Today, the color in question is lavender, for which the folks at Coast Truck Centers in Troutdale, Ore, a suburb of Portland, are apparently indeed not tough enough. According to the Courthouse News Service, a frequent source of weird news items, Coast recently cowered in the shadow of a lavender-dominated billboard on their property advertising “Bonneville Hot Springs Resort and Spa (‘Bonneville’),” wrote CNS reporter Nick McCann. The problem? The sign “is lavender in color, contains artistic, cursive writing, and advertises a resort aimed at upscale, high-end customers.”

Coast worried it would scare off its heavy-duty customers, and was also angered at the billboard supplier’s attempted end-run around contract-mandated approval for any advertising displayed there — why they were in court about it in the first case. Apparently said supplier stole in under cover of night to install the brightly-colored billboard.

Click through the above thumbnail image (photo by Stuart Tomlinson) for more reporting on the incident from Portland Oregonian. (And hey: It does look rather funny above the Western Star logo on Coast’s sign, doesn’t it…)

Central in the discussion was Wayne State University Professor Michael Belzer (pictured), author of the “Sweatshops on Wheels” book that noted the effect early 1980s trucking deregulation had on wages, and which makes an argument in some places for an hourly pay standard. Deregulation “has increased competition…and reduced compensation,” Belzer noted in his oral testimony (written testimony available here). “CSA in its current form puts pressure on drivers without addressing underlying causes [of safety problems]. In the trucking industry, poor compensation causes carriers to” be unsafe, generally, he added.

He further called for reconsideration of trucking exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which I most recently wrote about when owner-operator Joe Ammons did much the same, garnering a raft of atta-boys and other discussion from readers. “Other nations, like Australia,” Belzer noted, “address underlying systemic problems” in various ways, “like paying for loading and unloading times, help level the playing field by keeping costs low and incentives high.”

Though many carriers are compensating for detention at varying hourly rates and with varying models, removing the FLSA exemption would do much to increase the prevalence of the practice, Belzer suggested, and the result would ultimately be a safer industry. “The most important thing we can do is start from the economic competition that is driving these [unsafe] outcomes. We don’t want to encourage a ‘race to the bottom.’… The way competition in transportation works, it tends to drive that process. We have to address ways to put boundaries around it. Pay drivers for the nondriving labor. Once you do that, they’ll self-regulate.”

At once, there were disputing voices in the hearing like that of Tucker Company Worldwide’s Jeff Tucker (also pictured), a broker who took Belzer’s talk as an argument for reinstituting a measure of price regulation in trucking. “I would hesitate of going down the road of somehow regulating pricing for trucking,” he said. “It will be something that industry will rail against. You’ll have the National Association of Manufacturers and every other association screaming – it will be a bloody war… and eventually it will raise prices to all of us.”

Tucker went on to note that rates were on the rise throughout various industry segments: “Right now, prices are going up…. Rates that truckers are getting are better. Their returns are better.”

Owner-operator Daniel Miranda (also pictured) disputed that notion, however. “I’m trying to figure out where Mr. Tucker sees this great economy. There’s a chance the brokers are taking it all and putting it all in their pockets — it’s not going to the drivers.”

Data from National Transportation Institute Principal Gordon Klemp, presented as part of our webinar last Thursday, bears Miranda out in some ways. Pay has tracked flat in recent times for segments other than flatbed.

Have you seen better rates? Do you agree with Belzer’s core argument, that better compensation for nondriving work would be the best thing the industry and/or regulators could work toward to improving safety?

Look for more on the subject of detention time as the August issue hits the racks and here on the website — my “Top owner-operator challenges” feature runs through the problem of excess and uncompensated detention as the No. 3 industry problem named by readers. Stay tuned.

By that Owen means paying more than lip service to safety. In order for small carriers to retain their best competitive advantage over large carriers — their ability to attract and retain the “million mile drivers,” as Owen puts it — developing a “safety culture” above and beyond the regulations will be ever more necessary. Though while stressing such, and touting NASTC’s relatively young Management and Safety Program (think of it as an outsourcing of safety-culture management and assistance), Owen’s talk took a darker turn.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen to a trucking company?” he asked.

“Going under,” one of the attendees laughed.

“Roll-over?”

Those are plenty bad, Owen noted, but as a small trucking company owner the worst thing that could possibly happen is “having one of your drivers killed in one of your trucks. If and when that happens — and it happens a lot — you had better be able to look yourself in the mirror and tell the man or woman in the mirror, ‘I did the best I could. I developed a safety culture. I dispatched him safely.’” If you can’t do that, it will drive you nuts,” which, he added, is a heck of a lot worse than losing a lawsuit.

The new entrants’ seminar occurs every final Friday of the month. Check in next week for more scenes from it. And for now, find more via the Association’s website.

