American Central Transport Names Next President

Phil Wilt Photo: American Central Transport

American Central Transport COO Phil Wilt will take on the title of president, replacing Tom Kretsinger, who's dropping president from his title as president/CEO and becoming chairman of the board and CEO.

The Liberty, Mo.-based dry van truckload carrier serves the eastern U.S.

“Phil has done an outstanding job as our COO and making him president will expand his leadership to the entire company," said Kretsinger. "We at ACT are used to change, and it's one of the things that make us strong. It's the team that counts and our team is the best in trucking."

Wilt joined ACT in 2006 as senior vice president of human resources and safety and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2014. He holds a BS degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in economics and education.

"Our management team has been working for a long time to achieve our company's goals for success and I look forward to continuing our progress in the days ahead," said Wilt.

Related: ACT Raises Pay for Company Drivers and Owner Operators

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

AT&T Launches Telematics Solution for Commercial Fleets

Photo courtesy of AT&T Partner Exchange.

AT&T is rolling out a GPS-based fleet, asset and mobile workforce solution designed to help commercial fleets and other business customers track and manage vehicles, high-value assets, and mobile workers, AT&T announced.

AT&T will offer AT&T Fleet Complete through its Partner Exchange platform in a partnership with Toronto-based Fleet Complete, a Canadian telematics vendor.

"With AT&T Fleet Complete, solution providers can tap into new ways to address real business issues for their customers, such as improving fleet utilization, reducing fuel costs, increasing productivity and maintaining compliance," said Sue Galvanek, vice president of marketing, pricing and product solutions for AT&T Partner Exchange.

AT&T Fleet Complete is a prepackaged solution offering five options for customers, including fleet tracking, asset tracking, hours of service, dispatch, and resource tracking.

The Fleet Tracker provides near real-time fleet and vehicle diagnostic data to help businesses reduce fuel, insurance, maintenance and other related costs. It can also help reduce their carbon footprint.

The Assest Tracker manages high-value assets and includes a rechargeable battery-based hardware.

The House of Service product automates a driver's logbook, helping with FMCSA compliance. The Dispatch offering tracks and helps manage mobile workers. When paired with AT&T Enhanced Push-to-Talk, it offers improved dispatch communication.

The Resource Tracker helps keep track of a business' workforce through a cloud-based app. The mobile solution lets dispatchers send activities to mobile workers based on geographical position and workload, which can save time and money.

"We trialed AT&T Fleet Complete earlier this year and couldn't be more excited to have access to this solution," said Douglas Riewski, VP of Business Development, Pavo Communications. "Using it with AT&T Enhanced Push-to-Talk is a homerun for our business. This is the type of innovation we look to AT&T Partner Exchange to deliver to help us keep our customers happy and maintain our edge."

AT&T Fleet Complete is just one of several program additions that AT&T Partner Exchange has recently made to help accelerate solution providers' success with mobility. AT&T also offers its AT&T Fleet Manager solution to government fleets in a partnership with BSM Technologies' Webtech Wireless unit.

Related: AT&T Simulates Distracted Driving

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

OOIDA Fires Back on ELD Rule Ahead of September Court Hearing

Photo: Omnitracs

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has filed a reply brief to the government's arguments defending its controversial electronic logging mandate in the association's lawsuit, scheduled to be heard by a federal court next month.

OOIDA is seeking an injunction to halt the implementation of the rule.

Friday, Aug. 12, OOIDA filed a reply brief in the suit, originally filed last December only a day after the final rule was published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The reply brief is a legal precursor to oral arguments on Sept. 13.OOIDA's case hinges on five arguments:

The ELD mandate affects an estimated 3 million interstate drivers of vehicles manufactured after model year 2000. By December 2017, drivers will have to replace paper logbooks with electronic devices.

The association previously challenged a similar mandate in August 2011 and the court ruled in favor of OOIDA's arguments that the previous rule did not protect drivers against harassment. FMCSA went back to the drawing board to rewrite the rule in a way that would address the court's concerns.

With this track record of derailing mandatory e-logs once before, the association is confident it can do it again.

In June, FMCSA forcefully defended the ELD rule in a brief that it was required to submit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In that brief, FMCSA argued that the ELD rule is constitutional as it does not violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches; that the mandate does not impinge on drivers' rights to privacy, and that its cost-benefit analysis “amply supports” the rulemaking.

The reply brief filed by OOIDA Friday is in response to FMCSA's brief. According to an article on the website of association magazine Land Line, the brief counters the agency's arguments thus:

1. Do ELDs do what they're supposed to do? In the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) highway bill, Congress directed FMCSA to “prescribe regulations … requiring that a commercial motor vehicle … be equipped with an electronic logging device … capable of recording a driver's hours of service and duty status accurately and automatically.”

