Channel 19: Page 143

‘Virtual deputies’ log long border hours

South Texas-based truck driver Robert Fahrenkamp made an appearance on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered news program yesterday in a piece about Blueservo.net, the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition’s effort to ramp up illegal immigration enforcement along the border by enlisting citizens. Fahrenkamp, a regular watcher of the Blueservo.net webcams (a still from one is […]

February 25, 2009

Channel 19

Kenworth featured in ‘Fortune’ mag

Fortune magazine’s Tech Transformations series last week detailed the supercomputing power harnessed via the web as part of truck maker Kenworth’s efforts to design the ultra-fuel-efficient T660 tractor currently on offer. Senior writer Jon Fortt leads with a chronicle of the exposure of the seemingly mundane mudflap to intense design effort. “>Most people don’t spend […]

February 24, 2009

Channel 19

Monster mash

Considering that a majority of truckers polled recently at eTrucker.com think space aliens may have visited sections of U.S. highway, it’s easy to imagine that a few drivers in big rigs may have felt an energy rush Monday morning when they and other motorists along Lamar Boulevard in Austin, Texas, slowed down after seeing digital […]

January 30, 2009

Channel 19

High-culture sailing… I mean, trucking

It’s not often truck drivers and truck driving show up in the New Yorker, a magazine associated most often with upscale urban types and lonely fiction writers. Until recently, the last time to my recollection was writer John McPhee’s ride with tank-hauling owner-operator Don Ainsworth, published in February 2003, which later was included in McPhee’s […]

January 29, 2009

Channel 19

A long-haul legend

A new book by former Truckers News staffer and contributor James Beach chronicles the history of Peterbilt trucks, from the birth of the diesel engine to the recent end of production of the flagship Model 379. Featured on the hardcover’s front is the Outlaw Customs “Dead Man’s Hand” 2001 custom 379, which won best limited […]

January 28, 2009

Channel 19

Poetry of the road

The Huffington Post has this story about the Australian Red Room Company poetry group’s search for three Australian haulers to collaborate with three mainstream poets on poems about life on the road. Red Room’s “Dust Poems” project hinges on a live event at the Overflow in Olympic Park in Sydney March 21 and, according to […]

January 27, 2009

Channel 19

Tippin tips his hat

blogger-post-footer”>Channel 19 is the blog version of the column of the same name featured in Overdrive: The Voice of the American Trucker. Todd Dills ([email protected]) is its author.

January 23, 2009

Channel 19

Tipping the tax man

With President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Federal Reserve having made a mistake that most owner-operators could have helped him avoid, we pause now before the impending vote by the Senate Finance Committee on whether to confirm Timothy Geithner to the post to issue a recommendation and a question:br /br /1. Truck owner-operators or […]

January 22, 2009

Channel 19

One day later

It’s official, folks. Though most truck drivers, according to our eTrucker.com polls taken just prior to the election, didn’t expect to vote for Barack Obama, he’s taken the reins of the government. However, if like that of many of your fellow citizens your mood is upbeat a day after the inauguration, we thought you might […]

January 21, 2009

Channel 19

New trucking novel

Inge Auerbacher, author of several memoirs relating to her survival of the Terezin concentration camp in Nazi Germany before and during World War II, is now the author of a madcap trucking suspense novel, Highway to New York: A Lady Truck Driver Adventure. The story’s protagonist, Lisa Stack, drives a Freightliner and runs with the […]

January 20, 2009

Channel 19

Can you tell the difference?

If it weren’t for Chicago’s United Center behind Terry Berry’s 1990s-era Passport auto-hauling Peterbilt, it’d be pretty difficult to determine which pic showed a 60-footer and which a mere five-footer. What started out as “a hobby” of one Chicago Class 8 truck enthusiast, says De-Elegant Model Truck Fleet founder Kuenn McClinton, is now a family […]

January 16, 2009

Channel 19

Rhapsody for rerouted rigs

The shortest truck bypass on record may be the 0.9 mile route connecting U.S. 441 South around Micanopy, Fla. Denizen and archivist Diane Cohen, who waged a 6-year grassroots campaign to preserve the antebellum brick buildings on the town square, persuaded the state legislature to approve the bypass, built in 1992 for $425,000. Prior to […]

January 15, 2009

Channel 19

Beverage preferences

The same year that a renegade truck owner-operator hauled a load of Coors beer to Georgia for the benefit of moviegoers in iSmokey amp; the Bandit, the AFL-CIO, joined by the Teamsters union, launched its 1977 boycott of Coors beer, citing antiunion practices. Joining that boycott at the behest of then San Francisco Teamsters local […]

January 14, 2009

Channel 19

A tiger in Louisiana — and we’re not talking LSU football

Louisiana scored a threepeat first in the Worst Roads category in Overdrive’s Highway Report Card survey this year, mostly for the reported awful condition of many sections of I-10 within the state’s borders, where recent battles of animal rights activists have hit the highway running. At exit 139 on I-10 sits the Tiger Truck Stop […]

January 13, 2009

Channel 19

Bama-magic, or lack thereof

Alabama state troopers teamed up with over-the-road truckers in the state in December to enforce highway laws. According to perennial results in Overdrive‘s Highway Report Card survey, the latest out this month on p. 24 of the magazine, the effort was a long time coming. Alabama, with only a single full-service scale house (on I-20 […]

January 12, 2009

Channel 19

Keystone confusion

In last year’s Highway Report Card survey, the watchword on the highways in the Keystone State was drama, as the perennial Worst Roads winner in Overdrive‘s annual survey waged a much-protested campaign to toll the second major east-west thoroughfare through the state, I-80. This year, the feds denied the state its application to toll the […]

January 9, 2009

Channel 19

Don’t mess with Texas

Texas has been on a five-year winning streak in the Best Roads category in Overdrive‘s Highway Report Card survey, out this month (in the digital magazine, flip to p. 24). That doesn’t mean, however, that its high-traffic highway network hasn’t seen a disproportionate share of controversy in recent years. Just a couple days ago, though, […]

January 8, 2009

Channel 19

One jarring ride through Detroit

It’s January, which means it’s “>Worst Roads” time for us at Overdrive, and “>Worst Roads” week here at the Channel 19 blog. Our yearly Highway Report Card survey, approaching its second full decade of existence, gives our owner-operator readers the chance to rank states and segments according to their level of washboarding, hobby-horsing, potholes, tolls, […]

January 7, 2009

Page 143 of 151

White Pine Paving's 'Change Order' 2000 W900L, revisited

From impressive airbrush work and laser cutouts of equipment often hauled behind the rig to a unique lighting package and extra-tall shifter, Maryland-based White Pine Paving's 2000 Kenworth W900L day cab brings style to local work.

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