P.M. Executive Briefing - Aug. 25
This Afternoon's Headlines:
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National Truck Company Tests Accident Prevention Tool
For four years now, Ruan Transportation Management Systems has been testing the Eaton/Vorad Collision Warning System on five of its over 2,000 trucks. Each system, priced around $2,400, monitors a trucker's driving as well as uses radar to locate vehicles close to a truck where drivers cannot see them.Ruan says its rate of crashes on the rear of trucks and in their blind spots has dropped, although database and technology support manager Estel Cooper says, "we haven't been keeping statistics to gauge the magnitude of its loss prevention value to our company." Still Cooper says it makes "very significant" loss-prevention improvements and, with quantified results, could potentially lead to lower property and liability insurance rates.
Hero Truck Driver
An Ontario, Canada, trucker is credited with saving the life of Shane Carpenter, a 21-year-old motorist who crashed his car into the back of the trucker's rig on I-88 in Schoharie, N.Y.The car was stuck under the truck and pulled along for 250 feet before the trucker stopped and removed Carpenter from his car as it started to burn. The crash led to I-88's shutdown for a few hours. The trucker was not named; Carpenter was in serious condition at an Albany hospital. ABC NewsWire (08/25/99)
Travel Center to Offer Drivers More than Gasoline and Food
A $1 million, 12,000-square-foot Williams Travel Center will make its debut Nov. 23 off I-10 in Biloxi, Miss.Although the center will provide truckers with showers, a laundry room, and their own part of the restaurant, Williams marketing Vice President Ike Mefford says the company also wants to number business and pleasure travelers as well as locals among its customers. Truckers will also have a separate entrance and diesel fueling area. A total of 118 trucks can park there overnight.
Mefford says Williams, which started with one travel center seven years ago, intends to "get coast to coast by 2006." Sun Herald (Biloxi/Gulfport/Mississippi Gulf Coast) Online (08/25/99); Monti, Lisa
Hourly Pay Pact for Canadian Drayage Truckers Sparks Concerns in U.S.
Port trucking companies in the United States are speculating about what the new hourly wages for Vancouver, British Columbia, independent port truckers will mean for their businesses. Already, the same issue has sparked protests and a unionization drive in Seattle and Tacoma as well as a 1996 job action by truckers at the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex.Industry higher-ups believe that if the truckers in Washington state succeed, hourly wages will follow at other ports.
The Vancouver pact also mandates improved efficiency with appointments, a container-holding yard, and recommendations for longer hours. But U.S. executives are not convinced that such a thing will work in the United States.
Joe Nievez, who is president both of Qwikway Trucking and the California Trucking Association, says, "to go hourly, a port has to be very productive." Los Angeles-Long Beach is always busy with containers from Asia, he says.
West Coast Trucking President Dan Gatchet, who heads up the Washington Trucking Association intermodal conference, says the key is better efficiency and adds that trucking firms would "have antitrust all over us" if they attempted to engage the owner-operators in collective bargaining. Journal of Commerce Online (08/25/99); Mongelluzzo, Bill
Intrenet Reports Loss, but Revenues Surge
Intrenet Inc. posted a net loss of $2.3 million for the second quarter 1999, compared to $1.2 million income in the same period of 1998. Revenue was a record $72.2 million, up from $66.35 million in the year-earlier quarter.The company saw a net loss of $2.4 million for the first half of 1999, compared to a net $1.6 million income for the first six months of 1998. The loss occurred despite gains in loads and miles.
The company attributes the loss to non-recurring expenses exceeding $2.8 million. Interim President and CEO Eric Jackson says the company is in the process of making "specific, aggressive, and necessary changes." These include scuttling the INET Logistics intermodal business, paying employees based on performance, streamlining routes, and selling some assets. Jackson also intends to raise revenue through mergers and acquisitions. Cincinnati Post Online (08/24/99) ; Miller, Nick
Loads of Trouble
On Monday, California Transportation Department Gene Berthelsen said the state agency will begin tracking the errors made by itsruck-route permit writers.
The department acknowledges that 24 accidents in the last three years are due to such mistakes, including a fatal Anaheim crash last month. In the past, the department reported between seven and 10 accidents per year due to the errors, which trucking-company officials say is lower thanthe true figure.
Performance Transport President Vaughan Goodfellow, who also serves as chairman of the California Trucking Association's oversize-and-overweight subcommittee, says his company typically finds permitting mistakes "here in the office. ... Every couple of years we'll catch it on the road."
Berthelsen used the word "questionable" to describe a letter written by a permit writer to California Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), saying the permit office had found 20 permitting mistakes in the past month. This was after the office started checking over the permits ahead of time due to the death in Anaheim. Dunn is the Senate Transportation Committee vice chairman.
Also on Monday, the department created the title of chief of operations at the Transportation Permit Division and named one of the permit offices' supervisors to that role. The new chief, Hossein Rostam, is to identify and make any changes necessary to the operations. Orange County (Calif.) Register Online (08/24/99); Kindy, Kimberly
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