I decided to share this article written by Bill Cameron in Truck News as he hits on some really great business tips for Owner Operators and drivers in general. Sean: I’ve written in the past that I think driving school practices and commercial driving exams should have a serious overhaul. I think this revamp should include a math test. It seems far too many truck drivers, despite possessing other admirable skills, just can’t add.
I am happy to share a great article by Aubrey Allen Smith where he details the various HOS rules in USA and the rest of the world. What I really like is that Aubrey focuses on the result of the US FMCSA rules changes on driver safety and driver fatigue as well as the need for the carriers and shippers to address the issues of unecessary wait times.
Read More »FMCSA Hours of Service: July 1st Rules Compared to Other Countries
Read More »Drivers Deserve Respect: FMCSA, DOT & CSA Scores may just help
A good article about the coming Hours of Service Rules Change slated to come into effect on July 1, 2013. Many fleets and drivers may be hoping this doesn’t actually get put into effect as scheduled, but according to Richard P. Schweitzer, general council/government affairs for the National Private Truck Council (NPTC), it will.
Read More »Plan for new July 1st HOS rules as written: Are you ready?
Check out this new rugged smart phone by CAT. I like the look and I suspect CAT did its homework as they don’t generally put their name on crap. There is a good review of the phone on Equipment World if you want to check it out. See link below.
Read More »Good looking Trucker Smart phone – CAT gets it right!
New year – new taxes. That’s what many drivers are thinking after the latest round of tax increases. Read More »The 5 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions for Owner Operators
A good article about technology in trucking from Homer Hogg, Maintenance Supervisor for TA and Petro,. Homer highlights the benefits of technology, mobile and otherwise, as well as explores the benefits of things like a truck Blackbox (EOBR, AOBRD, ELD…..). He also discusses the need to get drivers on board and not resisting technology that may help them and improve fleet operations at the same time. Technologies like BigRoad can be used to automate electronic driver logs and improve CSA scores for the fleet.
Read More »GPS fleet tracking: Maintenance, Logs, Smart phones
And although finding freight isn’t hard, it is a little bit of an art. Knowing where the freight is, knowing how much time is involved loading, knowing if it’s going to a good area, deciding whether deadheading (driving empty to pick up) is going to be worth it. These are all learned. Ed is a master at this – you can throw a load and a rate at him and he’ll know immediately if it’s worth doing. Me? I’m not as quick with the figuring, but I’m pretty good now too.
We have a few agents who will call us outright, if we’re in the area, to offer us a load before they post it. They know us, they’ve worked with us before, and they know we deliver – no pun intended. Most of the time though, we find our loads on the board. “The Board” is the load board where the company we’re leased to posts their loads. If you enlarge the photo below (click to enlarge), you’ll see a real example of freight that’s available to us.
Read More »Click Mouse, Make Money – Owner Operators and Load Boards
It now looks like the FMCSA is not going to delay the proposed July 1, 2013 implementation of the new HOS rules after all. Even though the new rules will cost the industry a lot ($230M according to the ATA) in terms of lost productivity while also decreasing the flexibilty drivers have to choose their sleep/drive/work cycles it will not cause too much trouble to adopt for those fleets using electronic logs today.
