a much lower price than produce that has been shipped halfway across the country. On the other hand, supplying fresh daily produce to all corners of the nation is a luxury not enjoyed by many countries on this globe. Luxury, though, has its price tag.

Truck transport was the most common mode of long haul transportation until recently. The flexibility of routes, combined with the affordability of the transport mode, made trucking the choice of many farmers and suppliers. However, as trucking companies have been re-thinking the economic viability of long haul transport, railroad freight has become a realistic option. In many cases, trucking combined with rail freight has proven to be a successful combination.

Farmers across America have been relying more on rail service to ship their crops to the designated markets. Washington, D.C., though, has been making the economic reality of rail freight difficult for the farmers. In order for food prices to remain reasonable, rail prices must be reasonable. Antitrust exemptions granted to the freight rail industry allow the rail companies to charge farmers exorbitantly high prices. Removal of these exemptions would force the rail companies to become competitive and, thus, would reduce the rates and provide better service, also a complaint of the farmers. The lower rates would be passed on to the consumer. As many farmers rely heavily on the railroads, they feel that they are being held captive with no place to turn, and no other options.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has been pressuring members of the House and Senate to eliminate the Freight Rail Antitrust Exemptions. Senate bill 772 and House bill 1650 are companion bills that would make the antitrust exemptions obsolete. Farmers, growers, and consumers hope that the bills soon find a favorable place in the nation's law books.

Harbor Trucking Capacity in Southern California to be Cut in Half

Harbor Trucking Capacity in Southern California to be Cut in Half
March 19, 2008

The harbor trucking capacity in Southern California could experience a shortage of around 8,350 trucks and owner-operators by October due to conflicting Clean Trucks programs and the federal Transportation Worker Identification Credential program.

Addressing the 8th Annual Trans-Pacific Maritime Conference, John Husing, a Southern California economist who studied the harbor trucking scene in 2007, said that at present nearly 16,800 trucks arrive regularly at the ports, but this capacity is expected to be cut in half by this fall for three reasons: many drivers will fail to qualify for the TWIC biometric identification card, Clean Trucks programs of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are conflicting with one another over the use or non-use of the employee-driver model in the harbor, and all trucks built before 1989 will be banned from the harbor by this fall as they no longer meet the ports’ new emission standards.

Qualifying for the TWIC certification requires drivers to demonstrate proof of legal residency in the United States, a requirement which, according to recent surveys conducted by Husing on behalf on the ports, may drive 15% to 22% of the drivers to not even apply for a TWIC card at all.

Confusion further surrounds the harbor trucking scene. In February, a Clean Trucks program that does not require the use of employee-drivers was approved by the Port of Long Beach. Having paired up with the Teamsters Union and pushing for the unionization of harbor trucking, the Natural Resources Defense Council has threatened to seek legal ramifications against the port over such an issue.

On the other hand, the Port of Los Angeles is expected to release, in the next few weeks, its own version of Clean Trucks program, which is expected to require the use of employee-drivers. Curtis Whalen, executive director of the American Trucking Associations’ Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference, said that thousands of owner-operators will lose their jobs if Los Angeles adopts such an employee-driver model. If the Port of Los Angeles ever releases a Clean Trucks program that requires licensed motor carriers to use only employee-drivers, the trucking industry will take legal action against the port. Whalen stated that ATA could sue the Port of Los Angeles under the federal preemption clause that asserts the federal government’s authority to regulate rates, routes, and services in interstate transportation. ATA could also resort, in its dispute with the Port of Los Angeles, to the Federal Maritime Commission, which holds the responsibility of preventing discrimination in port transportation.

To cope with such an expected shortage, Husing said that more than 1,000 trucks will be added to the harbor later this year. Husing, who previously thought that compromise was within reach, is now no longer optimistic that the ports can work out their differences and agree on a joint Clean Trucks program by the Oct 1st deadline.

Auburn Repairs Roads to Ease Traffic Pressure

Auburn Repairs Roads to Ease Traffic Pressure
Thursday, March 13, 2008

Big trucks as well as school buses, fire trucks, and growing commuter traffic are the cause of severe stress on the roads according to a report released by the Auburn Citizen's Arterial Task Force, which was commissioned by City Council in 2007. In order to face this overgrowing concern, Auburn has passed on several regulations to reduce truck traffic in the city, one of which is that tractor-trailers are banned from A Street Southeast and residential roads in the city.

Transportation issues are of extreme importance in the city nowadays, and Auburn officials are racing to repair damaged roads in order to reduce the stresses the city streets are facing. Through its Save Our Streets program, created in 2004 to maintain and repair local streets and costs an average of $2 million a year, the city has upgraded and repaired, since 2005, an average of eight miles of local roads a year. Later this year, streets with minor damage, including 22nd Street Northeast and 25th Street Southeast, will be maintained and updated. Next year, streets with the worst damage will be repaired when the city’s plans to set up new sewage and utility lines in areas that are also in need of repaving are realized.

