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• A truck with a wonky load was seen driving down a busy freeway in Melbourne
• The driver seemed oblivious of the risk they were posing to other motorists
• Outraged Reddit users called for the driver to have his license revoked
  

Drivers have been left somewhat concerned after an un-roadworthy truck was spotted driving down a busy freeway.

The unstable vehicle in Monash, Melbourne, looked like it was accident waiting to happen as it leaned heavily to one side.

Footage of the dodgy truck has since emerged on Reddit. Its heavy load appears to be held together by thin straps, which are not enough to keep the truck's load in place.

Shocking footage has emerged on Reddit of a completely unroadworthy truck driving down a busy freeway in Monash, Melbourne

Rather than being held in place in the centre, the load leaned worryingly to the right.

The driver of the truck appeared either unperturbed or blissfully unaware of the risk his vehicle posed to surrounding drivers.

The dodgy vehicle was caught on camera by a driver travelling behind the truck.

'Ring the police before this idiot kills someone,' one outraged Reddit user commented.

Another called for the driver to have his license removed because he is 'too dangerous to be on the road' and it is 'only a matter of time until he kills someone.'

'Lucky I was going the other way,' one person remarked.

Source of article click here : Daily Mail

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations and Bridgestone Canada are informing customers that Bridgestone and Firestone truck tires will increase in price Nov. 9.

Bandag retreads sold in the U.S. and Canada will also be affected. National account, national fleet, and national fleet preferred prices will go up 10% on Bridgestone and Firestone tires, as well as Bandag retreads.

The price increase is in response to increased business costs and other market dynamics, the company said. The price increase will affect tires shipped on or after Nov. 9.

Source of article click here : Truck News

Mid-Bay Bridge is a toll bridge that runs across Choctawhatchee Bay in Okaloosa County, Florida. (Image Courtesy of Mid-Bay Bridge Authority)

The Florida Department of Transportation on Oct. 5 announced oversize and overweight restrictions on the Mid-Bay Bridge in Okaloosa County for vehicles over 80,000 pounds.

FDOT announced the temporary restrictions after a routine inspection discovered corrosion on a steel cable inside the bridge that reinforces concrete. The truck restrictions were announced as a preventative measure while a repair plan is created. The bridge remains open to passenger vehicles.

On average, 22,000 vehicles drive over the Mid-Bay Bridge each day. The bridge was built in 1993 and runs 3.6 miles over the Choctawhatchee Bay.

FDOT did not provide a timeframe for when the temporary truck restrictions would be lifted.

Source of article click here : Truckers News

Dive Brief:

• In a survey of more than 3,700 carriers in North America, 74% said they plan to add trucking capacity, with many citing a low availability of drivers as having the greatest impact on their business.
• With increased demand from shippers, a majority of carriers said revenue has grown by more than 5%, according to the survey conducted by Transporeon and released at Edge 2018, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' (CSCMP) conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
• The survey recommended shippers achieve a status of "shipper of choice" by "scheduling realistically, minimizing empty miles and paying your carriers sooner."

Dive Insight:

Shippers and carriers alike recognize the growing pains of rising freight demand. Many shippers are going to market earlier to secure freight transport and a majority of carriers plan to add capacity.

"In terms of equipment, the solution is relatively simple — buy more trucks," Transporeon's survey noted. And economic data show carriers are doing just that. Class 8 truck orders reached an all-time high of 52,400 units in August, according to FTR.

Purchasing more trucks doesn't necessarily get to the root of the problem, however. "The pinch point right now is drivers," Ed Moran, managing director of Transporeon, told Supply Chain Dive at Edge 2018.

Along with demographic shifts in the workforce, "there's more scrutiny on how [truck drivers] manage their own business with hours of service and the ELD (electronic logging device) mandate," Moran said, contributing to more drivers leaving the industry than entering it.

Before the mandate took effect, supply chains assumed a trucker could legally drive 500 miles in one day, according to Transporeon's survey. But with ELD's tracking hours, the limit is closer to 450 miles. "That means same-day shipments suddenly became next-day shipments for many shippers," the survey said.

The strain on the market has forced spot rates up, but contract rates haven't followed the same pattern. Carriers said in many instances they have had the ability to raise rates but decided against doing so.

"They have these long-term relationships with shippers," Krishna Gilligan, manager of marketing for North America at Transporeon, told Supply Chain Dive. "They weren't going to gouge them."

Source of article click here : Supplychain

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) — It may not be an easy job, but it is important. Each day, truck drivers transport goods across the country that consumers need.

But there has been some concern over the decline in those willing to take on the role as a truck driver. Long hours, hard work, and time away from family can all be deterring factors.

For decades, the industry has been dominated by men. However, a local group in Virginia wants to change that.