“Regularly, Rafa [whose first name only was used to protect his identify, "for obvious reasons," as runs an editorial introduction] travels the danger zones of his country, across the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo Leon, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Tamaulipas, ‘perhaps the most dangerous’ place of all. Tierra Brava in Mexican lingo,” writes Kent Paterson, author on the project of the Frontera NorteSur border news service, part of the Center for Latin American and Border Studies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. “In the Monterrey area, business soured when gangs of extortionists began demanding money from owners of truck fleets in the 20-50 vehicle range, worked down the chain to those with 15-20 trucks and eventually vamped on the small mom-and-pop owner with just one truck, according to Rafa.”

However, the longtime operator in some ways sounds quite familiar to many a U.S. hauler when he describes the position of independents and small fleets in the country. This is Paterson, quoting the driver, at the end of the story: ““People eat or drink a soda and don’t know where it comes from…. We truckers are invisible to Mexican society. We are indispensable but invisible.”

Well worth the read: Check out the full story here.

A salesman of fire-retardant work wear, Johnson, formerly of Los Angeles, has in past “counted 10,000 vehicles in 12 hours” traversing the intersection near his place of business in town, he told NPR, a traffic dynamic North Dakota Trucking Association’s Tom Balzer described to me as the biggest challenge for the industry and residents in boom areas there during my reporting of this month’s cover story on opportunities in oil and gas services-related hauling.

With much of the growth coming just in the last two years, Balzer noted “on average 60 new trucking companies a month” of varying sizes, mostly small, cropping up in the state to serve the oil and gas industries. That of course brings infrastructure stress. “Not just roads, truck stops, and places to stay,” said Balzer. “The amount of pressure that’s being put on the area is something we couldn’t have expected…. The amount of growth up there, no matter how well anybody could have planned, has been greater than anybody had ever thought. One of the interesting stats is that eight years ago they refinished a particular road [in one of the booming areas]. They planned for 20 years of use for the volume of traffic. In eight years, they’ve exhausted the 20 years’ worth of use, and the majority of that is in the last three years.”

All the same, the opportunities in trucking in oil and gas services there are many, if you can effectively deal with these problems. By all accounts, many owner-operators are. If you missed our cover story this month detailing opportunities there and around the nation in oil and gas, click through the cover image above for the digital magazine version. Follow this link for the html text version.

In addition to the Great American Trucking Show coming up next month (owner-operators can renew their Overdrive subscription or subscribe anew via this page to be entered into a sweepstakes to win an expenses-paid trip for two to the big event in Dallas), a little advance warning here on two other events.

The Music City Chapter of the American Truck Historical Society’s next event takes place Friday-Saturday September 28-29 in Cookeville, Tenn., with a truck entry fee for the show of $1 or a can of non-perishable food that will go to the Helping Hands Food Drive.

The Music City Chapter folks and the regional owner-operators they attract to their gatherings are great sources of good vibes and awesome trucks. Don’t believe me? I’m still writing about the rigs I caught at the last one — find my latest post from their June Crossville, Tenn., event for two impressive 1980s Peterbilt cabovers here.

Event details:
Hyder Burks Pavilion
Cookeville, TN
September 28-29, day hours
General admission: $3

Second Annual Truck Driver Social Media Convention
A definite sense of involvement in something big was one of several outcomes of last year’s first social media event put on by the folks with Truth About Trucking and AsktheTrucker.com last year. If you’re a regular reader, you may well recall my reporting from the conference and later, as subsequent ripple effects were felt around the industry.

This year’s event stands to be another great opportunity to gather with fellow drivers and owner-operators for serious discussion of how just to push the industry for the better.

Presenters this year at Harrah’s in North Kansas City Oct. 27-28 (and don’t miss the big-tent event-wide roundtable) include:

Elaine M. Papp, the Division Chief of the Office of Medical Programs at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Chris Voss, founder of Strategix One Consulting and one of Forbes’ Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers, on how to incorporate social media toward personal and business goals.

Kylla Leeburg, co-founder of Truckers Against Trafficking, discussing what you can do to combat domestic sex trafficking.

Also, back after great presentations last year, both regulatory expert Richard Wilson and Paul Taylor of the Truckers Justice Center will be on hand.

You can register for the event ($99) via this page.

The following comes by way of owner-operator Joe Ammons, who is looking for assistance with a petition for the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (or Congress) to repeal the trucking exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which among other things specifies the 40-hour workweek and 8-hour day for employees of companies in other industries — particularly in the context of the new Congressional mandate for interstate carriers to use electronic onboard recorders, which would seem to negate traditional arguments for the trucking exemption, as Ammons has noted.

It is time, Ammons says, for the industry and its drivers to make an exchange — the chance of time and a half and coming in line with much of the mainstream U.S. workforce on hours in exchange for industrywide EOBRs: “I feel it is time to offer up the exchange and make things equal,” he says. “Let the government, the industry and the shopping public know exactly what all this regulation is costing them and us. Maybe as an owner-operator this won’t affect me right away, but it will have an eventual trickle-down in detention time, rates, and lifestyle.”

Like the idea? Tell Ammons and all of us in the comments below.

Older than HOS, time for change
With all the emphasis on hours of service and EOBRs, little attention has been given to a key piece of title 49 transportation law. That one bit of law is actually older by book than the hours of service rule itself. This rule is originally date February 4 1887, under relationship to statute 379 Sec. 204 (a)(1)-(2). The basic description of this law is Fair Labor Standards Administration, exemption, transportation.