With their manufacturing base growing rapidly over the past few decades, cities like Auburn, Kent, and Renton have been deeply affected by the increased traffic. Many of the roads in these cities were never designed for this kind of traffic in the first place. Most of Auburn’s roads were designed for passenger cars, not for heavily loaded big trucks. City leaders believe that identifying the problem areas in Auburn's streets is not the issue, but having the necessary funding to act on and fix all of them always proves to be an obstacle.

In their report, the Auburn Citizen's Arterial Task Force estimated that a budget of $85 million is required to repair and upgrade the city’s roads. Even though trucking companies are expected to pay state fees and taxes, Auburn officials say the money has not been passed on to the city level.

On the other hand, Auburn’s truck drivers are handling traffic pressure as best as they can. Bart Lutton, terminal manager for Peninsula Truck Lines operations in Auburn, Bellingham, and Bremerton, stated that the 81 drivers working in the Auburn warehouse always leave early in order to make timely deliveries in the area. Alternatively, if allowed to use city streets to make deliveries, drivers with Peninsula Truck Lines believe they could save several hours a week. However, having been banned from taking shortcuts through residential neighborhoods, drivers have to contend with getting stuck in the traffic for as long as it takes.

Challenger Motor Freight Adds Top Awards to its Arsenal

Challenger Motor Freight Adds Top Awards to its Arsenal
March 13, 2008

Challenger Motor Freight has been winning plenty of top awards as of late. The company has been awarded Platinum status in Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies competition, an achievement which means that Challenger Motor Freight is regarded as one of Canada’s best companies for the seventh consecutive year. The award is based on an accurate and independent analysis of management skills and practices.

Challenger has also won the prestigious Johnnie Walker Blue Award for the second year in a row. The award is presented to the overall Carrier of the Year, based on four performance criteria: timely pickup, timely delivery, load tender acceptance percentage, and EDI compliance. Adding a third award to its arsenal, Challenger has just recently won General Motors award for Best FAST Carrier Performance in 2007 with more than 98% fast shipments out of last year’s 18,288.

Dan Einwechter, chairman and CEO of Challenger Motor Freight, refuses to let the company’s business taper off now after winning those awards. Instead, he is expanding his Montreal terminal to ease the increasingly overwhelming east-west traffic and is planning a remarkable development in intermodal transportation.

Launched back in 1975 as a one-truck operation, Challenger has grown now into a company which is ranked fifth on the Today’s Trucking Top 100 list, for the second consecutive year, with 1500 tractors and 3500 trailers.

With an efficient logistics division, warehousing services, and 650,000 square feet of warehouse space, Challenger has excelled in air and sea freight-forwarding as well as third-party freight management. Challenger has been relying on the truckload, LTL, and special trucking operations as its stock in trade for so many years. Additionally, the company sells used trucks in good condition to customers all over the world.

The company is still specializing in the north-south traffic. Choosing to grow the business somewhere else, Einwechter says that he has reduced the company’s cross-border work as well as transportation of automotive parts in recent years. On the other hand, Challenger has almost tripled east-west traffic between central Canada and Alberta and British Columbia in the last 2 years. In Vancouver, the company has been doing a lot of drayage work and de-stuffing containers.

Having had to adapt to a changing market, Einwechter admits that the business environment, nowadays, does not look so promising. The company managed to replace $60 million worth of business over a 24-month period up to last year. Behind this success is a talented and hard-working staff.

Business has abated these days, and it seems like 2008 will see smaller business than usual for Challenger. However, Einwechter is still hiring drivers and is planning to buy 150 new Volvo tractors with I-Shift automated transmissions.

Challenger has always been known for its passion for new technologies. In this sense, Einwechter happily announces that the company is about to receive five new Peterbilt tractors equipped with new gadgets, including the new Paccar MX engine.

There is no doubt that the top awards Challenger has recently won is a living proof of its success as a trucking company with an entrepreneurial edge in a very wide-ranging enterprise.

Trucking Companies Hit by Elevated Diesel Fuel Prices

Trucking Companies Hit by Elevated Diesel Fuel Prices
March 13, 2008

Local trucking companies are faced with the ordeal of having to adapt to the constantly fast-climbing fuel prices across the nation.

Rich Ferguson, terminal manager of Brilliant-based Fraley & Schilling Inc., conceded that, with elevated diesel fuel prices, the company’s ability to profit has been deeply affected. However, he said that his company has not resorted to cutting down the number of available trucks like other companies in the tri-state area have. Actually, the company is enjoying a very strong run in business in the area and is actively seeking more drivers.

Still, with diesel prices rising, it has become increasingly difficult for his company to recover those costs. Ferguson added that recent economic conditions are to blame for the decreased demand for trucking services in the Midwest. He expressed his concern over how the weak dollar makes imported goods more expensive and consequently how it is getting in the way of importing more goods from other countries.