A partnership between Virginia Western and CDS Tractor Trailer training aims to get more women in the industry. The two created a massive billboard on an 18-wheeler that has been driving around the Roanoke area.

"We've seen a huge uptick in the number of women who have come into our program," said Crystal Kennedy. "We're up to about 10 percent of our student population being women."

Kennedy said some women have seen the billboard and pictured themselves behind the wheel of a truck for the first time.

Faye Clark is one of those women now training to become a truck driver.

"My favorite thing is knowing I can handle something that big on the road, and be able to transport the merchandise people needs these days," Clark said.

While the goal of the campaign is to get more women in the trucking industry, Kennedy said there is a broader lesson to take away from it all.

"We need to challenge some of the stereotypes coming out in today's industry," she said. "Whether it be males in nursing or women in trucking."

Source of article click here : WHSV

There are a handful of subjects like the driver shortage, truck parking, and hours-of-service (HoS) that never drop off trucking’s gripe list, they just jockey for position as the industry’s most critical problem. Right now, the most hotly debated issue is probably HoS, pumped up because of the U.S. electronic logging device (ELD) mandate and the shadow of similar regulation in Canada.

It comes down to this: how effective are HoS in keeping “fatigued” drivers off the road? It’s a common scenario: you might be perfectly rested, alert, and safe, but can’t get behind the wheel because you’re out of hours. Conversely, you have lots of hours left, but are so drowsy your eyelids are fluttering, yet you’re expected to keep going. In any case, ELDs effectively remove any vestige of a driver’s self-management of alertness from the equation, so the debate is largely hypothetical.

One of the most comprehensive pieces of research I’ve read that includes a forthright discussion of fatigue and road safety is a paper titled Addressing Human Factors In The Motor Carrier Industry In Canada, published in 2011 by Pierre Thiffault, a senior research analyst with Transport Canada. While wading through the complex scientific report is no walk in the park, it is nevertheless enlightening.

Thiffault acknowledges that HoS rules provide a necessary regulatory framework to ensure commercial drivers operate within essential sleep science principles.

However, while the regs theoretically address important risk factors, they have significant limitations. For one thing, they fall short of acknowledging that fatigue is a spectrum of brain alertness, from more to less; in other words, factoring the difference between drowsiness and fatigue into road safety.

While we’re moving toward fatigue, lots of other things are going on in our bodies and our brains. Inattention and drowsiness occur long before actual fatigue takes over, but if your logbook says you’ve got time left on the clock, you’re good to go.

So, while HoS regulations are necessary, they’re not sufficient to really address fatigue. The reality that most stakeholders either don’t understand or turn a blind eye to is that we spend a lot more time in a drowsy state, which in many respects is where the greatest risk lies.

It’s generally accepted that monotony or “highway hypnosis” decreases alertness and increases drowsiness, and there is a growing interest in examining the impact of automated vehicles and platooning on a driver’s alertness and vigilance.

Now, new research coming out of Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology shows that low-frequency vibrations can make drivers drowsy. CBC radio’s Quirks and Quarks recently featured an interview with Professor Stephen Robinson, head of the psychology department at the institute. Comprehensive experiments showed that low-frequency vibrations coming up through the floor of a vehicle and through the seat are causing driver drowsiness.

We’re not talking about sleep-deprived, end of shift drivers. Just 15 to 30 minutes of vibrations put the otherwise rested drivers at high risk of a crash.

Last year, researchers at the University of Waterloo conducted a field study to determine the impact of whole body vibration (WBV) on truck driver vigilance and discomfort. The results showed that new seat technology was able to reduce WBV exposure up to 55% and consequently reduce fatigue-related vigilance over the course of a day.

The adverse health effects of WBV, like muscular disorders and lower back pain, have been known for some time, but the work at Waterloo was the first to look at the effects of WBV on vigilance in truck drivers.

Whether it’s killer seats or boring terrain, most drivers understand that driving with drooping eyelids is risky, yet they tend to fight sleepiness with effort – windows down, radio up – and keep going.

In trying to understand the discrepancy between drivers’ actions and their knowledge of the safety risks of drowsy driving, Thiffault’s extensive discussions with drivers revealed that the way trucking “works” is a significant shaper of their motivations, and things like compensation schemes, scheduling, company policy, and carrier/shipper relations, weigh heavily on a driver’s decision to take the risk.

The bottom line is we’re living dangerously to count on HoS to be the only, or even the primary, means to address driver fatigue.

Perhaps if stakeholders paid more attention to emerging research that doesn’t lump alertness, drowsiness, and sleep into one big bundle labeled “fatigue” that can be managed by regulation, we might just be able to put HoS to rest.

Source of article click here : Truck News