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After three years in fleet-owner trucks, and a lot of thought into the design, we built our dream expediter truck (CR unit) and it turned out to be a winner in all respects (comfort, payload, etc.). Several years and 600,000 miles later, had we built another truck, it would have been nearly...

Madsen Truck Photo 01

That was my first thought too. Some trucker(s) gained quite the story to tell. From the news reports, it sounds like the manager and employees responded well and helped keep people safe.

Also consider truck parking at home. Some communities allow it. Others prohibit it. Do you have a good space to park a truck at home? Will your neighbors be OK with it? If not, research the truck parking options where you live.

Whether there are slow times or not will depend a lot on your motor carrier, equipment and credentials. A team that is configured one way may be very busy at the same time a team with another carrier and different equipment and credentials is complaining about a slow week or month. One carrier...

Or they are thinking to attract drivers who mistake meaningful activity for meaningful results. As one driver once said to us after telling us about the unbelievably cheap load he and his wife took, "If you're not running, you're not making money." This team was a broker's dream and blind to the...

I just read an informative article on the health risks of inadequate sleep and the benefits of adequate sleep. While the risks and benefits are real, the article presumes people have the ability to sleep on a regular schedule. That's not realistic for expediters. It's the nature of the job to...

When you say your wife can no longer drive CDL vehicles, is that about physical limitations or is it a license issue? Teams we know come to mind who are quite happy and apparently successful in their cargo-van expediting business but they are CDL capable in that they have HAZMAT endorsements and...

That's a GREAT success story, Kim! Congratulations! Well Done! I know you'll keep at it since fitness is not something you complete, it's a lifestyle you embrace.

"... margin of error over 52 weeks?" I think you are more of a numbers guy than you let on. You may not work spreadsheets like some expediters do but your financial instincts are clearly present and they work to produce your stated result. If that was not true, every expediter who is not a...

It is not true that "dead head makes all the difference." When considering a single load, deadhead is one factor among many. What area does the load take you to? What effect, if any, does the load weight have on your fuel economy? What about timing, does the load deliver immediately or will you...

I believe it. We have a number of healthcare workers as gym members. They struggle hard to stay in shape, and those are the ones who make the effort. It seems that many nurses in our Florida area (more so than Minnesota where we came from) are overweight or obese; morbidly obese in some cases...

We have a Planet Fitness down the road from us and it is a worthy choice for many people. When we meet people who put price above everything else in making a gym choice, we send them to Planet. We also have a number of people coming from Planet to join us because they like better what we offer...

Truckers have long been suspicious of companies that use the body mass index (BMI) as an indicator of their fitness to drive, and for good reason. It's a shortcut method that big-money insurance companies, health care providers and drug companies use to profit handsomely off a simple number and...

While reading a fuel-economy thread, the thought came to mind that an EO article entitled "Basic Math for Expediters" would be helpful to a number of readers. I don't write for EO any more but I thought I'd share the idea just the same. What basic math should all expediters be able to do? A...

The dash display showing your fuel mileage numbers may be accurate, but the only way to know for sure is to check the number of gallons pumped into the tank against the actual amount of miles driven. So too with any computer printout from the ECM. When making such checks, , be sure to also check...

We made one carrier change in the ten years we were in the business, and we did so believing the grass was greener on the other side. In fact, that turned out to be true, even with the very real and very substantial costs of changing carriers factored in. Our satisfaction with our first...

One, and it was a beauty. Served us well for seven years.

Might be easier to just relace them. Bolt can make you new ones, can they not?

The truth of that statement depends on the particular topic at hand. If a new dispatch system is announced at a company an expedier no longer runs with, that expediter will naturally have less knowledge of it than those who are actually using it day to day. Core concepts are different. Someone...