Interesting Tidbits From the Industry

GOOD WITH COFFEE

“Now you know what Freightliners eat for breakfast.”

Maxim magazine’s take on the Volkswagen 1L, a concept car powered by a one-cylinder engine that gets 287 mpg


JUST IN TIME FOR THIS DELIVERY

“I saw two women standing beside the road,” Roland Gauthier, a trucker with Carlen Transportation, told the Bangor (Maine) Daily News. “It was pouring rain, and they had a flat tire and were waving for help.” The women – one of whom was in labor – were en route to a hospital when they stopped on I-80 near Brookville, Pa. When the baby decided it wasn’t going to wait, Gauthier – a former ambulance driver trained as an emergency medical technician – got towels, a sheet and first aid kit from his truck. He and the other woman delivered a 9-pound, 2-ounce baby girl in the car, the Daily News reported.

Then Gauthier headed back down the road with his load of lumber – but not, in true Knight of the Highway style, until he had finished changing the tire.


IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT NAP

There’s no shortage of technologies being developed to warn a driver that his eyelids are too heavy for toothpicks. Now Jetlog Corp. has a gadget that focuses instead on helping a drowsy driver take the ultimate nap – maximum rest in minimal time, without drifting too deep into slumber land.

The programmable Power Napping Enabler, which includes a headset for playing wake-up music, works in part by detecting muscle relaxation when the thumb falls off a sensor. It can be used as a stand-alone unit or with certain hand-held computers. By waking up the user at just the right time, it prevents the excessive grogginess and sleep pattern disruption that can result from a nap that goes off the deep end.

For more information go to www.jetlog24x7.com.


WHAT’S THE MATTER, CAN’T TAKE A JOKE?

Alexander Meusel, 31, from north Germany, didn’t get too many laughs when he told an employee of the Channel Tunnel in England that he was transporting TNT in his truck, reported News 24 television of South Africa. The station described him as a “a serial joke-teller about the contents of his heavy goods vehicle, often mentioning the name Osama bin Laden.”

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Meusel’s prank, which caused 39 police officers to be mobilized, landed him in court, where a judge put him behind bars for 28 days.


HOW’S MY SIGN LANGUAGE?
“Then there’s the guy who used his middle finger to answer the question ‘How’s My
Driving?’ for a trucker. In response, the trucker used his crowbar to smash the man’s rear window.”

St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times article about a version of the 1-800 How’s My Driving system for parents to get reports on their teens’ driving

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