Kenny Vieth is about as steely-eyed as any of the analysts who cover trucking for a living. As president and senior analyst at ACT Research, he's also someone who takes a hard, unflinching look at industry issues, either, such as on how federal regulations are aggravating the truck driver shortage.
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...Read the rest of this storyDiesel prices have risen for the first time in five weeks, but the slight increase leaves the cost for a gallon about where it's been since the beginning of the year.
The average U.S. retail pump price for diesel climbed 0.7 cents in the Feb. 13 report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), to $2.565 per gallon. That's 58.5 cents higher than this time last year.
Prices rose in every region except for the Midwest, which posted a drop of 0.5 cents ($2.487),
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he ELD Mandate affecting millions of commercial drivers will be enforced beginning this December, 2017. If you are currently required to complete a Record of Duty Status (ROD), either occasionally or daily, then it's likely the ELD Mandate will affect you. So, what should you do? This whitepaper from Telogis will help you to navigate this ELD mandate in an effective way.
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...Read the rest of this storyDeborah Lockridge
" >Deborah Lockridge
" width="185" height="244">You can't maintain and repair your trucks without tools. But the tools available to you today go far beyond wrenches and multimeters, even beyond portable diagnostics tools or computer tablets.
The most powerful tools you may not be fully taking advantage of in the shop involve information.
Of course, you're holding one basic information tool in your hands. HDT has been bringing you the latest maintenance trends and practices, and basic how-to refreshers, for more than 90 years.
Last year, one of the things we told you about was using Lean and other waste-reduction systems in the shop. You don't even have to officially use Lean tools, but the ability to analyze your shop processes and make it easier and faster for your techs to do their jobs is a powerful tool.
That's just one way to use information as a tool. More data is available to the trucking industry today than ever before in its history. An amazing amount of information flows from the truck itself, much of it available at your fingertips via telematics even though the truck may be hundreds of miles away, from engine fault codes to the pressure in the tires.
In this issue's story on uptime, Randy McGregor tells about how he looked for patterns in the data to determine patterns in emissions system failures, allowing him to get ahead of potential problems before they resulted in downtime.
But it's easy to feel like you're over your head in a sea of data. One tool that can help is standardized Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) — a system that uses numbers to describe parts and maintenance activities. This series of codes is used to describe virtually every facet of the maintenance operation, from parts to manufacturers to technician work to vehicle location. Although it was unveiled in ...Read the rest of this story