However, OOIDA says ELDs as mandated don't do this, because they can't automatically track non-driving on-duty time.

2. Does the law protect against driver harassment? This is the key issue that OOIDA used to prevail in its 2011 lawsuit, and the association says the agency still has not addressed this issue satisfactorily, despite an express prohibition on driver harassment, with civil penalties for violations and a procedure for drivers to file written complaints of harassment by a carrier.

“FMCSA takes the position that it is not required to address all instances of harassment, but only those related to HOS violations, and then only harassment perpetrated by motor carriers,” the OOIDA brief states.

3. Do they save more than they cost? OOIDA's suit claims FMCSA has no proof that ELDs improve hours of service compliance or reduce crashes. In its June brief, FMCSA pointed out that “as an initial matter,” it was “not statutorily required to do a cost-benefit analysis at all, so any objection to that analysis provides no basis to vacate the rule.” Nevertheless, FMCSA said its own analysis, using data from motor carriers already using electronic logs, fully supports the rule. OOIDA's reply brief disagrees, saying “FMCSA has provided no valid evidentiary support for its conclusion that ELDs will reduce HOS violations or crash risk.”

The association says FMCSA has not studied the effectiveness of the devices, and ignored a 2014 study that found no differences between trucks using electronic logs and trucks not using them in recordable and fatigue-related crash rates.

4. Does an ELD constitute unreasonable search? FMCSA in its June brief flatly declared that “ELDs do not violate the Fourth Amendment. ELDs are neither a ‘search' nor a ‘seizure' under the Fourth Amendment. ELDs are not surreptitiously attached to a vehicle by the government, but are installed by a motor carrier openly and pursuant to regulation with the advanced knowledge of the carrier and driver, who effectively consent to their installation and use by voluntarily participating the commercial motor carrier industry.”

OOIDA's reply brief points to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling against law enforcement agencies placing GPS or other tracking devices on private citizens' vehicles without a warrant. OOIDA dismissed FMCSA's argument that trucking is a “pervasively regulated” industry and that drivers are giving their consent to search merely by agreeing to participate in the industry.

5. Do they violate driver privacy? FMCSA in its brief said the rule “takes appropriate measures to preserve the confidentiality of personal data contained in ELDs, relying in part on existing regulations and federal law protecting the release of private information, as well as committing the agency to redact private information from the administrative record in an enforcement action, and further requiring motor carriers to protect private data consistent with sound business practices and requiring ELDs have secure access to data and use encryption methods while transferring data.”

FMCSA said the OOIDA brief “contains only vague assertions that the agency should have done more, without specifying exactly what additional procedures they desire or explaining why the provisions adopted are not ‘appropriate measures' as Congress required.”

In its reply, OOIDA said the agency is misrepresenting what Congress required.“FMCSA's truncation of the statutory language conveniently omits reference to the words ‘shall institute appropriate measures' and gratuitously represents that ‘Congress required the FMCSA to consider ‘appropriate measures.'”

The OOIDA brief goes on to detail ways data can be used to harass drivers, in unrelated criminal investigations for example.

Related from the archives: OOIDA Refutes Recent Electronic Logging Device Study (2014)

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

Love’s Roseburg, OR, reopens after fire

Less than five months after a fire damaged a Love's Travel Stop location in Roseburg, OR, Love's 312 opened last week with a number of improvements.

"First things first: The Arby's at our travel stop location in Roseburg has reopened. People have been asking about that," said General Manager Matt Gonsalves.

read more

The OEMs have stepped up

While the truck makers are keeping their some of their plans quiet about the technologies they plan to deploy to meet the anticipated Greenhouse Gas Phase 2 emissions standards, they are not just sitting idly by.

In a review of new Class 8 model trucks in the recent issue of Fleet Owner, the OEMs shared some changes they are making NOW to make their trucks more fuel efficient.

If you have not read the article here is brief recap of some of the changes coming for 2017 models:

read more

Vnomics awarded National Science Foundation Grant

Vnomics Corp., providers of True Fuel, announced it is providing matching funds, data and expertise to support research at the University of Rochester into the use of machine learning to improve the fuel efficiency of commercial vehicles. The company said its support is part of a grant awarded by the National Science Foundation for its Young Innovators Internship Program.

read more

A fire truck takes flght

Loadmasters with the 439th Airlift Wing, Air Force Reserve Command, load a 1982 Mack 1250 GPM pumper fire truck into the belly of a C-5B Galaxy cargo plane at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst NJ for a 3,700 mile journey to Managua, Nicaragua. Retired from the Mercer Engine No. 3 firefighting company of Princeton, NJ, this fire truck is being donated to a group of volunteer firefighters in Managua. (All photos courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense)