Trucking Info

HDT Talks Trucking

Go behind the scenes with the industry’s most seasoned trucking reporters as they bring you expert insights and interview industry professionals on the HDT Talks Trucking podcast.

2024 Season

March 8, 2024

Listen: Solving Trucking's Rollover Dilemma

We are seeing a distressing increase in the number of truck rollover crashes. What's behind the increase isn't completely clear, but many believe it's a lack of driver training and understanding of vehicle dynamics.

January 25, 2024

How Trucking Fleets Can Get Control of False Driver Logs

Log falsification violations can lead to out-of-service orders, fines, bad federal safety scores, failed DOT audits, civil penalties, and even nuclear verdicts. What can motor carriers do?

2023 Season

December 20, 2023

How Your Fleet's Safety Manuals Could be a Goldmine for Plaintiffs' Attorneys

If you’re concerned about how to defend your company against aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys who target trucking, you’ve probably heard of the “reptile theory.” But there’s another type of attack that has gotten less attention, and it means your safety manuals and policies could be a goldmine for them – and a landmine for you.

December 19, 2023

Listen: Can Microgrids Speed the Transition to Electric Trucks?

Joshua Goldman, vice president of E-mobility at microgrid and DER deployment advisor Xendee, says off-grid energy sources offer resiliency from power outages while helping to level the cost of electricity supplied by utility companies. Could a microgrid kickstart your fleet's transition from diesel to BEV?

November 28, 2023

Listen: Energy One's First Megawatt Charging Hub in Findlay, Ohio

One Energy is an industrial power company and installer of on-site, behind-the-meter, wind energy systems. In early October, the company unveiled its first 30 megawatt battery-electric truck charging site. The site is fully developed, energized, and waiting for its first fleet customers in Findlay, Ohio.

2022 Season

December 21, 2022

Top Trucking Stories of 2022 [Podcast]

The editors of Heavy Duty Trucking, and hosts of HDT Talks Trucking, come together to talk about their top stories of 2022 in this special editorial panel episode.

December 8, 2022

Is There a Diesel Fuel Shortage? [Podcast]

No, we’re not running out of diesel fuel. But – low stockpiles do mean higher prices. In this episode of HDT Talks Trucking, we break down what trucking fleets should know.

December 6, 2022

Smart Trailers and Beyond [podcast]

Explore how technologies such as Smart trailers, the internet of things, cloud computing, and APIs can come together to help fleet managers, in this episode of HDT Leadership Insights.

Season 8

November 10, 2021

Inside a High School Truck Driver Training Program

Hear what one truck-driver-turned-high-school-teacher is doing to usher in the next generation of truck drivers through one of the nation’s first high school truck driver programs.

November 10, 2021

Is the Real World Ready for Driverless Trucks?

Christopher Hart is a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and a licensed commercial pilot. He has been studying automation in transportation for years. On this episode of HDT Talks Trucking, Hart explains why he’s uneasy about sharing the road with driverless vehicles.

November 10, 2021

Inspections and Maintenance for Autonomous Trucks

Ryder will soon be managing maintenance services for several fleets of autonomous vehicles. On this episode of HDT Talks Trucking, Ryder’s director of new product strategy, Mike Plasencia, explains what it takes to keep driverless trucks running.

Season 7

September 27, 2021

Let’s Meet HDT’s Managing Editor, Vesna Brajkovic

On this episode of HDT Talks Trucking, Vesna Brajkovic discusses her role as managing editor of HDT and Truckinginfo.com. She talks about her love of soccer and her work mentoring young women.

September 6, 2021

The Secret Life of Truckstops

Trucking and truckstops are strange bedfellows. There are plenty of parallels between the two industries, yet the relationship isn’t always mutually beneficial. Truckstop business consultant Don Baglien, aka That Truckstop Guy, shares what it’s like on his side of the doors that never close. We discuss menus, hospitality, paid parking, rest area commercialization and alternate fuels.

July 28, 2021

Electric Trucks Are Producing Some Interesting Partnerships

With medium- and heavy-duty truck electrification, we’re seeing a unique alignment of traditional truck manufacturers, tier-1 suppliers and start-up companies. As a group, they are simultaneously competing and collaborating on the advancement of truck electrification. Can all these diverse interests play together in the same sandbox?

