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At first glance, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s four-year surface transportation bill contains some wins for small-business trucking, but will those be enough to overcome possible deal breakers such as longer and heavier trucks on federal highways? Here’s a look inside the bill released on Tuesday, Jan. 31. For starters, the bill calls for approximately $260 billion in funding for surface transportation, but the exact amount for highways was not known as of press time. From OOIDA’s standpoint, the positives in the bill include provisions for truck parking and driver training, a study of crashworthiness in truck cabs, and...

Retailers warn economy will be slowed by new trucker scheduling rulesBy Keith Laing - 01/12/12 11:27 AM ET New limits on the number of hours truck drivers can work per week enacted by the Department of Transportation will put the brakes on commerce, the lobbying group for retail companies said Thursday. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) announced last month that its new rules for trucker scheduling will limit the number of hours a driver can work to 70 per week. Under the old rules, truckers could drive 82 hours per week. The Washington-based National Retail Federation (NRF) said...

The new "Hours of Service" Rules are a drop in the bucket. We think of the world of transportation -- especially trucking and automobile manufacturing -- as being one of the most fundamental of Democratic Party constituencies. Detroit has long been a party stronghold, with the UAW and Teamsters among Democrats' most powerful union supporters. From the worker at the DMV to the driver he licenses, this is one solid chain of Democrats. But is this political loyalty deserved today, if indeed it ever was? Since the Democratic Party was taken over by environmental extremists a generation ago, there has...

Adam King spent months hunting for a job before landing at Witte Truck Driving School in Troy, Mo., this fall. After King, 23, of O'Fallon, Mo., passed the state commercial drivers license test, he spent the next five or six weeks driving a tractor-trailer under the watchful eye of a trainer before venturing out on his own. "I was unemployed after I got out of the Army for two years," said King, who drove trucks while in the military. "I put in hundreds of applications." For the past three years, employment in the trucking industry has been stuck in low...

Trucker nailed with a 30,855 dollar over weight fine. did not know the road was weight restricted until it was to late (sign was not visible until he was past the point of no return) while turning around he was stopped by local PD. While being weighed and handed the ticket he watched another truck that was over the limit (road had a 10 ton limit. 18 wheel trucks weigh more than that empty) Police claim he was not doing a local delivery. He was less than 4 miles from his delivery.

After years of negative votes in Congress and the opposition of the American people, on Oct. 21 Barack Obama allowed the first Mexican truck to cross the border at Laredo, Texas, and head north to deliver door-to-door service of its industrial equipment. This was implemented by an agreement quietly signed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Mexico City on July 6 with Mexico's secretary of Communications and Transportation. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., calls this deal a major anti-jobs program saying, "We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico." Todd Spencer, executive vice...

Foolish laws are hampering America's lifeblood industry, and making drivers more tired to boot. As President Barack Obama is touring the country touting his so-called jobs bill, he’s not talking about one of the largest job killers facing American industry — regulation. PJMedia is working with AmericanJobCreators to bring you stories of how over-regulation is destroying jobs nationwide. One of the most regulated industries in the United States is over-the-road trucking. Nearly anything you have in your house, from light bulbs, to toilet paper, to your flat-screen television, was delivered to where you bought it by truck – indeed, 70...

By 2018, America’s 18-wheelers will be rolling on getting 20 percent more miles per gallon due to new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules addressing new fuel standards for heavy vehicles. But as nice as it will be for big-rigs to save four gallons of fuel for every 100 miles traveled, fuel efficiency comes at a cost. The Wall Street Journal estimates the costs to be $1,050 for work trucks, $380 for vocational trucks and $6,220 for supercab tractors. President Obama and the EPA promise the upfront costs will more than pay for themselves after a year or two, but some...

MEXICO CITY – Mexico and the United States have signed an agreement that will allow cargo trucks from each country to circulate without restriction on the other nation’s highways, ending a long-running dispute. The memorandum was signed here by the heads of Mexico’s Communications and Transportation Secretariat and the U.S. Department of Transportation as a follow-up to an accord reached in March by Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon. Under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican trucks were to have been able to circulate freely throughout the U.S. roadway system as soon as the trade pact...

After years of wrangling, US and Mexican officials signed an agreement Wednesday that allows trucks from each nation to travel on the other country’s highways – a key provision of NAFTA. Washington The United States and Mexico on Wednesday signed an agreement aimed at resolving a cross-border trucking dispute. The longstanding disagreement had come to symbolize growing resistance, especially in the US Congress, to free-trade provisions with America’s southern neighbor. The accord, signed in Mexico City by US and Mexican transportation officials, would end a 15-year-old controversy that on the US side featured fears of unsafe Mexican trucks barreling along...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. and Mexican officials signed an agreement Wednesday allowing each country's trucks to traverse the other's highways, implementing a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement after nearly two decades of bickering. Transportation secretaries Ray LaHood and Dionisio Perez-Jacome signed the three-year memorandum, which is based on an agreement announced in March by Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon. NAFTA, signed in 1994, had called for Mexican trucks to have unrestricted access to highways in border states by 1995 and full access to all U.S. highways by January 2000. Canadian trucks have no limits...

