Trip-planning / service locator app bags prize; hours hearing vid

Trucker Path reps with Shark Tank biz start-up competition show actor Robert Herjavec.

The folks from the Trucker Path app wrote in with some good news for the trip-planning / truck-stop and other parking locator available for both iPhone and Android smartphones. “We’ve just won 2nd [place] at the L.A. Auto Show start-up competition,” wrote Trucker Path cofounder Ivan Tsybaev. Not bad for the app, for sure; its functionality replicates in some ways what a lot of the truck stop brands’ own app do for their stops, but casts a wider net — much like Overdrive‘s own Trucker Tools app — setting itself apart with the trip-planning functionality. 

If you’ve tried out Trucker Path yourself, what do you think? If you haven’t but want to, click through the screenshot at right. The app’s functions come free of charge, company literature says.

Find more reporting on a variety of trucking-related smartphone apps via this page.  

Hours hearing vid
If you haven’t as yet, check out James Jaillet’s reporting on the House of Representatives’ Small Business Committee’s hearing on the hours of service — published in two parts Thursday, dealing with the Committee’s questioning of FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro on the agency’s decision to move forward with rule implementation before completion of real-world economic impact studies, and Friday, which rounded out industry opinions on the subject. I was happy to see Pacific Northwest-based owner-operator Tilden Curl testifying on behalf of himself and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

Owner-operator Tilden Curl

We’ve featured Curl in various and sundry capacities in the magazine over the years. (Here’s a pretty great piece by the late Max Kvidera published last year, a profile in which Curl hammers on key owner-operator business points.) One particular instance that I remembered while listening to his testimony was the lead treatment his thoughts received following an early-year 2012 electronic logs/harrassment listening session the FMCSA convened out in Washington State during a CVSA meeting, part of their attempt at due diligence at the time to satisfy the court order that vacated the original e-log limited mandate. Curl there demonstrated clearly that currently in place technology was sufficient to enforce drivers’ hours with precision similar to what you’d get from an electronic log. As such, putting a mandate to use the devices on the entire industry was unncecessary, he said. You can track back through that full piece via this link. 

Yesterday in the hours hearing, he brought the similarly well-reasoned perspective of a small business owner to the proceedings, in particular in his insistence on attention to safety and economic issues in small-business trucking surely as pressing as, if not more pressing than, the hours of service. He urged Congress and FMCSA to fast-track a fix to detention time and pay issues as well as Entry Level Driver Training standards.

Find video of the entire hearing below. For Curl’s portion of the testimony, you can fast-forward to the second hour, minute 11 (1:11). Below the video, find our latest Voices podcast with driver views on economic and safety impacts of the new hours rule, as well as links to previous features.   

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