And if you’d like to catch up on what happening with federal regulations regarding sleep apnea and the national registry for certified medical examiners, read the cover story in the February issue of Overdrive. You could be among those affect by coming changes.

Three manufacturers – Paccar, Navistar and Volvo – have deferred shipments of Class 8 vehicles equipped with the part, which was manufactured between Dec. 2, 2010, and Jan. 18. Bendix estimates up to 60,000 vehicles are affected by the part recall. Daimler Trucks North America doesn’t use the faulty part.

Bendix said a temporary remedy kit is available at the OEM dealers and authorized Bendix aftermarket locations. The company is working on a permanent remedy kit, although no estimate was given of when the permanent fix will be available.

Navistar has stopped production of Class 8 trucks pending a permanent fix. A Volvo spokesman said the company resumed truck production after replacing the ATR-6 with another valve. Paccar hasn’t responded to a media request about its action related to the part recall.

The problem with the Automatic Traction Control Relay Valve can potentially occur only in vehicles operating at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, Bendix said in a service bulletin on its website. Intermittent air leakage could result in applying brakes, but is not related to functioning of Bendix stability systems, the company said. Vehicle ABS and service braking will still operate normally on covered vehicles, the company said.

An operator might notice a loss of engine power, according to the posting on the Bendix website. In addition, brake lights may not be illuminated and the brake application pressure gauge won’t show any pressure, the bulletin said.

If a vehicle operator has the temporary remedy kit installed, “the Bendix ESP full stability system and Wingman ACB and Wingman Advanced system will be temporarily [disabled] until the permanent remedy kit is installed,” the company said in a news release.

Bendix reported the part defect to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Jan. 26, after disclosing the problem to the truck makers Jan. 20.

The company has posted a Q&A about this issue at an ATR Valve Update link at its website at www.bendix.com. The company also is staffing an ATR-6 phone line to answer technical questions and provide ordering information daily from 7 a.m.-8 p.m. ET. Its toll free number is 1-800-478-1793.

The appellate court has set an April 16 deadline for the California Air Resources Board to file its opening brief after the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California court refused to suspend judgments and a preliminary injunction Jan. 23 against CARB enforcing the standard.

Two years ago, the American Trucking Associations, refiners and fuel production companies filed suit against the board’s LCFS, which began last year and had been set to become significantly stricter in January and again in 2015..

Six weeks ago, the Western States Petroleum Association and the California Trucking Association issued separate statements expressing concern over projected fuel cost hikes resulting from LCFS.

Michael Shaw, a CTA vice president, said it would jack up fuel prices in the short term and could create fuel shortages in the long term.

“The California Energy Commission tagged the LCFS with an annual cost to California of more than $4 billion,” Shaw said. “How can CARB impose a major drag on our economy at a time when California’s unemployment rate still hovers at almost 12 percent?”

Western States Petroleum Association cited research it commissioned from the California-based Sierra Research, based on Department of Energy biofuel forecasts.

California biofuel supplies will be inadequate for LCFS compliance by 2015 when the fuel requirements “start to become much more aggressive,” the WSPA stated. The cost of acquiring special biofuels in California for LCFS compliance “could be as much as $54 billion between now and 2020.”

On Dec. 29, U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill ruled the state’s LCFS violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state sources of ethanol and crude oil. In response to a 2006 state law, the board adopted LCFS three years later to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels 10 percent by 2020.

Several West Coast and New England states that considered adopting California’s standard in recent years appear to be holding off on implementation.

Big birds to fly by truck

You guessed it, I’d bet. “The only way to get the cranes moving,” Wald wrote, “will be to put them in crates and drive them by truck to the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur, Ala., she said, where six or seven whooping cranes, alumni of earlier migrations, are already wintering.”

Read Wald’s full story for more. Or follow the journey’s progress on the Operation Migration blog here.

Reading up
Salon.com writer Irin Carmon’s “The latest Twitter revolution” story, about last October’s Truck Driver Social Media Convention is live at the political/cultural news and commentary site as of yesterday. Aside from a whiff of stereotyping sitting there in the very first line — “Rich Wilson is telling a roomful of truckers how to sound less like, well, truckers” — the piece gets the whole of the event, organized with a boatload of tireless dedication by Allen and Donna Smith over at AsktheTrucker.com, fairly well. If you need some background on driver-led efforts at regulatory policy influence to emerge from the meeting, you can start with this item from Channel 19.

Whether you attended the event or not, I’m interested in what you think about the story from both substance and driver image standpoints. Tell me. Read it here.

As for the section therein about Overdrive‘s early years, there’s a much more detailed account I wrote (“Breaking Free”) for our 50th-anniversary issue last year.

Here we go again
I bet you can guess where this is going: The Discovery Channel is launching yet another reality TV show about drivers, making it the fourth such series from as many cable networks in the past year alone. The show, “World’s Toughest Trucker,” is a competition that sounds similar to the History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers’ franchise in that it looks to crown a winner in the end, after competitors face a set of tough runs — with a $150,000 cash prize going to the toughest competitor in this case. Hauls will take place on roads in different locales around the world, though, in a single season, a significant difference.

