If you missed Part 1 of this year in review, find it here. Tune back in New Year’s Eve for the finale.
May
Oil market speculation was back in the headlines as diesel prices soared, and a U.S. driver jailed in Mexico continued to receive no shortage of vocal support from haulers on this side of the border. It was one of the biggest stories of the year, and further developments in May would see the driver’s carrier shut down as an imminent safety hazard by the FMCSA, yet another reason to choose a carrier carefully.
Another big story, the oil field hauling boom around hydraulic fracturing operations, hit the U.S. airwaves with a story in the New York Times tarring the oil field exemption and the Channel 19 profile of a team of former expediters making the move to crude.

The iPhone and Android phones were neck and neck in usage stats following a poll of drivers, one child’s dream came true as a passenger in an owner-operator’s Freightliner, and the freight drones were coming.
June
A driver was reunited with his lost dog, Washington State was building road surfaces from busted- and ground-up toilets, a couple of classic conventionals and cabovers were on display in Crossville, and a multiyear highway bill, contrary to prior guesses and predictions and redactions, reared its head by the end of the month, among other measures raising the broker minimum surety bond amount to $75,000 from $10,000 and directing the DOT to mandate the use of EOBRs for hours of service recording for virtually all interstate carriers. Despite the text of the direction being lifted from the Senate’s EOBR bill from earlier in the year, language giving the DOT the power to disqualify drivers directly ultimately didn’t survive the highway bill’s conference committee, where it was merged with a House variant.
In the week preceding the bill’s passage, a driver’s satirical modest proposal called for FMCSA to go ahead and ban all motorized transport already, and an owner-operators’ group hosted FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro on a conference call in which Ferro was introduced to a proposed CSA ‘8th BASIC’ for driver turnover and reiterated she would continue using the “bully pulpit” to influence shippers and receivers’ detention time outlays.
July
Bill Mack remained in ‘friendly negotiations’ over a potential return to SiriusXM.
Debates continued over many aspects central to the owner-operator business. Joe Ammons called for repeal of the trucking exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act in hopes of boosting pay standards industry-wide, and in the House of Representatives, others made the safety argument for increased driver pay.
The first lawsuits demanding fixes to the CSA program were brought, respectively, by operators in concert with OOIDA and by a coalition of carriers, shippers and brokers. While that didn’t necessarily mean the CSA program’s future existence was uncertain, the thought was pleasing to some.
Jason’s Law truck parking safety and security legislation, having been included in the June highway bill, was trumpeted as in need of a push from drivers in future to aid in implementation where parking was needed most.
Singing urinal cakes were pondered as a potential next step in hours enforcement, as the U.S. driver detained in Mexico saw his trial get under way, part of which involved a re-enactment of his accidental entry at the border between El Paso and Juarez.
Gwen Stefani “drove” a big checkerboard Pete in a music video.
August
I met the mother of the U.S. truck driver then still detained in Mexico at the Great American Trucking Show in the driver’s native Dallas, where the Women in Trucking organization turned five years old with a birthday cake, clown and more, and just how to use CSA to your advantage was discussed.
Back in D.C., CSA’s bedrock efficacy and its DataQs challenge process, among other issues, saw debate among members of the MCSAC advisory committee, and in the ether of the Internet, every trucker’s favorite agency got itself Facebook page.
A champion slackliner performed a stunt where she walked a wire strung between two moving Volvo cabovers to introduce a new European truck model, and more owner-operator business challenges, from public image to health to parking, were examined.
The ultimate challenge? Adapting to change.
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