(CNSNews.com) – In a recent letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a bipartisan group of 44 lawmakers urged the Obama administration not to reinstate a cross-border program involving Mexican trucks. The lawmakers cited cost, safety and security concerns as reasons for not reviving the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed program. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) are leading the bi-partisan effort, which includes 13 Republicans and 31 Democrats. “We have concerns that this proposed program could impact the safety and may create a security breach along our southern border,” the lawmakers wrote in a...

A story broke yesterday concerning the retrofit of more than 100 trucks from Mexico that do not meet United States environmental standards. Our federal government is paying to upgrade these trucks, yet when the state of California and the EPA set new rules for US-owned trucks, they fine companies who do not comply. This post is not about the environment, it concerns how US trucking companies are treated by the federal and state government as compared to Mexican-owned rigs. From AzCentral.com. For air-quality regulators, the border creates a legal barrier. State and federal agencies can’t force vehicles manufactured and bought...

In the latest effort to accommodate its cherished trade partner in the south, the U.S. government is paying to upgrade outdated Mexican trucks that hemorrhage illegal amounts of exhaust on their trips north to deliver merchandise. The Mexican trucks enter the U.S. under a 17-year-old international trade pact known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and they’ve created an air pollution crisis. The air quality in border towns has been especially impacted by the exorbitant levels of exhaust released by the Mexican trucks, which also fail to meet American safety standards. Since the Mexican truckers have no...

Trains are as American as apple pie and baseball, which, let's face it, have struggled in popularity since the advent of Breyer's ice cream and ACC basketball. Think Petticoat Junction. Think that old lonesome whistle. Think John Henry, steel-driving man. And don't forget "If you miss the train I'm on, you will know that I am gone," and Boxcar Willie, hoboes, Saturday morning "Soul Train," "Throw Mama from the Train," "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles," "I been working on the railroad" and, of course, Johnny Cash's "I hear that train a' coming." When I was a little starry-eyed girl, my friend...

It is amazing that, with unemployment unacceptably high, the Obama administration has endorsed a plan that will cost U.S. jobs and make highway driving for Americans more dangerous and less pleasant. Barack Obama wants to admit Mexican trucks to drive on all U.S. highways and roads. Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, explained what this means: "U.S. truckers would be forced to forfeit their own economic opportunities, while companies and drivers from Mexico, free from equivalent regulatory burdens, take over their traffic lanes." We wonder if Mexico has any regulatory standards at all. Mexican trucks...

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Thursday issued its latest hours-of-service proposal, though the agency has yet to decide if truckers should be allowed 10 or 11 hours of daily driving time. The proposal retains the 34-hour restart provision that allows drivers to restart their weekly clocks after 34 consecutive off-duty hours. However, FMCSA said the restart will have to include two consecutive off-duty periods from midnight to 6:00 a.m. In addition, FMCSA said drivers will be allowed to use the restart only once during any seven-day period. As part of an earlier court settlement, FMCSA must publish a...

Trucking Volume Collapses, Falls Most Month To Month Since March 2009 Gregory White Sep. 28, 2010, 4:29 PM Truck tonnage may have increased 2.9% year-over-year in August, but the collapse in month-over-month levels is much more illuminating. Tonnage fell by 2.7% from July to August, according to the American Trucking Association. That's the biggest month over month fall since March 2009. The chief economist at the ATA, Bob Costelo, says this slowdown was expected and that it should be slowing further with the economy for the remainder of the year. From the American Trucking Association:[snip]

Does anyone truly believe corruption will not surface among officials in the Mexican government if a FAST Pass system is part of a cross-border trucking plan?

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's adminstration will soon announce its plan to reopen the U.S. border to Mexican trucks and end a dispute that prompted Mexico to slap duties last year on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods, a top U.S. official said on Thursday.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A state police report says the Alabama truck driver involved in a March crash that killed himself and 10 others in central Kentucky was talking on a cell phone. Police say Kenneth Laymon of Jasper, Ala., crossed the median of Interstate 65 in central Kentucky on March 26 and slammed into a van carrying Mennonites traveling to a wedding in Iowa.

The Midnight Truckers are another barometer on the pulse of the nation for if they are moving so is the economy!CLICK TO LISTEN!

The Midnight Truckers are another barometer on the pulse of the nation for if they are moving so is the economy! CLICK TO LISTEN!

