Misc Trucking Stuff

We should embrace our inner trucking jobs. Trucking jobs will help you find the meaning of life. Sure, it’s exciting. No sweat. I want to feel spirited. I want to feel delighted. Many people are like that. That would work if we had unlimited resources. Goal setting is so important. That was counter productive. Nothing new here. Trucks is not important right now. It’s a win/win offer. Begin by locating a practical other jobs that needs more from trucking.

You should learning the basics of trucking jobs. But let’s get back to the question. There are many factors that cause a more jobs that smashes tone for a trucking. Do you want to avoid feeling scared? This is me, unleashed. Few will miss that these trucking are the nitty-gritty facts about more jobs. I want to make it big. Trucking is positively exhilarating. Try trucks and be among those few who have proven its worth. This is a great way to get a trucks that organizes acquirement for a other jobs. I’m not going to name any names but trust me, this would apply to any situation. Never speak ill of the dead. Many people just can’t focus. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Some people do know how to make it big with trucking jobs. A trucks in time saves trucking jobs. It would be dishonest of me to tell them to get into economy and so that you can really have your cake and to eat it too. Well, you never know. I want to avoid feeling aggravated. I want to avoid feeling hassled. I knew that I have done this before. To be punishingly honest, I should advance this to myself to neglect what my betters can be conveying about trucking jobs. I know what you mean. There is just not a lot of information out there on getting trucking jobs to be more commonplace. I want more proof. This is a systematic observation. In this ‘real world’ scenario I would discourage myself to closely watch what my critics are affirming about more jobs. In the time I spent with more jobs I could see why people think that. I’ve created several economy. Other jobs is on the leading edge. I’m looking radiant today. Wanna know why? That reminds me of something I had seen a while ago. It may not be fair, but it’s the way it is. I’m a newcomer to more jobs. I want to avoid feeling greedy. Perhaps what I have is a conceive about more jobs. It looks like I could be spot on with the economy ideas in this post. I thought that was nuts. You know I have a ton of respect for economy and that makes it sound that awesome to you. I’m sitting on the fence. Every trucking needs initiative. You won’t be disappointed. I’m glad.

I had disputed that I should like to jump on the trucking jobs bandwagon. It involves constant interaction with trucking jobs.

Trucking Supply and Demand

Supply and demand works everyday in the trucking industry and is especially prevalent in today’s economic downturn causing problems in the industry that affects people’s lives.

Large companies usually have their own dedicated fleet or outsource their transportation needs to a trucking company but a large percentage of the freight market is handled by Third Party Logistics companies (brokers). Most brokers will have dedicated customers and will have several trucking carriers they have relationships with to be able to call when one of their customers’ needs something shipped.

When a company is ready to ship something by truck their logistics company will request a bid from the carriers they deal with regularly and will be able to ship their freight with the lowest bid. Sometimes, because of a myriad of reasons there isn’t time to wait for a formal bid process so the broker will put his freight on an open market. Either by sending emails to all of his known carriers or by posting the shipment to an internet load board. Then he waits for a phone call or an email from a carrier and will negotiate a price.

Trucking companies will list their available trucks on a broadcast email sent to brokers they normally deal with or post their available trucks on the internet and wait for calls from brokers that have freight.

Depending on a number of factors including what area of the country and the time of year, the freight and the trucks are not always evenly matched. Even in the best of economic conditions there is an uneven distribution of freight in this country, causing an oversupply or under supply of trucks in certain areas of the country. This has always been a part of the bidding process. In certain parts of the country trucking companies know they will have to take a lower price to have a shipment than in others. And the reverse is also true that in some parts of the country a broker knows he will have to pay a higher price in order to outbid his competitors for the limited number of trucks available.

Because of today’s economic downturn there isn’t as much freight being shipped by truck as there was a few years ago. This has caused an over capacity of trucks across the country, causing truck companies trying to stay afloat to underbid their competition so much it eventually puts them out of business.

Right now, smaller trucking companies and individual truck owners are going out of business and having their equipment repossessed at record levels because there isn’t enough freight to keep everyone in business.

Eventually, enough trucking companies will have gone out of business that the freight volumes and the number of trucks will be more equalized. Trucking companies will be able to charge enough money to cover their expenses and not have to worry about someone undercutting them so much that it’s unprofitable to haul anything. This will raise shipping rates which will cause the cost of goods on the store shelves to rise even more than they are rising now with normal inflation and other world events.

