Letters to the Editor: Longer Trucks (Continued)
ven after 14 years in the trucking industry, I cannot understand why our industry devours itself as referenced in a letter in your April 24 issue on the controversy surrounding the use of longer, heavier trucks. (Click here for previous letter.)
I doubt you could find a lawyer, computer programmer or telephone technician whose company charges less than $100 an hour. Yet, when a customer tells us that $50 an hour is too much to pay for using our truck with all its associated costs, we cut our rates.
Or we think we have to get bigger rigs to keep our costs down.
We only have ourselves to blame when the public denigrates us. We have not told our stories as well as individual companies. We cave in too easily when a shipper puts pricing and/or delivery pressure on us.
Until we develop a stronger pride in our own industry and quit trying to devour each other, we cannot expect the shipper or the public to respect us either.
Lon Lasher
I>Systems Manager
P Freight Lines
ortland, Ore.
Longer trucks only work if the available regulated length is intelligently apportioned. Here in Canada, 25-meter (82-foot) combinations are being widely used across the country without trouble, even in city environments.
Bringing back cabovers carrying “dromedary boxes” [cargo boxes mounted in the space between the back of a tractor and the front of the trailer] and pulling doubles would go a long way toward increasing usable capacity without creating unnecessary traffic problems or operational headaches.
Mike Smith
I>Company Driver
amloops, British Columbia
anada
These letters appear in the May 15 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
