Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Is Cutting More Jobs Across Newspaper Group

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is slimming down its newspaper empire with more job cuts.

Shulkin intends to stay in VA post with White House support

Campaigning to keep his job, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Tuesday he had no intention of quitting despite blistering findings of travel abuses connected to his 11-day trip to Europe. He ...

The Driver Series

HDT's 3-Part Driver Series on truck drivers in 2018.

In the midst of an ever-changing trucking industry, trucking companies are finding new ways to rectruit, retain, and train truck drivers.

Driver Series Articles from the Print Issue

Part 1: Driver Pay - Making the Grade

Throwing money at a problem isn't always the solution. But if you need to find and keep long-haul truck drivers in today's competitive job market, how much to increase their pay — in one form or another — has to be a key tactical consideration.

Part 2: With Driver Training, Talk is Not Cheap

How you communicate with and train drivers can pay dividends in safe and efficient operations and in lower turnover.

Additional Articles:

Fleet Survey Shows Business is Great, Drivers are Scarce

The driver shortage is still affecting two-thirds of survey respondents, with a number commenting that if they could find the qualified drivers, there's plenty of business for them to add trucks to put them in.

DOT Digs into Data on Driver Detention

A DOT audit report finds that the FMCSA's current plan to collect data on driver detention is insufficient to the point that any such data collected “may not accurately describe how the diverse trucking industry experiences driver detention, which would limit any further analysis of [detention's] impacts.”

Uber: Self-Driving Trucks Could Help Alleviate Driver Shortage

Mixed fleets with self-driving long-haul trucks and traditional human-driven regional routes could help the trucking industry address the problem of an aging driver workforce.

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Goodyear Highlights Deeds of Highway Hero Finalists

Last year's Highway Hero winner, driver David Webb of Billings, Mont., recieving his award at MATS. Photo: Deborah Lockridge

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has named the finalists for its 35th annual Highway Hero Award, recognizing truck drivers who have put themselves in harm's way to help others.

Finalists for the 35th Goodyear Highway Hero Award include a driver who used his truck to end a high-speed chase involving state troopers and a stolen car; a driver whose quick thinking and skillful driving saved the life of a badly injured motorcyclist;, and a driver who administered first aid to a motorist who had been pierced through the neck by a broken steering wheel after crashing into a truck.

“Since 1983, Goodyear has honored professional truck drivers who have put themselves in harm's way to help others, making the Goodyear Highway Hero Award the oldest and most prestigious honor of its kind,” said Gary Medalis, marketing director, Goodyear. “It is our privilege to have recognized truck drivers for their extraordinary acts of heroism over the last three decades and we will continue this great tradition next month.”

In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the award, Goodyear is holding a special event at the 2018 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky.

Trucking industry journalists will evaluate the finalists and will select the 35th Goodyear Highway Hero Award recipient. The winner of the Goodyear Highway Hero Award will receive a special ring, a cash award, and a congratulatory trophy. Each of the other finalists will receive a cash prize as well as other items.

“We look forward to naming our next Highway Hero, honoring our Goodyear Highway Hero Award finalists, and celebrating 35 years of the Goodyear Highway Hero Award program next month,” said Medalis.

Here are this year's Goodyear Highway Hero Award finalists and their stories:

Brian Bucenell, ...Read the rest of this story

Truckload Linehaul, Intermodal Rates at or Near Record Highs

Measures of truckload line haul rates and intermodal rates showed continued increases in January, according to newly released figures from one freight payment processor.

The Cass Truckload Linehaul Index continued the acceleration established in November and December, when it moved up 6.3% and 6.2% respectively, by posting a 6.5% year-over-year gain last month. This latest reading of 133.5 is just shy of December's 134.5 all-time high.

After signaling an industrial recession in the U.S. and being negative for 13 months in a row (from March 2016 through March 2017), the index has not only been positive now for ten months in a row, but the strength is continuing, according to Donald Broughton, analyst and commentator for the Cass Indexes.

"In just the last seven months, our pricing forecast has increased from -1% to 2%, to 6% to 8%, and now giving us reason to believe the risk to our estimate continues to be to the upside," he said. "The current strength being reported in spot rates tells us contract pricing rates should keep rates in positive territory well into 2018."