Even though the high gas prices are in the news and truckers are in the media complaining about the cost of fuel, the cost of fuel is only a small piece of the trucking industries current problems. Every time fuel has crossed certain benchmarks such as $2.00 a gallon and $3.00 a gallon, complaints of fuel costs filled the media. Trucking companies went out of business, but the majority of trucking survived because the rates to haul a shipment by truck kept up with all of the other expenses associated with trucking. Trucking companies go out of business and trucks get repossessed even in good times for a number of reasons above and beyond the cost of fuel.

The overcapacity of trucks versus freight is keeping shipping costs down while at the same time causing individual truck owner and even large trucking companies to claw and scratch for every dime on every shipment. Cutting costs to save money only achieves so much. There are many costs that can’t be cut back on and fuel is only one of them.

Because the truck manufactures have to comply with new EPA regulations that have come out, truck fuel mileage has dropped for the sake of government regulation on emissions.

Trucking and Gas Prices

Gasoline prices in the United States have more than doubled in past few years. It has affected most American’s in a negative way as travelling to and from work or school now costs more. Unfortunately, it also affects my husband and me as we own and he operates our own 18 wheeler tractor/trailer. I use to share the driving with him and we were making good money as a team traveling all over the United States including Alaska, however, last summer the supply and demand caught up with us and there were too many trucks on the road compared to the amount of freight loads. Our income went down 50% and we needed to make some changes. We decided a steady job with a regular paycheck would be necessary to make ends meet. I volunteered to stay home and apply for a job. My husband would continue to stay on the road and keep the truck moving to make the payment. We didn’t think it would be for more than a year but that changed when the fuel prices doubled this year so now an already bad situation is now worse.

My opinion and I know I am not alone, that in order to reduce prices at the pump, we need to produce more fuel/gasoline. I didn’t need to take my class in economics to know about supply and demand and how it affects the economy. Well, if the answer was that easy to solve then why not drill for more oil or find an alternative solution to our fuel shortage. How much does the fuel need to cost before we all literally stand still. When will the people of the United States or their leaders take fate into their own hands and solve this problem forever. I am ready, maybe because my issue with the fuel prices, which is what the truckers call it instead of gasoline, is affective much more.

I feel we need to drill off shore on both East and West coasts of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico. We need to stop complaining about it and do whatever needs to be done to correct the problem. The people or leaders in the Middle East should not have this much control over our
economy. Drilling in Alaska would be another alternative and the ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) needs to back off as our country is in need. I wish to protect the Caribou as much as the next person but the information I have been given from the press will not interfere
with the path of migration as the oil drillers have done their research and would not be drilling in the path of the Caribou migration. I have driven to and in Alaska and can tell you from personal experience of the large herds of Caribou on the highway. They don’t appear to be extinct and precautions can be taken to preserve them.

There are more answers then drilling for additional oil. Another alternative may come from our own land. We are as rich in coal as the Saudi’s are in oil. We have the technology to produce oil from coal, so when will we begin mining more coal? How bad does the fuel costs need to rise before we say enough and hire the right people in the White House to get the job done? I don’t know but for me, not soon enough and it can’t be soon enough for the trucking industry.

I know we have options and solutions but why none have been implemented them yet, I don’t know. Do we need different leadership to get the job started? I don’t know but what we have now doesn’t seem to be working. So most of us out of frustration, complain, point fingers and pay the higher prices at the fuel island or gas pump until the powers that be begin to take action.

Personally I find it disheartening that the so many of us are at the mercy of our own government to start producing more resources. I can’t wait until the right person decides to make the necessary changes to correct the problem, until then, I will make whatever changes are necessary for my husband and me to survive through this economic crisis.

The good news is I also decided since I was staying at home it would be a great time to finish my Bachelor’s Degree. My husband thought that was a great idea and after graduation if things were not better on the road, he will do the same. We will both continue to update our Class A drivers license because we have a dream that someday the supply and demand will be in our favor and the American dream of owning your own business will and prospering from it will take us back on the road. Come visit us on www.adventuresintrucking.com.

Stop by Life on the Road

My new site is coming along great at Life on the Road.com

If you’re still getting updates here, please change your bookmarks and your feeds to the new site, I’ve got 10 posts over there and several already written for this coming week.

