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A rolling protest is in progress this Saturday morning on Ontario, on Hwy 402 eastbound between Sarnia and London. Traffic is being routed off the freeway by police. The rally is sponsored by people opposed to wind turbines being placed in Ontario against the wishes of the locals. Story here...

I did not think of it until reading this thread, but those of us who are often asked to show a current medical card will probably still have to carry it, even though the card has been registered with the state. The shippers who ask for the cards will not be able to run your CDL like the cops can...

I did not say it is not about regulation. The common agenda referenced above would change the number of regulations. The end result might be a fewer number of regs or a greater number. The number is not important. What the regs say is. More to the point the regulatory burden is what is...

Adding to the number of regulations is not bad in itself, just like subtracting from the number of regulations is not good in itself. Once upon a time there were no fire alarms, then there were. At some point, a new regulation came along making it illegal to trigger a false alarm. That increases...

I feel it would be possible to organize a grass-roots movement of drivers and friends who are committed to improving safety and elevating the job to a true profession. Again, as long as we keep the focus on safety, the debate can be won. If we change the debate to more regulation or less...

One other thing to note about a grass-roots effort is that it would take time. Sadly, time is not on the side of any truck driver these days. Technology marches on and the future of truck driving is not with human beings but with robots. The value of what we provide today will continue to...

That is true if you intend to operate within the Beltway. But as long as votes still matter, working from the grass roots is still an effective strategy. In Minnesota, with an effective grass-roots effort, we won an election with a $600,000 budget against combined opposition of $16 million. In...

That's a great question. The dictionary definition of professional or professionalism is quite general.

I took the exam but was unable to learn my score without entering personal information which I am reluctant to do, so I disengaged. One of the test questions mentioned the NFPA 704 rating system. Curious to learn more, I read up on the "fire dimond" here. That was interesting. The NFPA 704...

One of the things smart advocates do when building a support base is to bypass the people who do not agree and build a base of people who do agree. No matter what you propose, someone will always rise to argue with it. We would not be doing this to win arguements, we'd be doing it to win votes...

You are free to advocate what you want in the way you want. Good luck, though, in building a broad base of support for your reefer and liftgate safety agenda. P.S. You are hereby advised to keep your head out from under lift gates and away from their hydraulic components.

No it is not. Neither is being a lineman, electrician or plummer but those are considered professions and have licensing requirements. So too should it be for trucking, I suggest. Trucking is already a rule-heavy industry. It was when we entered it ten years ago and is more so now. It is less...

When home in Minnesota, we park the truck on a concrete pad that we had built for that purpose. It has a water hydrant nearby and shore power too. At our Florida house, we are in a gated community and there is a "boat yard" there where we rent a space. People park their boats and RV's there...

Here again, I thank you for sharing, because it shows what an advocacy group would encounter if such a group came into being and became active and effective, at least effective enough to stimulate a public debate. Notice, readers, how cubansammich is changing the subject. I am talking about...

Diane and I both come from white-collar professions in which continuing education is a requirement and a fact of life. It is ongoing and, in law, for example, even supreme court justices, must complete the CE courses on an ongoing basis. When I advocate continuing education, it applies to me as...

Which is precisely why standards must be raised. Any fool can drive a truck and many fools do. If we want truck driving to be a profession, professional standards must be applied (higher expectations, continuing education, improved compensation, etc.) and entry standards must be raised. Thank...

We would not do it better. We'd do it different. The political power that can be raised from the grass roots and applied for change exists in the grass roots. The idea is not to operate like beltway-oriented organizations (OOIDA, ATA, others). It is to rally enough people (voters) around a...

It has always been the case that East Coast truck stops fill up in the early evening. Interested in the effects, I have been keeping a close eye on changes in truck parking since the new regs went into effect. The one change I noticed and commented on several times here in the Open Forum is...

That part is not happening, at least not in a way we have observed on the road and over a number of Monday mornings now. There was talk of it before the new regs went into effect but it did not develop.

I'm having fun kicking the ideas around as Diane and I pass time over the long weekend waiting for a Tuesday pickup. But remember, we are on our way out of the trucking business, partly because of the increasing regulations.