The law originally defined transportation as exempt from some labor standards because the qualifications, hours for service and safety were under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The descriptor was rewritten during deregulation to be under the Secretary Of Transportation. The basic premise, as established in the 1935 revisions by the ICC, was that the industry needed continued protection because there was no way to track transportation workers’ hours. Companies, employers, were not able to know when these workers were actually working, sleeping, taking breaks or otherwise not productive.

That is about to change with the mandates included in the MAP-21 transportation bill, and it is time to redefine who should fall under the umbrella of the FLSA exemption. With the addition of EOBRs, trucking companies and the entire industry will be able to track when a driver is working and with that information available, it is time to pay for the productive time each driver puts in, whether at a shipper/receiver facility, an inspection facility, or driving.

If the EOBR is really supposed to be for safety, then lets make it safer for the transportation specialists driving these trucks to do so, and still make a living wage.

With current trends to update the hours of service and FMCSA  proclaiming that their top priority is safety and using these changes as a platform  to prove their commitment, it is time to update the scope of the FLSA transportation exemption. Such an action would not even require legislation, since the decision is under the control of the Secretary of Transportation, and he has been handed the tools to make a change of status under MAP-21.

What we need now is for all of us drivers and owner-operators to petition the Secretary to make the change, and if he will not, then Congress should step in and do so and prove it is about safety. Because as long as this industry operates under this exemption, there will be continued abuse by the many parties involved — shippers/receivers, trucking companies, brokers and others involved in the transportation industry. For you owner-ops who think this won’t help you, you need to understand that the trickle down will take less than six months to increase your rates and decrease your waiting time at the whim of some shipper or receiver.

I propose someone in this industry help me get that petition stared, and it doesn’t matter whether it is a trucking executive, OOIDA, or even the people at Truck Safety Coalition.

FMCSA wants to see change for safety: let’s complete the change in the name of safety!

–Joe Ammons, Ellensburg , Wash.

And here’s another little bit of intelligence — as of this morning the MTA hadn’t received a single qualifying entry. Your chances of winning may well be good. Following find abbreviated rules. For more, check out this page on MTA’s Facebook profile. After you’ve uploaded your vid to YouTube, you can make your entry official here.

Rules:

• All video submissions must be 10 minutes or less.
• All video submissions must focus on the “What Would Be COOL About Being A Truck Driver?”
• All video submissions must be original content not publicly displayed before.
• All video submissions must be uploaded to YouTube before being submitted through www.mntruck.org.
• All video submissions must allow embedding (http://support.google.com/youtube)
• No video submissions shall have a visual or verbal reference to any websites other than the Minnesota Trucking Association (MTA) or American Trucking Associations (ATA).
• No video submissions shall endorse any private products, services or enterprises.
• No video submissions shall contain profane language, violence, weapons, sexually explicit content, or personal attacks of people or organizations.
• No video submissions shall contain obscene, hateful, offensive, or slanderous content.
• No video submissions shall contain material that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred, or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.

That study was conducted by U.S. organizations: the U.S. National Cancer Institute and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. For heavy exposure to diesel exhaust over long periods, the study concluded a three-fold risk of lung cancer for nonsmokers exposed, five-fold for those exposed at extremely high levels. See some of the results here.

Critics, however, according to this CNN story among other outlets, point out what we know all too well and what none of the study press releases/results took time to note — that pictures like the above are ever more uncommon now that diesel engines in developed countries around the world have become by some estimates up to 99 percent cleaner over the last few decades. Here’s a brief excerpt from the CNN story:

Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said the IARC decision has “little bearing” on current conditions. Popovich said the recent studies aren’t relevant, because they looked at worker exposures from the 1950s until the 1990s, when older and dirtier equipment was in use.

“It therefore does not reflect the technology changes that have been made since then,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

He bought it from a friend in the area who was convinced he was facing either an entire rebuild or replacement of the 425-hp Caterpillar engine (whose power moves to the drives through a 13-speed tranny).

Turned out, says Kunkel, the problem was a pin that had popped out of a piston and was rubbing the liner, an easy fix for him. It’s “one of those stories you hear about and wish it would have happened to you,” he says of finding the rig.

Among other mods are the paint job, which Kunkel laid on himself, likewise the custom-fabricated fifth-wheel cover, among other things.

Kunkel put in the custom headlights, too, which were originally the squared-off version common in Peterbilt units from the late 80s. He “put in the vintage rounds,” he says, then set the “blinkers in the bumper.” Detail below.

Today, the unit runs good as new, toting equipment locally.

We caught it at the American Truck Historical Society Music City Chapter’s truck show in Crossville, Tenn., last month, along with this “John and Jane Deere” 1984 362 cabover, owned by Jason Hubbard and powered by a 350 Cummins and 13-speed transmission.

Hubbard, who hauled livestock up until a few years ago, sells real-estate today, in addition to running the family farm. He uses the truck only sparingly, hauling some hay around the farm and other tasks. Enjoy further shots of both rigs below.