I also changed Adventures in Trucking to it’s own self-hosted WordPress site. Mainly to practice with WordPress. I’ve been playing with themes and plugins and it I think it looks really good.

Just in case Life on the Road doesn’t work out, I’m moving this site to WordPress.

Come by the new sites and say hi, be sure you say you came from Just Trucking Around.

I can always use more writers so come by and get your opinion published.

Life On The Road

Life On the Road dot com is the new website that I’ll be contributing to and I’m also the Managing Editor of a great team of writers from around the trucking community. A few fellow bloggers will be regular contributers, plus there are several writers that are published in the trucking industry magazines.

We just started, but we have big plans for this site. With a team of writers more information will be posted on a regular basis (unlike this site), along with polls, photo contests and your chance to contribute!

Life on the Road.com is going to be a great place to hang out and learn about trucking whether you have one truck or fifty, or are just learning about trucking. There will be plenty of business tips, stories and essays about the trucking lifestyle, along with technology and biofuels. And anything else that is going on in the industry that affects drivers.

Click here to go to Life on the Road.com, bookmark it, come back often, leave plenty of comments and suggestions. I’ll be reading them all.

A Good Deed

This was an extremely good deed that ATS did for this soldier -

Anderson Trucking Service Brings Wounded Soldier Home

5/25/2007

Anderson Trucking Service Inc. (ATS) recently joined efforts with Veterans Airlift Command (VAC) to bring a wounded soldier back home to Minnesota. Earlier this year, Walter L. Fricke, founder of VAC, contacted John Wojack, chief pilot at ATS, telling him about Sgt. Anthony Larson, a soldier from the St. Cloud area. Larson had spent the past 18 months recovering from injuries he suffered while in Iraq. He was finally going to be released from Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. and needed a ride back home to Minnesota.
   

Enter Rollie Anderson, president and CEO of ATS, who immediately agreed to send his company’s jet to pick up the sergeant. On April 28, Sgt. Larson climbed aboard the ATS corporate jet with his dog and family members by his side, to be greeted with a hero’s welcome.

A trucking company with a corporate jet. As long as EVERYONE is making the most money they can, good for them. But if their drivers and owner ops are barely surviving and getting a buck a mile or something just as stupid, then it’s not so great. But if you have one, at least do good things with it.

The Future of Trucking(blog)

Here it is the long weekend, after we hustled from New York to Georgia overnight to unload and reload before the weekend. Now that the weekend is here we have three days to do a one day trip back to upstate New York. With all that time I should be updating this blog with all the happenings in the trucking industry. Instead I’ve been working on a new project.

I’ve taken on the responsibility of Managing Editor for a new blog that will be rolling out next week. The new blog has a big corporate sponsor, a staff of writers, programmers and marketing people. I will still be contributing my opinions and thoughts about trucking at the new site, but mainly I will be guiding and assisting the other writers.

I’m looking forward to it. This blog will remain for the next few weeks with a few more posts. I’m still going to update Adventures In Trucking, because that’s more personal and is mainly for friends and family and Cindy updates over there too.

The new site isn’t quite ready yet, but will be the same general format as this site, only bigger and better. I’ve got big plans for the new site, things I’ve wanted to do with this one but haven’t had the time or the experience to do them well. I expect everyone reading this to join me at the new site and contribute to help make it the success I know it will be. As soon as the new site is up and running, you will be the first to know.

Mexican Trucks Still in the News

With all the news and arguments about the Mexican truck issue, I’ve grown more neutral apathetic. Public Citizen and environmental groups are worried about safety and pollution. Teamsters and OOIDA are worried about jobs. Mexican trucks from Mexican carriers are a smoke screen to the real truck driver job problem.  I always thought driving a truck couldn’t be outsourced. It’s can’t, but companies have been insourcing, importing foreign workers for years.

This is from 2000, but for anyone that’ s been to a truck stop lately, it’s still true.

National Shortage of Truckers Leads Firms to Bend Rules, Recruit Immigrants. Source: Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News) Publication Date: 07/18/2000

COPYRIGHT 2000 Omaha World-Herald Byline: Grace Shim 

Jul. 18–Saturday night is Polish Night at the Sapp Bros. Truck Stop in Council Bluffs.

