Tag: overdrive: Page 9

Channel 19

National Seating sweepstakes: Do you need a new seat?

If so, here’s your chance to get one free of charge. Get on over to this website, which is offering owner-operators the chance to win a brand-new premium National Commodore seat (pictured) by sharing a shot of your current seat and any anecdotes detailing what you like about it and what could make you like it […]

June 19, 2012

Channel 19

Onboard recorder integrates with Google Earth

The PeopleNet company announced two weeks back that it had integrated some of the onboard data-recording capabilities of its EOBR units with Google Earth in order to provide back-office staff a bird’s eye, 3-D-type view of critical events. Check out the picture here, which appears to show acceleration/braking on a right-hand curve. “In direct response […]

June 19, 2012

Channel 19

Farm to market in style — Bill Blankenship’s 1978 W900A

Bill Blankenship, who with his son, Jerry, runs the McMinnville-based Blankenship Farms & Nursery business, found this member of the 1978 class of Kenworth’s long-running W900 model eight years ago, buying it to haul the products of his business. Today, after a long restore-and-rebuild process, he hauls trees to customers week-in, week-out — “32 trips […]

June 17, 2012

Channel 19

Vegas trucking tweets and Music City peeps

The Great West Truck Show gets going today out in Las Vegas, running through Saturday with vendor exhibits, the Custom Rigs Pride & Polish competition, CCJ‘s Fleet Executive Conference (under way as of yesterday — some news here from the first panel on challenges and opportunities trucking the rarefied California environment of late) and more. Follow Overdrive‘s Twitter feed @OverdriveUpdate — […]

June 14, 2012

Channel 19

Would the professional drivers please raise hands?

At a fueling station in Dayton, Ohio, Kevin Burch, President of the Jet Express truck line, saw a decal (pictured) on the side of a flatbed as he was fueling. The message, “This truck helps build homes for our troops,” was on a flatbed in the operation of a Volvo Rents delivery fleet. Burch took […]

June 13, 2012

Overdrive Extra

World’s Toughest Trucker contestants at Great West

Drivers Jason Johnson and William Carlos “L.A. Rookie” Weekley (pictured) will be joining representatives of the Truck It Smart load matching service at their booth in Las Vegas at the Great West Truck Show, beginning Thursday. Not only have both drivers proven they can hang hauling loads in the Australian Outback and in the Himalayas, […]

June 12, 2012

Channel 19

Heads-up: Senate EOBR mandate gets a push

The mandate for interstate carriers in the United States to use electronic onboard recorders for hours of service tracking that is in the Senate’s two-year highway bill proposal — S. 1813, currently in conference with a House six-month temporary reauthorization and experiencing no shortage of debate — got a little push from a few big players […]

June 12, 2012

Channel 19

Truckers to DOT: ‘Smartphones are winning’

Smartphones are whipping the Department of Transportation in the battle for the attention of the motoring public, wrote Whitesboro, Texas-based Pennco Transportation driver Martin Groseclose on Overdrive’s Facebook page, in response to last week’s news of the DOT’s strategy for dealing with the epidemic of four-wheeler distracted driving. If you missed said news, check it […]

June 12, 2012

Channel 19

Driver for Landstar-leased fleet in Oprah magazine

Cleveland-based Shannon “Sputter” Smith (pictured, courtesy of Women in Trucking), a driver for a Landstar-leased small fleet, got into on-highway hauling as the youngest child of a father who worked on trucks for a living. As told by Jeanne Marie Laskas in Oprah magazine, her story is an inspiring one for any woman thinking of […]

June 11, 2012

Overdrive Extra

Defining ‘gobbledygook’ with driver Sandy Long

Missouri-based Weston Transportation driver Sandy Long, blogging here, this morning laid down a primer for owner-operators and drivers on the term gobbledygook, defined by Wester’s as “wordy and generally unintelligible jargon.” She found some examples of it in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s postponed proposal (from last year) to mandate electronic onboard recorders for […]

June 11, 2012

Channel 19

Two awesome class 8 motor coaches

The first comes by way of the Southeastern Regional Truck Show and the awesome pair of Hyler Bracey and Cass Flagg, the former of whom you may well remember as one of the folks behind the “Big Horn” moving museum(click through that link for a story about its conception.Some years later, Bracey was looking for […]

June 10, 2012

Overdrive Extra

Heat: Your tires’ No. 1 enemy

The folks at GITI Tire reminded us of this in their most recent newsletter, citing an article from the Saturday Evening Post that estimated 80 percent of tire failures were due to underinflation — the article appeared in 1928, and “nothing has changed,” the company said. It’s a no-brainer, really, but how many times have […]

June 9, 2012