Class 8 orders continued to fall in September, according to data tracked by ACT Research and FTR, though orders for Class 5-6 medium-duty units continues to remain steady.
ACT said 13,900 Class 8 vehicle net orders dipped to 13,900 units in September, some 28% below order intake during the same month in 2015, noted Steve Tam, the firm's vice president, in a statement.
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...Read the rest of this storyVolvo Active Driver Assist integrates the Bendix Wingman Fusion system, combining camera and radar for more accurate object detection. Photo: Volvo Trucks North America
" >Volvo Active Driver Assist integrates the Bendix Wingman Fusion system, combining camera and radar for more accurate object detection. Photo: Volvo Trucks North America
" width="240" height="320">Volvo Trucks North America now offers Bendix Wingman Fusion collision mitigation technology integrated right into the dash of its VNL and VNM model trucks.
At the American Trucking Associations Management Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas, the company unveiled Volvo Active Driver Assist, a comprehensive collision mitigation system that combines radar and camera capabilities to provide emergency braking and help drivers maintain a safe following distance.
The system is fully integrated into Volvo's Driver Information Display on the dash, so no additional display units or prep kits are needed.
Volvo Active Driver Assist is always active, providing stationary object detection with stationary vehicle braking. It sends audible and visual warnings if a non-moving, metallic object is detected in front of the truck. Braking assist will be applied – at speeds greater than 15 mph – when the system recognizes the stationary object as a vehicle, independent of whether cruise control is engaged. The driver will receive a warning up to 3.5 seconds before an imminent impact with the stationary vehicle, and, if no action is taken by the driver, Volvo Active Driver Assist will automatically engage the brakes.
When cruise control is engaged, Volvo Active Driver Assist will also help the driver maintain a set following distance behind the forward vehicle. If the forward vehicle slows down, Volvo Active Driver Assist will alert the driver and, if necessary, reduce throttle to the engine, apply the engine brake, downshift the Volvo I-Shift automated manual transmission and apply the foundation brakes and brake lights to help the driver maintain the set following distance gap based on the speed of the two vehicles.
Using a front bumper-mounted radar sensor and a windshield-mounted camera, ...Read the rest of this story
John Payne Photo courtesy of Stoughton Trailers
" >John Payne Photo courtesy of Stoughton Trailers
" width="250" height="278">Stoughton Trailers has named John Payne its new vice president of purchasing to its executive team, the company announced.
In his new role with Stoughton, Payne will be responsible for global supply chain functions in support of the company's business growth plans such as sourcing, purchasing and materials strategy. Prior to Stoughton, Payne was most recently the vice president of operations at the Lang Companies.
His other previous positions included director of materials and executive director of supply chain management at Cummins Filtration and materials manager at Fluid Management.
“John will be a valuable member of our leadership team and a major contributor to our strategic vision,” said Bob Wahlin, Stoughton Trailers president and CEO. “His expertise in purchasing strategy, process improvement and problem-solving will result in greater cost savings and streamlined efficiency for our growing company.”
Payne earned his B.S. in business systems analysis at Northern Illinois University where he studied accounting, finance and communications. He is an Institute of Supply Management Certified Purchasing Manager and earned the APICS Certification in Production and Inventory Management designation.
Stoughton Trailers is a Wisconsin-based, international supplier of semi-truck trailers for over-the-road trucking, as well as agricultural trailers and other specialty transportation equipment.
Related: Stoughton Trailers Expands Sales-Marketing Team
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...Read the rest of this storyRepresentatives from the FMCSA, ATA, ATRI and the truck stop group NATSO unveiled a new app designed to help truck drivers find available parking spaces. Photo: Evan Lockridge
">Representatives from the FMCSA, ATA, ATRI and the truck stop group NATSO unveiled a new app designed to help truck drivers find available parking spaces. Photo: Evan Lockridge
">Trucking and travel plaza leaders have launched the Park My Truck App to help professional drivers find available truck parking.
Drivers who need to stop and rest will be able to use the free mobile app to locate an available space. It was created as part of an initiative by the NATSO Foundation, NATSO, American Trucking Associations and the American Transportation Research Institute.
