2/20/2012  Tracking trends with HDT's Top 20
"All That's Trucking" blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

Each year, Heavy Duty Trucking's editors pore through the pages of the last 12 months of product announcements we've run in the magazine and click through the pages of Truckinginfo.com, in search of the most innovative, significant and useful equipment and other items to honor as our Top 20.

It's not an easy job, and we get help from a number of real-world fleet executives and maintenance chiefs to narrow it down.

In writing up the descriptions for this year's winners, I was struck by a few trends:

1. Fuel efficiency. Trailer side skirts, a transmission that claims it will be thriftier with fuel than competitors, an aerodynamic truck van body and a drivetrain that takes the concept of "gear fast/run slow" to new heights made the list this year.....

2/17/2012  Wheel-off incidents sure can get your attention
"All That's Trucking" blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

"If I had been up five minutes earlier, I wouldn't be having any conversations with anybody." That's what Canadian Bill Oriold of a small town near Calgary, Alberta, told reporters after a set of truck duals flew through his front door and landed in his kitchen, according to the Huffington Post Canadian edition.

The tires, along with their metal axle, came off the tractor-trailer about 6 a.m., as it was heading north on Highway 24 just outside the town east of Calgary. Oriold said he's an early riser and could have been making coffee in the kitchen or taking his dog outside to pick up a newspaper and been in the path of the projectile. Instead, a sound like an explosion got him out of bed, his first thought being that the furnace had exploded.

The Calgary Sun report features a video showing some of the damage: "Flying semi wheels smash through man's home".

The driver apparently didn't realize the duals were missing until he heard news reports of the incident.

This is only one of a number of reports of "wheel-off" incidents in the past year.....

2/9/2012  How to be more innovative
All That's Trucking Blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

I've been surrounded by the concept of innovation lately. For the past few weeks, I've been selecting and interviewing our 2012 Truck Fleet Innovators for our March cover story - always fascinating. And last week, I enjoyed a thought-provoking session on innovation during the 2012 Recruitment & Retention Conference put on by the Truckload Carriers Association and ACS Advertising.

Tim Richardson, an inspirational speaker who challenges traditional thinking on success and richness, held up an 8-track tape - The Captain and Tenille, to be exact. "These were popular in the 70s," he said. "How did you recruit drivers back then? Some people are still recruiting in the same way they did in the 70s." Like the way we listen to music, he was saying, the way the industry recruits and retains drivers needs to change, as well.

The problem with being innovative is we aren't taught to think creatively, Richardson explained.

If anything, he said, it's the opposite, starting with teaching children to color inside the lines. "I remember my first job out of collage," he said. "If I tried to do something differently from how it was done, I got in trouble."....

2/3/2012  What do trucks and a yacht have in common?
All That's Trucking blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

So what were a group of truck journalists doing last week on a 75-foot sport-fishing luxury yacht? Learning about the power of integration.

Volvo Trucks in 2011 recorded the North American heavy-duty truck industry's largest market share gain of the year, and hit a company record market share of 12.1% of the combined U.S. and Canadian retail market. More importantly for this trip, it reached record penetration levels for its proprietary engines and I-Shift automated manual transmission. The percentage of Volvo trucks sold with the company's proprietary engines hit a record of nearly 80%, and I-Shift penetration also hit a record level of more than 40%.

Volvo last year also introduced the XE-13, which takes integration to a new level with sophisticated software that maximizes the "gear fast/run slow" concept for better fuel efficiency.

"In North America, integration is fairly new as a concept," explained Magnus Koeck, vice president, marketing and brand management at Volvo Trucks North America. "But if you take other parts of the world, we have worked with integration for a very long time. So we have the history, we have the knowledge."

And some of that knowledge can be cross-platform. In case you don't know, Sweden-based Volvo Group, parent company of Volvo trucks, also has divisions that specialize in construction equipment, buses, aero, and Volvo Penta, which makes marine and industrial engines.

That's where we come to the vessel in question, the PentaGone, custom-built to showcase Volvo Penta's IPS "pod" (read "integrated") propulsion system. The version on this boat, the IPS 1200, uses three Volvo D13 engines (similar to what you see in Class 8 trucks), rather than the traditional inboard motor system that would typically use two much larger engines that consume way more space and way more fuel.

Much like Volvo designed the XE13 to work together very specifically as a complete package, so sister company Penta designed the IPS to work as an integrated system to supply to boat makers, rather than simply supplying an engine that may or may not work efficiently with the transmission and other components.

In this video, Ed Szilagyi, manager of product integration, explains it much better than I can in the engine room of the PentaGone.



"As some people in our company say, the I-Shift is to Volvo Trucks as the IPS is to Volvo Penta," said Ron Huibers, president of North American truck sales and marketing. "As much as we've had a record year (in North America) on that, we're just catching up to the rest of the world."

If you'd like to read some more about the PentaGone, here are links to some articles in the boating community:

Why IPS Is Gaining Favor Among Sportfishermen, BoatTEST.com

New Spencer 70 IPS Motor yacht features Nauticomp Signature II LED Displays, Luxury Yacht Charter & Superyacht News

The Spencer 70 IPS Penta Gone demonstrates that change can be good, www.yachtingmagazine.com

....

1/18/2012  Diversification Diligence
"All That's Trucking" blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

Diversification. It's a tactic trucking companies have been embracing for a while now, as less-than-truckload companies get into truckload, truckload companies get into intermodal or warehousing, and everyone, it seems, is getting into logistics. Dry van fleets launch or buy flatbed or refrigerated divisions and vice-versa. We've even seem some companies branch out into real estate and solar power.

It's been a very successful tactic for many. Look at J.B. Hunt, which parlayed its truckload roots into an intermodal empire that helped drive record second-quarter earnings last year. FedEx over the years has moved from simply a fast package delivery business to include LTL, ground package delivery, air freight forwarding, logistics, customs, office services, etc.

Of course, we've seen it on a smaller scale, as well. A livestock hauler, for instance, who branched out into selling trailers. And then there's simply the need to diversify the types of customers you have, as many flatbed companies learned the hard way when the housing and auto manufacturing markets both tanked.....

1/12/2012  So when will Google invent a self-driving truck?
All That's Trucking blog by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

Did you know Google has a fleet of robotic cars?

Google's fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles, driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention, according to the "Automaton" blog at ieee Spectrum, a neat website that's sort of for electrical engineers but has very cool information others can enjoy, too. (Bionic eyes, anyone?)

This post is from a few months ago, but I just saw it this week while screening the American Business Media's Jesse H. Neal journalism awards, sort of the "Pulitzer Prize of business journalism" for magazines aimed at businesses as diverse as trucking, law, swimming pool installers and healthcare.

As the ieee blog explains, a laser range finder mounted on the roof of the car generates a detailed 3D map of the environment. "The car then combines the laser measurements with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself while avoiding obstacles and respecting traffic laws."....