Packed Containers Piling Up At Asian Ports Because There's Too Much Demand From West Vincent Fernando, CFA Mar. 30, 2010, 6:16 AM Packed containers are piling up at Asian ports as strong demand from the U.S. and Europe causes a lack of supply of ships. Shipping companies had purposefully idled capacity during the economic downturn, then started to bring it back recently. Yet they didn't do it fast enough to keep up with the robust pick-up in demand from the West.[snip]

An index that measures the health of the US economy by analysing real-time diesel consumption of trucks has cast doubt on the strength of the economic recovery after recording a sharp decline in January. The Pulse of Commerce Index was created by Ceridian, which processes electronic card transactions, and the UCLA Anderson School of Management. It receives data every time a commercial driver fills up a truck with diesel, generating a picture of manufacturing and retail traffic. The index, which launches on Wednesday, has data going back to 1999. Its performance closely tracked rises and falls of gross domestic product....

LOWELL, Mass. — Police said a Massachusetts lumber truck crashed into a home after the driver was knocked unconscious by a small chili from Wendy's. Lowell police said Eric Gremm reported that he choked on the chili when the truck hit a bump, causing him to pass out as the flatbed truck veered off the road and slammed into the home. The man, 59, said emergency workers at the scene told him that he had passed out, but he could not remember losing consciousness.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- IdleAire Inc., the company that provided truckstops with no-idle electrification, is pulling the plug on its operations after a nine-year run. The company, which was saved from Chapter 11 in 2008 after being bought by a coalition of investment firms for $10 million, said it decided to close up shop when it couldn't find a buyer for its assets. "The company had made great strides toward profitability in the midst of a very challenging operating environment," the firm said in a statement. "We believe IdleAire had strong growth potential and was well positioned to capitalize on the...

KNOXVILLE - The driver of a tractor-trailer rig sat dead this morning behind the wheel at the intersection of Merchants Drive and Central Avenue Pike as his partner slept in the cab. "The driver had indicated earlier in the morning that he was not feeling well when he pulled off the roadway and parked his vehicle," said Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk. DeBusk did not say when the driver, identified as Tommy Wilson, 71, of Missouri City, Texas, pulled over, but an employee of the Pilot Corp. store, 100 Merchants Drive, said videotape revealed the driver first came into...

Depressed December totals still high point for 2009, ACT says Shipments of commercial trailers hit a 32-year low in December while reaching their highest point in 2009, said ACT Research. At 8,296 units, shipments of trailers used to haul freight were off 44 percent from December 2008. Trailer shipments haven’t been so low since the trucking industry was regulated and P-I-E was hauling freight. That’s a sign of the extent of excess trailer capacity at the end of the worst year in shipping since the Great Depression. In its latest report on the trailer market, ACT said trailer factory shipments...

does Barack Obama have against truck drivers? He's hit Scott Brown for driving a truck at least three times now in Boston. Truck drivers are voters too. UPDATE: Four! UPDATE: Five!

This is how I lost my job with Stevens transport. I was delivering in Houston Texas in early November. After I was done was told to call a clinic down there for a random drug screen. I was told that the Clinic had truck parking. I called the Clinic and they said they knew nothing about truck parking. I went by the place and it did not look like a place I would want to pull my truck into so I got on the interstate and headed about 15 miles west to Katy Texas at a Loves Truck stop. Once...

A week before Christmas — four days before Arrow Trucking Co. closed its doors and stranded hundreds of drivers and their freight at truck stops and rest areas around the country — Arrow driver John Eischens called his mother. He asked her for a bus ticket home. "Arrow bounced John's last two paychecks and cut off all advances in the week prior to the shutdown," said Marie AuBuchon, a driver for KLLM Transport Services of Jackson, Miss., and a member of a loose-knit national effort to return stranded Arrow drivers to their homes. "John only worked for them for about...

Arrow Trucking Company suspended operations yesterday, leaving hundreds of drivers across the country out of work three days before Christmas.

Arrow Trucking news is not good for employees, as the Arrow Trucking Company is closing its doors. The Arrow Trucking Company is rumored to be bankrupt now, but it seems that Arrow Trucking really didn't care about their employees in the end. It is being reported that some Arrow Trucking employees didn't find out they were out of a job until their gas cards were rejected while they were on the job across the country.

Filiberto Cervantes has already separated from his wife and kids, lost his car, moved into his truck and says he subsists largely on a diet of $1 cheese burritos. But Jan. 1 looms like a date with the grim reaper himself. ... Cervantes is among thousands of truckers servicing the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex who are facing a day of reckoning this New Year's. That's because Jan. 1 is the day new clean-air guidelines go into effect at the ports, banning all pre-1994 trucks -- as well as 1994-2003 rigs that have not been retrofitted with costly diesel particulate...

A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers. Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo. The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets. More than half of all U.S. imports now come from companies in the program, called the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or...

