Truck driver Robert Palm knows what it's like to be on the road, away from friends and family when a medical emergency strikes. The 35-year highway veteran was severely injured in a crash in 1997. He was hospitalized again in 2010, far from his home, with a ruptured appendix.
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Pardon me if I am not excited about Amazon.com's June announcement that it plans to purchase Whole Foods Market. While some people, both inside and outside of trucking, are predicting it will be a game-changer after it closes sometime in the second half of this year, it may not be as big of a deal for trucking as they think.
For starters, Whole Foods captured just 1.7% of the $750 billion grocery market last year. In contrast, Walmart has the largest slice at 17.3%. When you consider that Walmart and seven other companies have a combined market share of nearly half of the U.S. market, it's easy to see that Amazon is getting only a small slice of the nation's grocery pie.
Second, while Amazon is no doubt king of online sales, it has little experience running brick and mortar stores. With its purchase of Whole Foods, it gets more than 460 of them, and 87,000 additional employees. Only recently has Amazon branched out from its online confines, opening just a few dozen small “pop up” stores in malls to showcase its electronics devices, plus less than a dozen bookstores.
Third, while experts have speculated that the deal will be a big boost for the grocery delivery market (helping Amazon broaden its fledgling AmazonFresh and Amazon Go grocery offerings), the fact is that delivering groceries, especially perishables, isn't the same as delivering books and music.
Amazon.com got its start delivering these items to customers and then branched out to most any kind of item you could need (and many you don't.) But these items don't go bad if it takes a while for them to get delivered. Perishable items are another matter. Most of the perishable items Amazon currently offers are fulfilled by third-party retailers. In other words, they leave it to someone else ...Read the rest of this story
Trail King announced the introduction of the Commercial MG-HG detachable gooseneck trailer, featuring interchangeable gooseneck styles.
The Commercial MG-HG trailer has been engineered for corrosion resistance, with moisture trapping areas being designed out of the structure of the trailer. This has the effect of minimizing the build-up of road debris and moisture accumulation that leads to corrosion.
The trailer is primed and painted before the air, hydraulic, and electrical liens and decking are installed for increased protection from the elements. Optional lightweight, aluminum features, including aluminum I-beam or box beam cross members, outer rails, decking, and front and rear channels, provide even more corrosion resistance.
It comes standard with the full-width mechanical gooseneck and is engineered to accommodate four interchangeable gooseneck styles. Goosenecks can be ordered in either full-width or narrow-width, and mechanical or hydraulic to accommodate different customer demands and provide maximum flexibility.
“Our newest detachable gooseneck delivers the strength and dependable performance that Trail King is known for,” said Rick Farris, vice president of sales and marketing for Trail King Industries. “The Commercial MG-HG represents the next step in the evolution of our mechanical gooseneck trailer. The most notable demonstration of this is its ability to accommodate a variety of gooseneck styles. The Commercial MG-HG offers the most standard equipment of any trailer of its kind on the market, plus a variety of options, for the ultimate in hauling versatility.”
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Denso Corp. says it's starting a new company, NSITEXE Inc., to design and develop semiconductor IP cores – key semiconductor components for automated driving technology, according to the company.
Advanced electronic controls are needed for in-vehicle technologies such as advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving in next-generation vehicles. Denso's new company will develop high-performance, low-power semiconductors that will be required in these vehicle technologies to process large amounts of data from sensors and external communications at a high speed. The data is used to help the systems make decisions for automated driving functions.
NSITEXE's next-generation processors will be designed to collect and analyze that sensor and communications data to determine what the vehicle needs to do. The semiconductor IP Cores optimized for in-vehicle applications will then be licensed to in-vehicle microcomputer and system-on-a-chip manufacturers for use in driver assistance and automated vehicle systems.
The company will be established in September with an initial capital investment of around $1 million. It will be completely owned by Denso and be headed by Yukihide Niimi as president.
Related: Trucking Industry Debates Driver-Assistance Technologies
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...Read the rest of this storyImage via Zonar
">Image via Zonar
">Cummins Connected Diagnostics is now available to customers using Zonar's smart fleet management solution, offering critical information on engine maintenance and repair.
By obtaining data through Zonar's V3 telematics control unit, Cummins Connected Diagnostics wirelessly connects an engine to Cummins for immediate diagnosis of engine fault alerts. Using Cummins' algorithms, Connected Diagnostics prioritizes engine fault information and translates it into clear, actionable recommendations that are sent to operations managers.
With the report, fleet managers can intervene when service is needed immediately or proactively schedule a service event to prevent progressive damage to a vehicle.
"Offering even more of our customers access to Connected Diagnostics through Zonar's V3 device, we're able to deliver the information our customers need to avoid unexpected downtime and maintenance costs, as well as improve efficiencies across their operations," said Sherry Aaholm, vice president and chief information officer at Cummins.
Cummins Connected Diagnostics are available now on vehicles operating with Zonar's V3 solution. Existing Zonar customers can enable Connected Diagnostics with an over-the-air update.
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Related: The Modern Maintenance Manager: The Connected Shop
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...Read the rest of this story“Blind as a bat” makes sense, because bats have to use a kind of radar system to get around, right?
Yes and no. Some bats do use echolocation, but they aren't blind: All bat species have eyes and can see. Our knowledge of history and science is filled with these common misconceptions that are easily proven false.
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Stertil-Koni's ST 4600 is a four-post lift with designed for high-capacity lifting and suited to vehicles with low-ground clearance.
The ST 4600 has a capacity of 132,000 pounds with a 36-foot, 3-inch runway length. It also has the ability to handle various size wheelbases and raise vehicles to a height of 74-inches in 190 seconds.
The four-post lift can be installed on any suitable concrete floor through Stertil-Koni's distributor network. It features multiple safety enhances including a height measuring device and an electro-mechanical fall safety system. It is ALI certified to the provisions of ANSI/ALI ALCTV-current edition and offers the safety features of a platform lift, in which the vehicle wheels reside on drive-on runways. It also has an automatic overload protection device.
Other ST 4600 features include an internal air-line kit and optional jacking beams that can lift axles off the runways providing wheels-free access. Additional accessories include LED lighting sets and an anti-skid runway coating.
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