Tag: big rigs: Page 4

Channel 19

Setting the pace with owner-operator Henry Albert

Sunday’s post on Overdrive 2007 Trucker of the Year Henry Albert’s blog caught my eye with what it says about thinking outside the box to ensure success in running an independent business. In the post, Albert visits an old haunt of his, Charlotte’s Metrolina speedway (the old grandstands here pictured by Albert), shuttered long since […]

November 8, 2011

Channel 19

How to get — and keep — the contract

Success in hauling with your own authority often requires negotiating contracts directly with shippers and keeping those contracts when bigger competitors come prowling. The father-son operation of John and Erick (pictured) Engbarth learned this by experience. Erick makes regular hauls from North Carolina to California loaded with plastics and usually carrying motorcycles back. When Engbarth […]

October 29, 2011

Channel 19

Friday Channel 19 news round-up: Cross-border trucking; ‘driver shortage’; and the 1 on the 53 and the 99

Separate but not equal That separation could be diminishing when it comes to U.S. and Mexican tucking, now that a new pilot program for cross-border long haul is under way.  In the wake of the Oct. 21 border ceremony at Laredo, when the first Mexican truck crossed as part of the new cross-border pilot program, […]

October 28, 2011

Channel 19

Scenes of Chrome & Class

That’s David Holbrook’s 1986 Peterbilt 359, winner of both Working Bobtail and People’s Choice awards in the second annual Chrome & Class Truck Show, held at the Rush Truck Center location in Smyrna, Tenn., on I-24 just southeast of Nashville. It was a much expanded show this year, with near double the number of entered […]

October 26, 2011

Channel 19

Memphis expo and Nashville show this weekend

Outreach, education in Memphis I had the good fortune of meeting Niki Brown and her husband, independent owner-operator Steve Nelson, this past weekend at the Truck Driver Social Media Convention (if you missed my reporting from the event, find two stories here and here) in Tunica, Miss., due south of their Memphis home base. They’re […]

October 19, 2011

Channel 19

‘Trucker Tools’ app continues expansion from coupons to comprehensive on-highway resource

The Truck Stop Coupons app, which debuted for the iPhone and Blackberry devices quite some time ago, quietly gained more and more functionality as time passed by — from real-time fuel prices for the comprehensive locator for diesel-fuel sellers embedded within it to searching functionality for truck stops according to their amenities offered. Now, the […]

October 12, 2011

Channel 19

Toolbox system made in the USA by and for owner-operators

Veteran owner-operator Jeff Zehrer of Minnesota (trucking since 1983) had long known the difficulty of finding the perfect-sized toolbox to fit in his sleeper’s side compartment. After 28 years of frustration, he decided to rectify the situation by designing his own. He wanted a toolbox that was sturdy, easily accessible, and could hold all his […]

October 3, 2011

Channel 19

Driver John Irish wins Carhartt sweepstakes

Remember the “Art you Carhartt tough?” sweepstakes? I wrote about the two finalists earlier this year, both of them with some behind-the-wheel experience. John Irish (pictured, middle), the ultimate winner, Carhartt announced, and his wife took the Grand Prize trip in August to Oregon for a competitive lumberjacking event covered by ESPN. Working long days […]

October 1, 2011

Channel 19

Citizen to accident lawyers: Lighten up on anti-truck ads

“How many times a day do you hear on TV ads from lawyers making statements such as, ‘big trucks can cause serious injuries?’” So asked a reader, Bill Hughes, of the Tennessean newspaper, based in my home base of Nashville. I know the folks he’s talking about, of course, as I’m sure do you in […]

September 28, 2011

Channel 19

Fitting insurance to the operator — trends in usage-based pricing

If you missed a feature about insurance costs I wrote for the August edition of Overdrive, it contained a brief item relative to how insurance companies determine customer risk — and as a result of that risk determination, premium rate pricing. Canal Insurance Chief Underwriting Officer Paul Brocklebank made brief mention in the piece about […]

September 27, 2011

Channel 19

Truckers lobbied to support National Pork Rind Day

This wouldn’t be the salty snack’s first appearance on the Channel 19 blog. For that, we’d have to go back to August 2010, when a driver choked on one and his rig left the roadway — and didn’t spur mainstream media calls for a ban on eating behind the wheel. All the same, Ohio-based Rudolph […]

September 22, 2011

Channel 19

‘Where’s the love’ for truckers? Dr. Love has the answer

Or at least he knows where it’s not: I-55 South into Hammond, La., from the No. 46 milemarker about 15 miles to I-12 (much smoother). Dr. Love, or truck driver B.G. Love, takes online viewers on a tour down this road in a video posted in June to the blog for his “Lovology” project, a personal […]

September 12, 2011