Season 6

May 13, 2021

Volvo Trucks Sees Hydrogen Driving Fossil-free Trucking

While battery-electric trucks seem to be the darlings of the green movement here in North America, hydrogen fuel cells struggle for acceptance. A recently formed joint venture between Daimler Truck and Volvo Group Company aims to change that. Volvo Group's chief technology officer, Lars Stenqvist, explains the company's strategy to increase hydrogen's market penetration by 2050.

April 30, 2021

Electric Trucks: The Road to Cost Parity with Diesel

The trucking industry is still in the early stages of electrification. A significant portion of the fleet population will be electric by 2030 or 2035, but much needs to happen before then from electrical grid upgrades to improvements in battery technology. Two senior engineers at Dana outline the challenges that lay ahead on the road to electrification.

April 29, 2021

Has FMCSA Finally Got Hours-of-Service Right?

Most drivers and carriers seem supportive of the recent updates FMCSA made to its hours-of-service rules. To some, if the trucking industry is happy with a rule change, it must be bad for safety. Are the changes generally good for drivers and carriers? We'll find out on this episode.

Leadership Insights with Omnitracs

February 23, 2021

Leadership Insights: Efficiency, Productivity and Smaller Fleets Too

Data is the key to profitability. Omnitracs' chief data and AI officer, Dr. Ashim Bose, focuses on how operational data can improve efficiency and productivity. He also explains how smaller fleets can use data and advanced analytics to improve their efficiency and productivity, too.

February 23, 2021

Leadership Insights: Taking Safety to the Edge

Data flows by the gigabyte from trucks today. Much of that data can help make your drivers safer and keep your drivers safe. From fatigue warnings and traffic alerts to weather and even Covid-19 hot-spot alerts, Omnitracs' chief data and AI officer, Ashim Bose, discusses how fleets can benefit from this treasure trove of data.

February 23, 2021

Leadership Insights: Turning Trends into Actions

From the latest in data intelligence to effectively using data to improve safety and operations, Dr. Ashim Bose, Omnitracs' chief data and AI officer, discusses how fleets can overcome the challenge of managing vast amounts of data and begin putting that data to work.

Special Reports

March 17, 2021

Will Self-driving Trucks Put Truck Drivers Out of Business?

As the name implies, self-driving trucks will not require drivers. Does that mean anyone contemplating a career as a driver is heading down a dead-end road? According to Finch Fulton, vice president of policy and strategy for human-guided autonomous truck company, Locomation, anyone driving a truck today is unlikely to lose their job to a robotic truck.

December 14, 2020

On The Road to Smarter Smart Trailers

Smart Trailers are upending how truck fleets do business. These formerly brainless boxes are now providing insights and intelligence to fleets that help improve efficiency and productivity while making fleets proactive rather than reactive. Paul Menig of Business Accelerants discusses where this technology can take us, and what we'll need to do to get there.

November 13, 2020

Everything You Need to Know about Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Hydrogen fuel cells are still a bit mysterious. Are they a solution to trucking's range anxiety? Can they compete with diesel? Are they safe? Loop Energy president and CEO, Ben Nyland, pulls back curtain on fuel cells. He tells us how they work, where they'll work, and what they do best.

Season 5

January 10, 2021

HDT Editorial Roundtable-Looking back at 2020 and ahead at 2021

Last year, 2020, was a train wreck and 2021 got off to a pretty interesting start. What's ahead in 2021, or in the four years to come of the Biden administration? HDT's editorial team of Deborah Lockridge, David Cullen, Jack Roberts and Jim Park cast a relieved eye back at 2020 and wary eye ahead at 2021.

January 10, 2021

Fuel Economy Testing Pioneers Chuck Blake and Bob Wessels

Bob Wessels and Chuck Blake, despite their competitive positions, understood the need for "real world" fuel economy testing that fleets could believe. The pair worked side by side for a couple of decades pioneering reliable and repeatable test methods. Bob and Chuck accumulated more than a few stories over the years, and they share some of them on this episode of HDT Talks Trucking.

