1/20/2012  Underride guards in Japan look weaker but cover more area than here
Trailer Talk blog by Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Underride guards are becoming topical in the United States as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is petitioning federal safety authorities to toughen the regulation that govern the design on rear bumpers on trailers.

I had this in mind during a trip to Japan in late November because I knew had to write a story on underride guards for HDT (and did; it's in the January edition, page 64). While there I noticed commercial trailers and trucks and how they're equipped with underride barriers.

The barriers look like inverted fences that are strung along the rear and sides of trailers and truck bodies, covering the otherwise open areas ahead and behind their wheels. ....

1/10/2012  Pickup bed coating wards off corrosion from calcium chloride, this fleet manager finds
Trailer Talk blog by Tom Berg, Senior Editor

What's the best way to combat corrosion caused by aggressive anti-road-icing salts? One fleet manager has coated the undersides of trucks and trailers with a product used to line pickup beds.

It works for him and that's saying something, because his vehicles actually carry and spray calcium chloride, one of the nastiest compounds out there.

Larry Fingar, who oversees maintenance on the Peckham Materials fleet in Athens, N.Y., near Albany, hit on the bed-liner idea about 10 years ago. He had some vehicles sprayed with it and it seemed to be working. At that time he contacted me and a little later I wrote an article about it for Heavy Duty Trucking.

Recently we were again in e-touch, talking about truck components, and we resumed chatting about his anti-corrosion method.....

12/29/2011  Forget the evils of CO2. It's actually an environmentally safe refrigerant, Carrier says
Tom Berg, Senior Editor

The way that environmentalists bad-mouth carbon dioxide, it should be a four-letter word. Of course it is abbreviated to three characters - CO2.

High concentrations of it in the atmosphere since the advent of the Industrial Revolution are accused of contributing to global warming. So clean-air authorities have begun regulating it, with limits on truck engines beginning in 2014.

But there's a very good side to CO2, says Carrier Transicold. Aside from putting the bubbles in champagne and soft drinks, the gas occurs naturally: Among other things, we mammals exhale it.

And CO2 is a decent refrigerant, called R-744. If leaked, its environmental effects are neutral, and it is said to have a global warming potential, or GWP, of one.

By comparison, synthetic compounds like R-134a and R-404A have GWPs of 1,300 and 3,260, respectively.....

12/14/2011  Oil boom needs special equipment on trailers and trucks
Trailer Talk blog by Tom Berg, Senior Editor

No one wants to haul a load that's going to be rejected, so checking the commodity before loading makes a lot of sense. That's why Rush Enterprise's Peterbilt store in San Antonio has been installing a special piece of gear on tank trailers at a customer's request.

The device, mounted in a tool box on the tanker's left side, samples crude oil at the well site and determines its makeup so the driver knows if it's OK or will likely be rejected by the refinery. If it's too contaminated, the driver rejects it.

This is an odd example of the specialized work now done by the dealership's service department to support the oil boom going on here, says Fred Scott, the service manager. The dealership doesn't sell trailers, but does repair and service work on customers' units.....

11/22/2011  Strong, versatile van provides two-way haul for truckload fleet
Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Operations people at Nussbaum Transport had a couple of one-way hauls involving the same customer, and wanted to turn them into a more efficient and profitable headhaul and backhaul on the same semitrailer.

They did it with the help of engineers at Wabash National, who designed an extra-strong van trailer that does the work of a flatbed and a regular dry van.

Nussbaum, headquartered in Normal, Ill., has been running 30 pre-production versions of the vans for more than a year, supporting manufacturing at Electrolux in St. Cloud, Minn., according to Brent Nussbaum, the carrier's CEO. The vans take in heavy coiled steel and bring out major appliances, a low-density cargo.

Steel coils had formerly been hauled by flatbeds for which there was no outbound cargo. The appliances went inside regular vans that weren't always loaded when they were dispatched to St. Cloud.....

11/15/2011  'Fracking' requires sand, which boosts 'air can' use in Marcellus Shale area
Tom Berg, Senior Editor

A recent visit to northeast Ohio put me face to face with people involved in the production of shale gas that I've been hearing and reading about in the news.

It is one of the hot spots for sales of vocational trucks and trailers, and is boosting business in a region that's been hurting for jobs since the steel mills closed in the 1970s.

Rob Sidley, one of the family members running the Sidley Companies at Thompson, Ohio, was talking about the booming demand for "fracking" sand. Sand, water and chemicals are pumped into shale-rock formations deep underground to fracture the rock and free natural gas that's trapped there.

The Sidleys happen to both mine it on their sprawling property and haul it to drilling sites in pneumatic tankers - "air cans," Rob called 'em.

"We've got 20 trucks on, hauling sand, and we're about to put another 30 on," he said, still somewhat amazed at the fast growth of this business. "They can't get enough of it." Sidley Trucking uses 6,500-cubic-foot Heil tankers and Mack tractors to move the sand.....