Search results

According to the Calorie Control Council, Americans will eat 30 million pounds of snacks on Super Bowl Sunday, including 11.2 million pounds of potato chips. I guess that TA is doing it's part to make sure truckers who are not home are not left out of the 1,200 calorie binge. It's all good...

Exactly! But that's not the end of the story. When 15,000 expediters fall out of the race, 15,000 more come in to replace them. Successful expediters make this job look great, but far more fail than succeed.

In the interests of full disclosure, this update is provided. With 12,100 hours on our Onan Quiet Diesel 7500 generator, we had an expensive and unscheduled repair done yesterday. The cost was $900 and two days out of service to get it done. One day was to have it diagnosed. the other day was...

Excellent post, usafk9, and you close with one of the most important questions a prospective owner-operator can ask. If all prospective owner-operators asked that question and made being prepared a top priority, the trucking industry would look different than it does today. Many shippers...

Blood runs purple, until it doesn't.

If a true capacity shortage developed because of the CARB rules, CARB would agree to suspend or otherwise delay the effective dates of the rules so that a truly painful capacity crunch would not happen. Just ask them. Everybody in California is for clean air. But if the rules caused a real...

California got into the business of approving specific devices for retrofits. The retrofit saga continues as one manufacturer seems to have abrubtly shut down, leaving people wondering what is to happen next. Even if you comply and invest in approved equipment, you may still be left holding the...

This is good advice but it is easier said than done for someone brand new in the business. You will likely have already traveled some distance to get to the truck. Your old job is behind you. You need to get into a truck ASAP and you want to get along well with your brand new fleet owner who you...

I am loving the Landstar agent who called us while we were out of service and put us on a lucrative $6,000 run.

This is gym business, not expediting business, and not appropriate for EO. But since you bring it up, the education, certification and experience that we seek in personal trainers are not quickly obtained. We will hire people who have the skills we lack.

Certification and experience required. College degree a plus.

I certainly hope that my posts are not taken as an "I'm tired of expediting" diatribe. I am tired of the increasing and sometimes nonsensical regulatory burden. I resent the additional expense -- tens of thousands of dollars of additional expense -- that CARB requires us to spend just to...

That is a profound thought! It is easy and fun to think about what you would like different or where you would like to be. That is the stuff of daydreams. It is something entirely different to "Analyze carefully where you are, paying attention to everything that got you here."

New Truck: You get to buy a new truck sooner because the salt eats the one up. Level Playing Field: Show trucks and 15 year-old junkers look the same when covered with road spray. Less Offensive Sights: When frozen solid, the one-gallon pee bottle a trucker left sitting by the fuel pump is...

That's the down side of experience. You get to thinking that experience means more than it does. You extend your experience into knowledge and develop errant opinions and beliefs. In "all my years," I have experienced a sudden whiteout once. Actually it was a series of them in the same windy...

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the history of expediting in a nutshell.

It depends on what kind of freight you haul and what credentials you have. California is a very important market for us. When we were with FedEx Custom Critical, we had more pick ups and deliveries in California than any other state. (But we left that carrier partly because of policy changes...

That's one for the books, to be sure. Attitude is everything. You did a good job keeping yours up and keeping yourself, your cargo and those around you safe.

Good point.

It's a game changer only to the extent that a carrier views its contractors not as commodities that are easily replaced but as human beings who bring value to the game. And in that regard, technology has little to do with it. It does not matter what kind of communications technology exists or...