Past Chatter

As we head into Memorial Day weekend it's likely some of you out there will enjoy a rare round of golf with a friend or relative in town for once in a while. My father's coming to town, so I know I will, and it will be a perhaps more-than-rare round indeed. I don't play much -- or well -- ...

Stuart "Stubob" Myrick (pictured) of the Gallatin, Tenn., area paid his driving dues behind the wheel of several dump trucks, in the late 1970s, then logging miles over the road with a grocery-distribution outfit pulling vans and, most recently, a flatbed loaded with empty containers in the private fleet of a container refurbishing company. In short, he's well earned his current gig: "semi-retired," he says, ...

Earlier this week, as Kansas became the 26th state to enact a behind-the-wheel anti-texting law applicable to all drivers, the folks at hands-free headset-maker Jabra released results of a survey/study conducted in April that threw a little wrench (and more!) into all the late discussion of worrisome activities drivers engage behind the wheel of fast-moving vehicles. While 28 percent of survey respondents admitted to text-messaging ...

If you missed National Public Radio's recent reporting along the Grand Trunk Road, an historic connection between far eastern and western sections of the Indian subcontinent, from Bengal to Peshawar in Pakistan, you probably missed this report by John Poole from a truckstop outside Islamabad. The stop, a rather informal spot on the Grand Trunk Road from his description of it, ...

If you've missed the May edition of Truckers News on the racks out at the truckstops this month (I know copies in the more popular stops tend to go quickly), check it out online. Many great stories therein, including an examination of the health-care reform bill (the upshot: jury's still of course out on how the bill will affect the ...

As if the Tennessee Department of Transportation didn't have enough problems already, considering the damage recent flooding did to infrastructure in the middle part of the state, Tuesday earlier this week a reportedly 25-foot-deep, 40-foot-wide, 18-foot-long sinkhole opened up on I-24 eastbound between Nashville and Chattanooga (pictured, Courtesy TDOT) that nearly swallowed up a big truck, folks on the scene reported. Luckily, TDOT employee David Shelton was in the ...

Ed Eubank, pastor of a nondenominational church in northwest Martin, Tenn., is hoping he can "make a better connection with truckers so that we can better serve the people out there in genuine need." Eubank, see, is also the primary man behind the humanitarians at Mission USA (www.missionusa.org), an organization providing relief to families and individuals displaced on the nation's roadways.  "We’ve got  a 40-foot ...

In my research for the cover story of the current edition of Overdrive, "Getting on board," about the growing use of electronic onboard recorders for logging among many major carriers throughout the United States, I had a conversation with expediting husband-wife team Bob and Linda Caffee about curiosities of their electronic logging system. “We drove to a military base,” Bob said of ...

When a Devon, Penn., lawyer representing big commercial construction contractors insists that "Nobody's against this," referring to tolling major interstates as a method of funding their upkeep and expansion, I suspect he's not talked to anyone among the nation's long-haul owner-operators and drivers. Opposition to tolling, in my experience, is near universal among the former, particularly, and it's no surprise: the diesel ...

Quebecker Alain Fournier (pictured, of a fashion) is a filmmaker focusing his efforts on fantasy work and -- this is where we come in -- online documentary. His first big web series, on YouTube and titled "Vapeurs Diesel" or "Diesel Fumes," looks at long-haul truckers, among them the character of "Big John," featured in the snapshot you'll see below. Though ...

Let's put the disclaimers up top, how bout? "No humans were harmed in the making of" the www.k9friendsunited.com doggie social-networking website, says founder Diarmuid Scullin, a long-hauler who started out with a simple, if somewhat off-the-wall idea. "Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of dog owners tend to be warm, open and friendly people but maybe because of time ...

Baldwin Distribution Services of Amarillo, Texas, launched its refrigerated operation in 1981 with 5 tractors and 7 trailers. Today, Baldwin boasts more than a dozen times those numbers, and operates nationwide -- lucky for them, and also country artist Brian Milson, whose new "Saltwater Cowboy" single is being promoted nationwide with floor-to-ceiling billboards on the sides of many Baldwin dry vans. Milson ...

When Daren Parker prepared to ask a senior driver in his Raleigh, N.C.-based Parker Gas propane-delivery fleet to drive a new medium-duty Kenworth T370 straight tanker, all bets were off as to what kind of reaction Parker could expect from said driver. The truck, after all, was painted pink. "You don’t see many trucks painted in pink," he says, "so some ...

The Cumberland River in and around Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, May 6, finally dropped below flood stage, and for many affected in the area, the cleanup process, if not already well underway, began in earnest. At the now-dry site of the inundated TravelCenters of America location downtown (the clean-up there, said sources at the site yesterday, could take up to six weeks), ...

In Burlington, N.C., on highway 70 yesterday, Lee and Jazzy Jordan were rear-ended "just as we were coming to a stop right around her J" to get ready to run, says Lee. "I had the four-ways on, and I guess this woman she didn't even look." Jazzy has made great progress on her truckers' benefit run across the United States since ...

There's been little to no coverage of a big portion of Nashville's industrial and transportation base, much of it situated along rail tracks north and south of the Cumberland River and east of downtown, that was still, as of yesterday, under water. In my last post, I mentioned Vitran Express and intermodal carrier TCW, both situated, along with other truck operations, Hascall Steel ...

Things continue wet, here, for anyone near the banks of the flooded Cumberland River, which reached levels not seen since well before flood-control efforts largely made it manageable since the last major event in the 1930s, which means that the flood level might easily be described as "100-year" or some longer period -- "epic" is probably good enough, I imagine. The situation ...

I spent a large part of the afternoon Sunday shop-vaccing close to 40 gal. worth of water from the basement of my East Nashville home, unplugging overwhelmed gutters and generally through it all trying to stay dry. I got off pretty easy. At least some of the many stranded over-the-road drivers around here today are able to make the most ...