Ferguson pointed out that Fraley & Schilling Inc. is indeed facing two problems when it comes to demand. The first of which is owing to the fact that the trucking service is not in high demand as it was before, and this subsequently affects the company’s ability to fix the prices of its services. The second is that the demand for trucking service is usually Truckingsubstandard in some areas around this time of year. The demand for transporting building products, for instance, has waned off at this time of year.

Facing a battle of his own is Joe Stenger, chief executive officer of Barnesville-based J.W. Stenger Trucking, who mentioned that the elevated price of diesel fuel has hit his company. A key component of the company’s variable cost of operation, diesel fuel’s increased cost can be passed along as fuel surcharges. However, erratically fluctuating fuel prices are causing this once stable system to spin out of control. He added that with the fuel surcharge often being lower than it should be, the company’s profits have diminished. Still, the company does not make any fewer deliveries as it transports a wide variety of goods.

Besides passing along fuel surcharges, Stenger is actively conserving fuel. New ways of preserving fuel are being examined, and with no-idle systems and satellites having been set up in each of the company’s trucks, drivers will not have to run their trucks while resting overnight and their performance will be closely monitored as well.

Stenger and Ferguson share the same point of view regarding the fact that elevated diesel costs will not cause shortage of goods, and consumers, they believe, should not be concerned about rationing products. There are still many trucks available to transport goods, and the supply will always be there. Stenger also acknowledged the fact that consumers will have to pay considerably higher prices for living necessities and goods delivered by his company, and these higher prices may prove to be a hurdle for them. Consumers will resort to rationing only when they are unable to pay the goods’ higher prices, and rationing will eventually be common for most families once credit card companies do not step in for help.

New Transportation Infrastructure Improvement Plan Proposed

New Transportation Infrastructure Improvement Plan Proposed
March 13, 2008

New York State’s Department of Transportation is offering $175 Billion improvement plan for updating and repairing its transportation infrastructure. With the deterioration of New York’s roads, bridges, railroads, and ports threatening many businesses that rely on them, this much-needed transportation infrastructure improvement plan is deemed essential for the state’s long-term economic prosperity and well-being.

Tioga Hardwoods Inc., operating in Owego and Berkshire, uses trucks to transport wood from and to sawmills, averaging 250 truck loads per month. After drying and separating wood, the company eventually sells it. President and co-owner of Tioga Hardwoods Inc., Kevin Gillette, said that reliable transportation is crucial for his business to survive. Transportation is also a hot topic among companies that are planning a move to the region.

Addressing this issue, Kendra L. Adams, Deputy Director of the New York State Motor Truck Association, confirmed that updating and repairing the state’s transportation is of high priority. Trucking is a big business in New York - more than 37,134 trucking companies are operating from New York - and transported goods need to arrive on a timely manner or else the jobs of 516,500 employees of the trucking industry will be jeopardized. With roads becoming more and more congested, timely deliveries have been unduly hindered and this has cost the trucking industry a lot of money. As nearly 2,950 bridges will become deficient in the 10 years to come, highway funding is now of key importance to the industry.

Kevin Gillette stated that faster rail service can be a feasible option for his company if only train speed improves. Bruce Lieberman, president of Railroads of New York and chairman of New York and Atlantic Railway, said that about 1.2 billion tons of goods, including agricultural grains, wood, paper, steel, stone, and chemicals, were transported via New York railroad services in 2006. Many tracks within the state are old and congested, and with the number of goods in need of transporting expected to increase by 70% in the next 15 to 20 years, the rail option has emerged as a necessity. Lieberman said that a five-year plan has been laid out by his organization demanding railroad yard expansions to allow more goods to be hauled in addition to repairing and upgrading already existing tracks.

Air travel is also a sought-after aspect of transportation and option for hauling goods. According to Douglas Barton, Tioga County Department of Economic Development and Planning Director, although the Greater Binghamton Airport has undergone some improvements, it hasn’t been the focus of attention as of late. Nowadays, having access to air travel is as important to business as was having access to highways in the past.

Repairing and upgrading New York’s transportation items need both time and funding. The Department of Transportation is estimating that the transportation infrastructure improvement plan will take 20 years and $175.2 billion dollars to be completed. The Department of Transportation commissioner Astrid C. Glynn said that the federal government will need to provide a major amount of the funding. Once Congress renews its Federal Surface Transportation Act in 2009, the State of New York needs to seek the authorized funds in the legislation to provide the adequate funding needed for this plan. The Department of Transportation also scheduled public conferences throughout the state in order to enlighten the public about freight transportation.

The Department of Transportation’s plan needs to be carried out as soon as possible. Glynn said with an annual inflation rate of 9.2% on construction costs, a prolonged duration between planning and implementation can cause severe loss of value for the dollar and catastrophic consequences on the plan’s finances. Glynn added that any federal funding New York’s Department of Transportation receives will have to be distributed geographically. Subsequently, with a range of proposed projects all over the state, projects must be prioritized in terms of importance.