Tag: voices: Page 2

Channel 19

Speed limiters: Senate bill to mandate a 65 mph setting a ‘terrible idea’

Voices on the Senate bill from a Georgia Republican that would mandate a 65 mph speed setting for trucks capable of it. And more on the ‘careful what you wish for’ dynamics in regulatory change.

July 10, 2019

Channel 19

Round-up: Words of trucking-newbie and back-on-the-right-path encouragment

Near-50-year trucking veteran Bob Miller offers Independence Day encouragement for the rookies out there — “America depends on you” — and a prison CDL schoolteacher and inmate narrates his turn back to the right path by helping others.

July 8, 2019

Channel 19

Martinez heard the message — +flexibility — now will his agency deliver?

To cap the week, here’s a celebration of the spirit of a system in which we can all at least participate by speaking freely. Views on and hopes for the impending hours revision hammer home the central message of a majority of haulers. In the words of one reader: “Quit stalling. Get some relief for us.”

July 5, 2019

Voices

Roadcheck preps: ‘Business as usual’ for many owner-ops, though questions about roadside approach remain

Preps for Roadcheck by Overdrive readers include a variety of equipment inspections and third-party checks, plus just “business as usual” for the largest share — the nearly as large number of recent poll respondents who noted they scheduled vacation highlights how many view the cat-and-mouse approach to roadside inspections, as little more than a nuisance.

May 31, 2019

Voices

Half of readers object to a miles-traveled tax as fuel-tax replacement

Part of the picture complicating the very notion of replacing the fuel tax is the slow but steady overlay of toll roads on top of the current system, which so many view as tantamount to double taxation. About a third of readers, however, voiced some support for an equitable miles-traveled system.

May 9, 2019

Channel 19

Faulty speed sensors, ground wires, empathy on customer service issues: Readers respond to one owner-op’s ELD issue

Several readers offered a variety of fixes in comments that had helped them with problems with their ELD acting with a mind of its own, similar to what Mark Kirbyson reported a couple weeks back here on Channel 19. Others, shared here, wrote in directly.

May 7, 2019

Voices

Assessing the ‘hard market’ for liability insurance

Premium increases in the past year have followed increasingly difficult conditions for insurers, watchers note, for a variety of factors. 10 percent might be a good rough average for independents and small fleets. At once, it’s not hard to find contrary examples on either side of that 10 percent among readers.

January 29, 2019

Channel 19

‘Secrets of trucking shall remain secret’: An elegy for the counter of knowledge

Gordon Alkire’s whimsical (but not all fun and games) take on so much that is gone into the past: the “In the sit-down diners was … the all-knowing, never-wrong counter of knowledge, usually manned by experts 24 hours a day.”

January 17, 2019

Channel 19

Govt. shutdown ripples out — though not toward military freight

And leased owner-op Jerry Boyd’s somewhat sanguine view on the year just ended, at odds with some independents running spot freight: “Everywhere you went,” Boyd said, “you could get a load of freight [with a good rate] – I’ve never seen it like that, just unload and reload.” …

January 16, 2019

Channel 19

Nearly half of independents using ELDs give no thanks for device providers

Almost half of independent owner-operator respondents who’ve put on an e-log reported a “no-satisfaction” level with their ELD provider — add those who were only “somewhat or a little satisfied,” and you can account for more than 6 in 10 responding independents using an ELD today.

November 21, 2018

Voices

‘About time’: Readers respond to new CVSA directive not to wake off-duty drivers to inspect

Responses to CVSA’s new policy directive to inspectors not to wake off-duty truckers for the purposes of conducting a random inspection ranged from exasperated positivity — “About time” ran the two-word response of multiple readers at Overdrive’s Facebook page — to I-hope-they-get-the-memo identifications of specific problem jurisdictions.

November 14, 2018

Voices

Truckers split over challengers and incumbents in midterm races

In 21 percent of readers’ districts, the House race featured no incumbent at all, while in those that did, just a single percentage point separated respondents who reported intentions to vote for the incumbent or the challenger, suggesting a divide about the current direction of government in general terms.

November 5, 2018