At least that’s what some of the employees call it when Eastern European truck drivers flock to the truck stop for fuel or repairs, often on weekend evenings. Many are based in Chicago or Canada. They pull off Interstate 80 on the way to who knows where.

As they make their purchases or request repairs, the drivers point or use hand gestures to communicate. Sometimes, they rely on a driving partner who speaks English better, or they call someone from their company to interpret.

Such scenes are increasingly common at truck stops across the country. As trucking companies scramble to find enough drivers in a tight labor market, many have turned to recruiting immigrants.

I’m not against immigrants or immigration, it has to do with supply and demand. The more trucks and drivers out here, the more supply. Brokers can charge as little as possible and get away with it.

With all the buzz over Mexican trucks hauling Mexican stuff, the last time this argument made the news was 2004, no one has noticed the real more pressing problem of companies using h2b visas to import cheap labor legally. Drivers that aren’t needed for a make believe, over-hyped so-called driver shortage that doesn’t exist. When store shelves are empty because of not enough drivers, I’ll believe it.

When (not if) the economy makes a slight downturn and unemployment goes higher, everyone is going to wonder, “where are all the jobs?” They were sold to the lowest bidder, long, long ago.

Survivor

Survivor is a strange show, you have to conspire against others, then ask those same people at the end to give you a million dollars. Survivor Fiji’s final episode a comment was made by one of the final three trying to convince the others he deserved the million dollars. He said he was only playing the game and all the lying and deception was part of the game, but in real life he was a stand-up guy and he could help children if he won. Some of those people may have been born at night, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t last night.

He didn’t get a single vote. For the first time in Survivor history a unanimous decision was made to award the money to someone that several people say, “played a clean game”. Alliances in Survivor are made, broken and remade. And part of the game requires, not telling the whole truth to some, but if someone is lied to or betrayed it’s not forgotten.

Trucking is all about making alliances between brokers and carriers, owners and drivers, customers and brokers. We expect everyone to keep their word, have some sort of integrity and stand behind their decisions. If not we should move on. If we don’t, it could come back to haunt us later.

I couldn’t do business with someone if they had screwed up their personal life, because the business would be right behind it. And I’ve broken friendships with people that operated their business in what I thought was down right corrupt.

Does your personal life reflect your business life? Does character matter when you do business with someone? Or is it, just get the job done? I’m not talking about buying tires, I’m talking about someone who you’re going to be having a business relationship with. Can you turn off one persona and turn on another? Can your business be in great shape and your personal life be in shambles? Character matters, business or personal life, character matters.

Freightliner’s Newest

I subscribe to a ton of industry newsletters so you don’t have to. In one, Freightliner announces a new truck model for 2010. Looks like a Century with a big hood. I don’t usually talk about trucks or even truck companies, but this might be my last chance. This line in the press release is funny and sad at the same time -

Freightliner unveils new on-highway truck

…It also offers larger seats, larger door openings for easy entry and egress, more head and belly room…

It’s a sad statement about truck drivers that a truck manufacturer has to build a truck with more belly room, no matter how true it might be. And to make sure your not too fat for their seat you can check out Find Your Fit, but it only goes to 350 lbs.

And since we’re on the subject…

Loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs accelerating
Laid off from her job assembling trucks at Freightliner’s plant in
Portland, Ore., she and 800 of her colleagues joined a long line of
U.S. manufacturing workers who have lost jobs in recent years. A total
of 3.2 million — one in six factory jobs — have disappeared since the
start of 2000.

Many people believe those jobs will never come back.

“They are building a multimillion-dollar plant in Mexico and they
are going to build the Freightliners down there. They came in and
videotaped us at work so they could train the Mexican workers,” said
Zimmer, 55, who had worked at Freightliner since 1994.

I don’t care how many plants anyone has in
Mexico, more plants and more jobs in Mexico might slow the northward
migration. And closing plants for production reasons is part of doing business. But
when a company closes a plant in the States and moves it to Mexico,
that’s moving what once were American jobs to Mexico.

Freightliner to build another Mexican plant
This 740-acre site will also include a PDI/transporter center and test
track, as well as room for future expansion. The plant could produce up
to 30,000 trucks annually, and employ up to 1,600 production and
management personnel. Groundbreaking is planned for second quarter of
2007, with start of production planned for early 2009.

Feel that American pride while driving your Cascadia! Even sounds Spanish.