Bridge Report Finds Nearly 56,000 Bridges Still Need Attention

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association published an  interactive map showing the states with the highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges. Source: ARTBA

The U.S. Department of Transportation has released the 2016 National Bridge Inventory, which indicates that 55,710 bridges are structurally compromised-- including 13,000 that need replacement, widening, or major reconstruction.

The information was analyzed by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. The information was compiled into ARTBA's 2017 Bridge Report.

The report is produced annually and by comparing 2016 to 2015's National Bridge Inventory, ARTBA found that progress has been slow in repairing bridges.

The inventory of structurally deficient bridges only decreased by 0.5% in a year's time. At that pace, it would take more than 20 years to address all of the problems structures.

“America's highway network is woefully underperforming. It is outdated, overused, underfunded and in desperate need of modernization,” said Alison Premo Black, chief economist of ARTBA. “State and local transportation departments haven't been provided the resources to keep pace with the nation's bridge needs.”

About 1,900 of the bridges are on the Interstate Highway System, affecting millions of Americans. The nation's cars, trucks, and buses cross the 55,710 bridges around 185 million times every day. While these bridges may not be imminently unsafe, their inclusion in the U.S. DOT report indicates that they are in need of attention.

The ARTBA report is presented through an interactive map of the United States, in which each state is color-coded based on the percentage of structurally deficient bridges it contains. By clicking on a state, a separate report on the state can be accessed, breaking down the breadth of the problem as well as the locations of each bridge.

Iowa was the state with the highest number of structurally deficient bridges at 4,968, while Rhode Island was the state with the highest percentage ...Read the rest of this story

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Driver Wellness Starts at Work

Photo: Melton Truck Lines

Building a healthy lifestyle can be hard work – especially for truck drivers, who are constantly on the go and constantly under pressure to be on the go. But the rewards that accrue when truckers live and work more healthfully are nothing to sneeze at, from being safer on the road to incurring lower medical and insurance costs to enjoying a higher quality of life for themselves and their loved ones.

Trucking companies benefit as well when their drivers are healthier. By implementing driver-oriented wellness programs, fleets are likely to see accident rates drop, which lowers operating costs and liability exposure. And driver satisfaction goes up, which cuts turnover and attracts new hires.

While no one opens a trucking company to hang out a medical shingle, a trucker's workplace is the logical place to reach out to him or her about medical or lifestyle issues that could threaten their livelihood or physical well-being.

Think of a driver health and wellness program as a home base drivers can start from and return to for general information as well as specific guidance. Education, not scolding, should be the key aim. Recognition and/or incentives can be deployed to encourage drivers to make healthy changes and attain various goals, such as reducing weight and quitting smoking.

While it may seem that everywhere you turn, there's new health data to absorb, any number of unbiased studies point to where fleets could direct their efforts to boost driver health and wellness.

A compelling one, conducted by the University of Utah School of Medicine and published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found that two specific indicators of poor health management – high pulse pressure (a blood-pressure measurement) and fatigue – were “highly associated” with truckers' crash risk (as was the use of cell phones ...Read the rest of this story

Spot market perception and actuality

Every day, hundreds of thousands truck loads are moved in the nation. The loads include “last mile” loads, long haul (over 500 miles), and short haul (less than 500 miles). Approximately one third of all truck loads are moved in the spot market. The spot market is made up of transactional based freight where trucks and loads are usually negotiated and tendered on a one-by-one basis.

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Spot Truckload Van, Reefer Rates Fall While Flatbeds Continue Climbing

The flatbed market continued to be the brightest of the three major spot truckload sectors last week, according to new numbers released by DAT Solutions, based on activity from its load boards.

The national average spot rate for flatbed freight hit $1.96 per mile during the week ending Feb. 11, the fourth straight week of increases and a 4 cents jump compared to the previous week.

Flatbed rates in some lanes went well past the $2 per mile mark but there were some exceptions:

All reported rates include fuel surcharges. This latest activity happened as the average national price of on-highway diesel added 1 cent last week to $2.57 per gallon.

The number of flatbed load posts last week rose 11% while truck posts declined 1%. This sent the flatbed load-to-truck ratio up 13% to 24.6 loads per truck nationally.

In contrast, average rates for spot van and refrigerated freight declined again, a typical pattern for January and February.

This happened as overall spot load postings on the DAT network increased 1.7% while the number of trucks gained 3.2%, indicating strong freight volumes and available capacity for this time of year, according to the freight-matching service provider

The reefer load-to-truck ratio slipped from 5.2 to 4.7 loads per truck nationally as the number of posted reefer loads fell 7% and capacity decreased 5% last week. The average reefer rate edged down 2 cents to $1.89 per mile.

The hot market for reefers was Miami, where there was a burst of potato shipments. The better-paying lanes out of Miami last week include:

Volume also spiked out of ...Read the rest of this story

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