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the estimated 7,500 jobs lost in October, the trucking industry has lost more than 91,000 jobs since the end of 2008 – a decline of 6.8 percent. Job cuts since July 2008 – just before the current decline – total 141,400. The BLS numbers reflect...

NEW YORK (AP) -- YRC Worldwide said Friday it lost money in the third quarter, but the financially fragile trucking company is still working with lenders to stay out of bankruptcy. Despite a weak economy and competitors nipping at its heels, YRC CEO Bill Zollars said in a conference call with analysts that he's confident the company will be able to rightsize itself next year. But he expects the economy to remain weak through the first half of 2010. "I don't think there's anything that would make us think we can't be back there at some point," Zollars said. "The...

(As you read the article, remember it comes from the Dem mindset that GPS causes accidents, guns kill people, etc.) ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state wants to crack down on truckers who rely on satellite devices to direct them onto faster but prohibited routes and end up crashing into overpasses that are too low for their rigs. Gov. David Paterson on Wednesday proposed penalties including jail time and confiscation of trucks to come down on drivers who use GPS — global positioning systems — to take more hazardous routes and end up striking bridges. In New York, a truckers'...

ORONTO (Reuters) – A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace, a police spokeswoman said on Friday. A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in southwestern Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 ($290) ticket. The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles, said Constable Shawna Coulter of the Ontario Provincial Police in Essex County.

A tractor-trailer loaded with canned beans was struck by a southbound Norfolk Southern freight train at the Coile Street railroad crossing off Snapps Ferry Road about 6:45 a.m. this morning. No injuries were reported as a result of the collision. GPD Officer Jeff Craft said at the scene this morning that Bobby Coffey, the driver of the Swift Transportation tractor-trailer, told police he had been attempting to enter the lot of the So-Pak-Co plant when he encountered a closed gate and came to a stop. The rear of the trailer was on the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks, police said. As...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Peterbilt Corp. permanently closed its truck plant in Nashville.</p>

A German trucker suspected of driving under the influence of drugs crashed his vehicle near Borås in western Sweden on Tuesday. He subsequently admitted to masturbating at the time of the accident. The trucker, apparently unable to reach a satisfactory climax, then proceeded to continue to pleasure himself while in the midst of a police interrogation, according to the local Borås Tidning newspaper. "He was masturbating while the police interrogated him," police prosecutor Åsa Askenbäck told the newspaper. "He has admitted that he was not paying full attention at the time of the accident. He was playing with himself instead...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. business groups are growing increasingly frustrated with President Barack Obama's failure to resolve a cross-border trucking dispute with Mexico they say has threatened thousands of American jobs. "We've got companies that are really concerned," said Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers. "Our calculation is that we've got 15,000 jobs at risk and the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that Mexican buyers are shifting suppliers," Vargo said. U.S. manufacturers hold out hope Obama's meeting early next week in Guadalajara with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian...

A plan containing guidelines on getting Mexican trucks back on U.S. highways has gone through bureaucratic review, the first step toward ending Mexican tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods. Implementing the plan would quell growing dissent among U.S. businesses that are hurt by Mexico's tariffs and that continue to besiege Washington with claims that doing nothing will result in job losses. The tariffs were imposed as retaliation for legislation enacted in March that took Mexican trucks off American highways, despite the North American Free Trade Agreement's program to let them into the United States.

Trucking Headlines U.S.-Mexico trucking plan may resumeBy Jill Dunn The United States may allow Mexican trucks to do business here as early as June, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reportedly said May 22. This spring, Congress ended the cross-border trucking program between the two countries. Mexico responded with 90 tariffs totaling $2.4 billion on U.S. products, casting a heavy burden on U.S. producers, LaHood said in a Bloomberg story. Candice Tolliver, the new communications director for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, did not immediately respond to questions. In recent weeks, the FMCSA began work with the U.S. Trade...

GENEVA (Reuters) – The prompt resolution of a 15-year old dispute over access to U.S. roads by Mexican trucks could be another casualty of the deadly swine flu outbreak, international trade experts said on Monday. Increased health checks to control the virus, which has killed 103 people in Mexico and infected at least 20 in the United States, could also slow the passage of goods across the busy but troubled U.S.-Mexico border, they said. The United States imported around $216 billion of goods from Mexico in 2008, making its southern neighbor its third-largest trading partner after Canada and China, according...

BRANFORD — At 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night — or just about anytime — there are 75 giant, exhaust-belching monsters parked at the TravelCenters of America truck stop off Interstate 95’s Exit 56. Many have their engines running and truckers inside sleeping or watching TV; cooking or talking on unlimited cell phone plans; playing video games or working on laptops to set up the next load. The Branford TA has been in the news because of the murder of an itinerant moving industry laborer found dead in a moving truck on April 17. But beyond that, it is “the...

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