The show premieres on Feb. 13 at 10:30 p.m. Here’s what a press release from the cable channel had to say about it:

WORLD’S TOUGHEST TRUCKER contestants hail from around the world, including the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Australia and Sri Lanka. All the drivers come vastly experienced but, like athletes in specific sports, each driver brings a particular skill set to the competition. They also bring their share of personal quirks and trademarks. There’s “Ice Man” Derek Martin, cool under pressure and used to the slick and steep roads of his native Canada; the wild and wily Alabaman/rookie, whose mouth can run faster than his rig; and the explosive Aussie loner Rodney Johnson, who always seems to find teamwork to be the toughest part of the assignment.

WORLD’S TOUGHEST TRUCKER begins Down Under as the truckers encounter river crossings, dust holes and dry creek beds in the parched region of northeastern Australia. In this first challenge, the teams won’t allow anything to get in their way, but will one pair live to regret stopping to help and rescue passengers in an overturned car?

You can find more about it here.

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent.

Payroll employment in for-hire trucking is up by 51,500, or 4 percent, from January 2011. Employment is up by 89,100, or 7.2 percent, from the bottom in March 2010, but it remains 130,100, or 9 percent, from the peak in January 2007.

The latest report from BLS includes the annual benchmark revision in the size of the U.S. work force, adding 162,000 jobs to the number estimated in March 2011. For for-hire trucking, this meant that the revised BLS figure for payroll employment in December was 1.318 million jobs — 22,000 more than what BLS initially reported for December. The January figure is about 1.323 million.

The BLS numbers for trucking reflect all payroll employment in for-hire trucking, but they don’t include trucking-related jobs in other industries, such as a truck driver for a private fleet. Nor do the numbers reflect the total amount of hiring since they only include new jobs, not replacements for existing positions.

Five texting and cell phone use violations will now contribute the highest (10 points) weighted severity to carriers’ numerical rankings in the Unsafe Driving Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC).

The violations include two each relating to operating a commercial motor vehicle while texting and operating a CMV while using a handheld mobile telephone. The fifth violation applies to motor carrier safety procedures, assigning a 10-point severity weighting to carriers’ “allowing or requiring driver to use a hand-held mobile telephone while operating a CMV.”

The SMS snapshot carriers will see this month will also provide more detailed breakouts of existing brake, wheel and coupling regulations, the agency said, which in part will help clarify the party responsible for violations in which intermodal equipment providers are involved. All told, the added detail turns six current Vehicle Maintenance violations into 22.

Those improvements are the results of a joint FMCSA and Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance effort, the agency said, to increase data uniformity through improved processes and tools.

FMCSA is revising Appendix A of the SMS Methodology document to take these changes into account.

The presenter is Tom Bray, senior editor for transportation management at J.J. Keller & Associates, the leading publisher of compliance materials for businesses. Bray, who has 22 years of trucking industry experience, is a former trucker who later worked in training and safety. He now specializes in motor carrier safety and operations management.

To view this and other archived webinars, visit TruckerWebinars.com.

The webinar was sponsored by Freightliner Trucks and produced by Overdrive and Truckers News.

A Navistar executive said the engine submitted to the EPA “has been refined with an air management system and electronic engine controls.”

Last week, the California Air Resources Board issued a public letter to Navistar saying the company’s emissions credits for the MaxxForce 13 will expire Feb. 29.

Most diesel engine manufacturers chose to use selective catalytic reduction after treatment technology to meet the required emissions levels. Navistar diesel engines use an in-cylinder exhaust gas recirculation technology to reduce exhaust emissions and the company is the only North American engine manufacturer to do so.

Currently, Navistar diesel engines emit more grams of nitrogen oxide than their competitors’ engines. But because Navistar exceeded the performance parameters set for earlier emissions reduction regulations, the company was awarded emissions credits by the EPA that allow them to do so.

“The bottom line is that Navistar will sell engines in 2012 that are fully certified in all 50 states,” said Jack Allen, president of Navistar’s Engine Group during the analysts’ meeting in Chicago. “And any issue between Navistar and the EPA will remain between us and the EPA and will not affect Navistar customers.”

A spokesman for Navistar noted EPA emissions credits do not apply across the company’s engine line in a blanket fashion. Each engine platform has its own individual “bank” of credits. So, Navistar’s DT medium-duty engines, as well as the MaxxForce 11 and MaxxForce 15 engines, were not included in CARB’s announcement and will continue to be sold using their existing EPA credits.

Additionally, once an engine is submitted for testing, Navistar noted, EPA will not penalize the submitting company if credits expire before the certification process is complete. In that case, credit extensions will be issued to ensure EPA compliance.

“We will work through the normal certification process for the MaxxForce 13 with the EPA and follow up with our additional engine platforms later this year,” Allen said. “We will continue to use the credits we have selling our engines going forward. This is an on-going process and a continual refinement process of our engines and our emissions technology.

“But we are confident the MaxxForce 13 will be certified as compliant by the EPA, validating our in-cylinder emissions reduction technology and without any degradation in terms of performance, durability and fuel economy for our customers.”