
If you know what to look for, and are sensitive to the symptoms, you can spot many potential brake problems before they become real liabilities. And having concluded there's a problem, you can report it to the shop in a way that might prompt more than a readjustment of the slack adjusters.
Read More →You probably have a pretty good idea what a telematics system is, even if you don't know it by that name. You may know it as a fleet management system or GPS fleet management system or GPS vehicle tracking system.
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It takes special people to be flatbedders. Tarping, however, is usually not on their list of favorite activities. A single tarpaulin can weigh 65 to 100 pounds or more. It must be half thrown and half dragged over the load, spread evenly with corners properly folded and tucked in, and the whole piece of slippery fabric secured with straps and bungies.
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Want to get a handle on alternative fuels? Talk with someone who uses them. One person is Melvin Rose, fleet manager for Monroe County in western New York, which surrounds Rochester. The county has 700 vehicles, from compact cars to Class 8 trucks. All run on ethanol-gasoline blends, biodiesel, compressed natural gas or propane, and Rose loves to talk about them.
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Shippers must work smarter and cooperate closely with their carrier partners to offset expected losses in truck capacity caused by government regulation, according to presentations at the 11th Annual Transplace Shipper Symposium held earlier this month in Dallas.
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New hours of service rules go into effect July 1. Are you ready? The American Trucking Associations has published an easy-to-use, free tipsheet to help you help your drivers understand the new HOS rules.
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Equipment Editor Jim Park still recalls his first meeting with a T800. It was in the fall of'86, the year the truck was introduced and a little more than a year after the T600 had made its game-changing debut.
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Only a couple of days after announcing its new T880 at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., in March, Kenworth had a couple of trucks for us press people to drive. Equipment Editor Jim Park and I were pleased to be among the scribes who got their hands on the just-minted vocational and regional-haul vehicles.
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The day after its introduction in Dusseldorf, in northern Germany, we reporters had a chance to drive Mercedes-Benz’s new Sprinter van for a few hours on various surfaces, from a test track to a dirt road and on a nearby Autobahn.
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It is an old trucking industry adage that while the sales department sells the first truck, the service department sells the second, third and fourth trucks. According to David Gerrard, senior vice president of distribution at Navistar, “Without an effective relationship on the service side of the house, it is very difficult to maintain the customer relationship.”
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