The Cass Truckload Linehaul Index measures market fluctuations in per-mile truckload pricing that isolates the linehaul component of full truckload costs from others, such as fuel and accessorials, providing a reflection of trends in baseline truckload prices.

Meantime, the Cass Intermodal Price Index showed total intermodal pricing rose 5% in January, with the measure at a record high of 141.4 plus a three-month moving average increase of 4.3%.

January marked the 16th consecutive month of increases, and pricing momentum continues to strengthen, according to Broughton, as higher diesel prices are creating demand and pricing power for domestic intermodal.

"Longer term, we continue to foresee oil trading in the $45 to $65 [per barrel] range and diesel in the $2.50 to $3.25 [per gallon] range ...Read the rest of this story

Test Drive: Cummins X12 Diesel Engine Version 2.0

We tested our X12 in a Cascadia daycab on Interstate and two-lane highways in Western New York, near Cummins' Jamestown plant. Photos: Jim Park

Cummins' new X12 engine is slated to hit the street sometime early this year, probably shortly after its formal launch in February or March. The engine was introduced in August 2016, and I had a short drive with it then around the 7-mile loop track at the Transportation Research Center in East Liberty, Ohio. It wasn't much of an opportunity to get to know the engine, but it whet my appetite. Cummins invited me to drive the new X12 this past November on a longer real-world route, starting from the plant in Jamestown, New York, where the X12 is to be built.

The X12 has a displacement of 11.4 liters, which, according to conventional mathematical rounding principles, should have caused the engine to be named X11. However, the engine punches above its weight, and to call it X11 would have diminished some of its brightest attributes. Tipping the scales at just 2,050 pounds, it has the highest power-to-weight ratio of any heavy-duty engine from 10 liters to 16 liters in size. It's lighter than any 11-liter block on the market (albeit subject to interpretation on how “dry weight” is determined). And its published ratings put it squarely in 13-liter to 15-liter territory for torque and horsepower.

<img src="http://www.automotive-fleet.com/fc_images/articles/m-cummins-x12-underhood-1.jpg" border="0" alt="

The unpainted parts remind us that this is a pre-production, but production-ready, engine.

Under the hood

Development on the X12 began in 2013 in close collaboration China's Beiqi Foton Motor Co. There it was known as the ISG. The version of the engine we'll see here in the next month or so has been almost completely re-engineered. Cummins tells me that close to 90% of the engine saw some re-engineering to ready ...Read the rest of this story

The Case for On-Board Electrification in Class 8 Trucks

This schematic drawing illustrates some of the potential for off-boarding drive components to lessen parasitic loads on engines. Source: Eaton

The business case for electric trucks is no longer in any doubt. Even with their limited range, battery powered light- and medium-duty trucks work very well in applications tailored to those constraints.

While the case for battery-powered, long-haul Class 8s is still iffy, there's no question that on-board electrification can take some of the load off the main diesel engine, allowing for greater operational flexibility and efficiency.

The move toward 48-volt electrical systems is still in its infancy, but SuperTruck concept fuel efficiency truck projects from Volvo and Navistar have shown they work. Likely applications for 48-volt power include HVAC, all-electric power steering, accessory drives like coolant and oil pumps, air compressors, engine fans, hybridization, etc., possibly right up to an electromechanical valve-train that can be very precisely controlled for improved engine efficiency (still maybe a decade away). We're very restrained today by our legacy 12-volt systems, but the SuperTruck research is helping to build a compelling case for a faster move up the voltage ladder.

Larry Bennett, Eaton director of engineering, technology and innovation, says electrification will play a pivotal role in trucking powertrain technology over the coming decade. “Engine makers would like to take as much as they can off the engine itself to reduce all those parasitic losses,” he says. “We can drive a lot of it off-board, and do a great deal more in terms of power management and distribution, all using the transmission as the controller.”

Bennett says, for example, the generator and starter could be mounted on the transmission rather than the engine. It would allow electrical power to be generated while driving, but also, if engine-off coasting is developed, the transmission would continue generating power (driven by the rear ...Read the rest of this story