Tag: Roadside Attractions: Page 32

Channel 19

News bytes: Diesel prices, Driving sans pants, Willie’s Place to be Petro

Commodities speculation back in the spotlight  The commodities futures positions limits problem is back in the TV news via a series on liberal populist host Ed Schultz’ “Ed Show” this week. The first spot in the series distilled the history of the elimination of position limits that I’ve written about some over the years, most […]

March 9, 2011

Channel 19

Happiness; UK producers seek ‘World’s Toughest Trucker’

Happiness There’s no other way to describe this picture, eh? It’s Virginia Kirk, general manager of the TA C-store and fuel islands in Nashville, Tenn., during the location’s grand reopening last week. It’s “awesome” to be back up and running, she told me Friday after being closed for nine months. Kirk’s addition of the “Welcome to […]

March 8, 2011

Channel 19

FMCSA listens: PSP update clarifies co-driver inspection violations

While I’m on the subject of CSA, I thought I’d share a bit of an update to this month’s Truckers News CSA cover story. In it, during dicussion of the DataQs system and Ed Webb’s case (which I wrote about yesterday), OOIDA’s Joe Rajkovacz raises a very particular problem with Pre-Employment Screening Program driver inspection/crash […]

March 4, 2011

Channel 19

One driver’s war: Taming CSA and the DataQs challenge process

I finally got the the opportunity to meet Boonville, Ind.-based driver Ed Webb (pictured) in person yesterday afternoon at the newly reopened downtown TA here in Nashville (speaking of which, Aaron Tippen’s performing tomorrow morning there at 10 a.m. and 12 noon if you’re headed down Tennessee way today). Webb was a source in my […]

March 3, 2011

Channel 19

Truckstops = Coffeehouses with copious rig parking?

A new index tracking sales of goods and services at highway truckstops, the McLane-NATSO quarterly index, recently tracked an interesting rise in the sale of hot beverages like coffees, cappucinos and teas at truckstops. That category of sales jumped 34 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year, suggesting to me at least a little […]

March 2, 2011

Channel 19

‘American Trucker’ rebroadcasts; my interview with the host

If you missed the debut episodes of the “American Trucker” series last Thursday on the Speed Channel, it’s being rebroadcast tonight at 8 and 11 p.m. ET, and 8 a.m. tomorrow. The next new episodes follow on Thursday, with “Bandit and the Snowman” and “Robb and the Bear,” the latter likely to include sneak-peek material […]

March 1, 2011

Channel 19

Notable independent Colorado truck stop closes shop; chance encounters on the road

The Rocky Mountain Travel Center just north of Pueblo, Colo., on I-25 exit 110 closed up shop yesterday, reported Carlos Mora of the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper. According to Mora’s report, the owner cites a confluence of factors for the demise of the near-half-century-old family business that was the truck stop and travel plaza. Chief among […]

February 25, 2011

Channel 19

Correcting the ‘B.J. & the Bear’ truck replica record

When I wrote about the new “American Trucker” TV series, premiering tonight on the Speed Channel, I mentioned their sample episode, in which host Robb Mariani runs through the build/restoration process on Paul Sagehorn’s original “B.J. & the Bear” Kenworth K100 and matching trailer, and included a photo of Paul with his other, 1984 Kenworth […]

February 24, 2011

Channel 19

Mack CEO shined as plant worker on ‘Undercover Boss’

This past Sunday, as we wrote here last week, Mack Trucks CEO Denny Slagle appeared on the popular CBS show Undercover Boss disguised in a mustache, cap, and toupee. Slagle (pictured, right) struggled to install front covers straight on 11-liter engines at the Hagerstown, Md., engine plant, took corners too fast driving a high-lifting fork […]

February 22, 2011

Channel 19

South African driver strike approaching closure after a violent week

Always a shame to see haulers around the world taking out their on-road frustrations on their peers. The news in South Africa this morning (photo of striking drivers by Lerato Maduna) is that, after a week of work stoppage by drivers’ unions in that nation that saw more than a little violence perpetrated on haulers […]

February 21, 2011

Channel 19

Owner-operator John Crozman emerges from Dakota blizzard hailed a hero

“I’ve been doing this a long time, 30 years,” says owner-operator John Crozman (pictured) of his long trucking career, for the past two years leased to Albertville, Minn.-based Long Haul Trucking. Over those three decades, like so many haulers, he’s seen his fair share of on-highway rescue action. “It’s not a problem. You come upon […]

February 17, 2011

Channel 19

Interviewing Dan Heister, Overdrive’s Trucker of the Year

In this month’s issue of Overdrive, I wrote about the recession-surviving prowess of Boyd Bros.-leased owner-operator Dan Heister (pictured), whose mastery of his short-medium haul niche in Boyd’s self-dispatch/percentage-pay Independent Express program brought him through the really bad times in 2008 to ever-greater success this year. In addition to recently purchasing what amounts to a […]

February 16, 2011