January 10, 2021

Are You Worried About Cybersecurity? You Should Be.

If you're a typical small fleet in North America, you may think you're not big enough to attract a hacker's attention. You may think cyber-attacks happen only to big fleets because they have more of what interests the hackers. But according to our guest, Kevin Linardic of Carrier Logistics Incorporated, you'd be dead wrong.

Season 4

November 1, 2020

Why We Need Sleep

Forget hours of service for the moment; this episode is about the importance of sleep. Jim Park talks with sleep specialist, Dr. Chris Winter, about why we need sleep, what happens physically and mentally when we don't get enough, and the steps you can take to ensure you get the sleep you need.

October 19, 2020

HDT's Alternative Fuel Overview

As trucking moves to wide-scale adoption of alternative fuels, it's becoming clear that we will need a little bit of everything to keep our wheels turning as greenly as possible. Deborah Lockridge and Jim Park explore the pros and cons of today's most promising alternatives to diesel: battery electric, fuel-cell electric and renewable natural gas.

October 16, 2020

What Penske Has Learned About Electric Trucks, So Far

Penske Truck Leasing has had an electric truck trial and evaluation project underway in southern California since 2017. They are trying to understand everything that would go right and everything that could go wrong with integrating several classes of electric trucks into a traditional fleet environment. Penske's head of fleet procurement and planning, Paul Rosa, shares his experience, so far.

Season 3

July 17, 2020

How to Improve Driver Retention

Jim Park speaks with Brad Fulton and Allyson Smith of Stay Metrics to understand why drivers leave, the top 3 things carriers can do to address turnover, and communicating expectations to recruits.

July 17, 2020

Truck Safety's Most Wanted

NTSB board members Thomas Chapman and Michale Graham speak with Jim Park about why the agency wants to see certain changes implemented, and how the number of crash fatalities could be reduced substantially if the recommendations were followed by various regulatory agencies.

July 17, 2020

Meet HDT's 2020 Fleet Innovators, Part 2

Jim Park and Deborah Lockridge sit down with three of the six HDT 2020 Fleet Innovator recipients - Darrel Wilson of Wilson Logistics, Danny Lilley of Werner Enterprices, and Roy Markham of Ben E. Keith Foods.

Season 2

March 31, 2020

How Can Fleets Reduce Unscheduled Downtime?

Learn vehicle maintenance best practices from Jim Buell, executive vice president of sales and marketing at FleetNet America, and Tony Morthland, director of equipment and facilities at Nussbaum Transportation.

March 31, 2020

Making Sense of All Those Economic Numbers

Jeff Kauffman, an HDT columnist and managing director for Loop Capital Markets and head of Tahoe Ventures joins the podcast to discuss aspects of the economy that affect trucking directly and attempt to make sense of the latest economic forecasts.

March 31, 2020

Electric Trucks Might Not be as Easy as We First Thought

HDT speaks with Rick Mihelic, the director of future technologies at the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE), about the necessary resources to power electric trucks, and how they create sweeping change to what we currently know about buying, selling, operating, and maintaining trucks.

Season 1

February 14, 2020

What Does the Delay of the Entry-Level Driver Training Rule Mean for Trucking?

Just days before the Entry-Level Driver Training (ELDT) requirements were to go into effect, the FMCSA announced a two-year delay. In this episode, we talk to three guests with stake in the ELDT program, and explore why they are unhappy with the delay and what they believe the consequences of this decision will be.

February 14, 2020

ELDs: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Mike Ahart, VP of Regulatory Affairs at Omnitracs, and John Seidl, a former commercial vehicle enforcement official-turned transportation-consultant and VP of Risk Services at Reliance Partners, weigh in on what the trucking industry looks like now post-ELD Mandate. It turns out, Dec. 18, 2019 wasn’t the end of the ELD story, and that plenty of issues remain unresolved.

January 31, 2020

How Do We Get Started With Electric Trucks?

This episode looks at highlights from a Fleet Forward Conference panel discussion, in which HDT Talks Trucking host Jim Park and panelists discuss how electric trucks will work in real-world fleet operations, focusing on integration, cost, and productivity.

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