Unlike their human counterparts, dead tires do tell tales. And aside from underinflation and road strikes, the tales most commonly told of tires robbing their owners of full value revolve around alignment. Scrubbing and scuffing and driving tires off in different directions, poor alignment kills tires faster than almost any other mechanical malady.
With Memorial Day nearly a month away, Ryder decided to interview its 2013 Driver of the Year David Hopper to find out what driving safety tips he could offer to those who will be on the roadways during the holiday weekend.
We have to stop thinking of our start/charge systems as simply a handful of separate components, and start viewing them as a system. From alternators to batteries and starters, cables and regulators, and even add-on components like low-voltage cut-off switches and DC/AV inverters, each can impact the component next to it.
Today, fleets have an alternative to on-site rooms full of computer servers – using a hosted environment for your computing needs, known as cloud computing. In the cloud computing environment, the servers are maintained by a third party (or maybe your enterprise software vendor) and fleets access applications and data via a web interface.
With the ever-growing driver shortage looming, many motor carriers are lowering their hiring standards to fill their empty trucks. No company wants to turn down a job because they don’t have drivers to service the account.
It seems the best you can expect from many drivers is a quick visual check that the tire is where it should be. Whether or not it's capable of holding air is another matter.
After 28 years of proposals, studies, drafts, revisions, legal battles and technological innovations – not to mention an Act of Congress – federal regulators are close to requiring most interstate commercial drivers to keep track of their work hours with an electronic device.
The swing continues toward heavy automated products, but manuals still dominate. Light and medium trucks are almost all ‘shiftless.’
Executive Contributing Editor Rolf Lockwood discusses the potential of the interesting opposed-piston/opposed-cylinder engine.
Common sense suggests that if a trailer’s doors are open, its refrigeration unit ought to be shut down. But many customers disagree, thinking the products will be better protected if cooled air continues to circulate as freight is being unloaded.
Tips for vinyl signage and images, plus refurbishing trailers.
Recruiting and retention. It’s akin to bailing water out of a boat that has a hole in it. You really have to plug the hole first, otherwise you’re constantly fighting to stay afloat. In the trucking industry, that hole is driver retention.
If you were in trucking about 30 years ago, you might remember the switch from incandescent sealed-beam headlamps to halogens, which were so much better that some truck operators stopped using auxiliary fog and driving lights. A more recent step up was projector-beam lamps, whose optics better aim the lumens from halogen bulbs and even more effectively light the way for drivers.
The enthusiasm for natural gas fueled vehicles seems to be stuttering a bit. Editor in Chief Deborah Lockridge offers insights from the Mid-America Trucking Show into the status of this alternative fuel for trucking.
Craig Bennett, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co., recently sat down with HDT Editor in Chief Deborah Lockridge to talk about the company's 100 years in business.
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