Park My Truck includes the total number of truck parking spaces for nearly 5,000 truckstops in the U.S. as well as information for some rest areas. Participants reporting available truck parking information include independent truckstops as well as chain locations representing 150,000 truck parking spaces.
"Finding a safe place to park is a consistent issue for drivers in our industry," said Chris Spear, ATA president and CEO. "While we would love to see the number of spaces increase, tightening state and federal highway budgets will limit the opportunity to expand parking capacity for the foreseeable future. It is important we have ways to let drivers know where the spaces currently exist, which is why this app, developed in cooperation with ATRI and NATSO, is so important. Directing drivers to safe parking spaces will give them opportunity to get the rest they need and the off-duty time they are required to have."
Park My Truck is accessible for free on the internet or through a smartphone app to all professional drivers, trucking fleets, state and other administrators of highway rest areas.
To contribute to the service, truck parking operators need only to have internet access and the ability to count available spaces, whether by observation or by electronic means. Truck parking providers can contact the NATSO Foundation at ...Read the rest of this story
While it seems pretty certain that some forms of autonomous trucking are definitely on the way, the vision varies on just what that's going to look like and how fast it's going to get here. That was the takeaway from a panel discussion on platooning and autonomous vehicle technologies at the American Trucking Associations' Management Conference & Exhibition.
Anthony Levandowski, co-founder of the autonomous trucking startup Otto, stood out on the panel, from his casual dress and orange sneakers to his visions of trucks being built with no cabs for drivers at all.
Levandowski, who formerly worked on Google's self-driving car project and now heads up autonomous vehicle development of both cars and trucks for Uber after it bought Otto, said his vision for the future of transportation is liquidity and automation.
Liquidity is the ability to match carriers with shippers. If you're delivering people, as Uber does via its ride-sharing app, why not food, why not packages, and why not freight, he asked. Uber is already doing last mile delivery for Walmart.
More specific to this panel was his second point, automation. Uber recently launched a fleet of about 14 self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Although they still have drivers at the moment, “once you have a vehicle that can drive better than the best driver, you want to be able to put them on everything,” Levandowski said.
He showed a video of a Volvo equipped with Otto's aftermarket system of cameras and other items driving down a freeway with no driver in sight. In the future, he says, you could have trucks that don't need seats, windshields or HVAC and could operate nearly 24/7 without the productivity constraints of worrying about driver hours of service or fatigue.
The company is currently signing up fleets and owner-operators to beta test its technology at testdrive.ot.to.
Decisiv, Inc., a provider of Service Relationship Management (SRM) solutions for commercial assets, announced that its software platform will power the Kenworth TruckTech+ Service Management System. The announcement was made at the American Trucking Associations (ATA) Annual Management Conference & Exhibition.
“We are very excited about supporting Kenworth, their dealers and customers with our industry leading service event management solution,” said Dick Hyatt, president and CEO of Decisiv. “Decisiv is the only software solution specifically targeted at revolutionizing the service supply chain of fleets, dealers, call centers, telematics and remote diagnostics providers to help drive uptime and lower total cost of ownership.”
Currently, new Kenworth Class 8 trucks are equipped with Kenworth TruckTech+ Remote Diagnostics, which enables fleets to view real-time vehicle health in the PACCAR Solutions portal. Beginning in 2017, Kenworth will expand TruckTech+ and the PACCAR Solutions portal to include a service management system powered by Decisiv, which will allow fleets to monitor the service status for their individual trucks in real-time.
Kenworth TruckTech+ Service Management will also provide detailed chassis information, parts catalogs, service bulletins, parts and service promotions, as well as warranty and repair history to service technicians at Kenworth dealerships, helping them resolve issues more quickly and efficiently.
“TruckTech+ Service Management takes the connected truck to the next level by giving our customers not only visibility to the health of their trucks, but also transparency and real-time information during service events,” said Jason Skoog, Kenworth assistant general manager for sales and marketing. “By partnering with Decisiv to develop our Service Management capability within the Kenworth TruckTech+ suite of connected vehicle solutions – and by providing our dealers' technicians with these industry-leading tools – Kenworth is applying the latest new technologies to maximize customer uptime.”
Kenworth trucks equipped with TruckTech+ will provide critical information to the dealer service departments ...Read the rest of this story
