Crane crashes across Tappan Zee Bridge, closed indefinitely

Bendix Expands Formula Blue Hydraulic Brake Parts Line

Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake is expanding coverage of its Formula Blue line of hydraulic brake parts for light- and medium-duty vehicles ranging from Class 1 to Class 6.

BSFB recently added 100 new part numbers and plans to introduce additional parts every quarter. The expansion increases Formula Blue's medium-duty lineup adding new parts covering a range of name plates including Ford, Freightliner, Hino, Kenworth, Mitsubishi Fuso, Navistar, Peterbilt and others.

The Formula Blue line offers more than 6,000 parts including new and remanufactured brake calipers, rotors, and full lines of pads, shoes, brake hardware, drums, master cylinders, and clutch hydraulics.

The 2016 Formula Blue Illustrated Parts Identification Guide is available online, offering a catalog that includes product photographs, dimensions and application information for brake pads, shoes, drums, rotors, wheel cylinders, master cylinders and calipers. The guide allows customers to enter their product type and vehicle model to find the right part for the application.

Formula Blue's improved online access means customers have the most up-to-date parts information at their fingertips, and Bendix is pleased to provide this resource in an environmentally friendly manner," said Keith McComsey, BSFB director, marketing and customer solutions. "With Formula Blue, BSFB has yet another way to serve the commercial vehicle market – allowing us to offer one-stop shopping for all air brake and hydraulic wheel-end needs.”

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

ATA: Truck Tonnage Index falls 1.5% in June

American Trucking Assns.' advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 1.5% in June, following a revised 2.9% gain during May. In June, the index equaled 137.2 (2000=100), down from 139.3 in May. The all-time high was 144 in February, ATA reports.

read more

Teletrac Navman Director Aimed at Mid-Size Fleet Market

Teletrac Navman has launched a new global software platform, Teletrac Navman Director, which tracks trucks and other assets, collects data for analytics, and provides real-time feedback to drivers to help them improve their safety and fuel efficiency.

The new platform is the end result of harnessing the strengths of combining Teletrac, a U.S.-centric company strong on the fleet enterprise side, and Navman, a global company known for navigation, according to Renaat Ver Eecke, president of Teletrac Navman. In a call with reporters, he said, the new platform reflects “the strength of bringing Teletrac and Navman together, building a platform that will serve the transportation market in a very interesting way.”

The award-winning safety analytics from Teletrac, he said, allow behavioral understanding of drivers, while from Navman we see an emphasis around workflow and analytics.
The new platform is global, he said, while it can handle multiple verticals in different countries, such as trucking and construction.

Director is designed for companies from 50 to 500 vehicles, a market that Teletrac Navman contends is not well serviced by companies currently in the market.

Director offers fuel use tracking, messaging and routing, along with driver behavior analysis tools and concise reporting features. Its safety module, called Safety Analytics, scores driver performance based on company priorities and replays unsafe driving events to aid driver training. Director's dashboards accumulate information to show trends.

"Director brings data about vehicles' location and activity, workflow and forms, real-time maps, maintenance alerts and safety into a single screen to serve as the nerve center for a fleet's operation," said Paresh Nagda, chief technology officer. "This versatility, further enhanced by advanced capabilities such as vehicle diagnostics, visual dashboards and comprehensive reporting, empowers businesses with unparalleled information about their assets and work in the field.”

Director is a completely web-based application for fleets in a variety of industries, from long-haul transportation to construction in markets from North America to Europe, Australia, and Asia, and is scalable to regions around the globe.

Setting it apart from much of the competition, officials say, is that it requires no up-front investment in hardware or installation, but instead is completely subscription-based, with monthly per-truck fees ranging from around $30 to $100 per vehicle, depending on features chosen.

The in-cab device was developed in cooperation with Garmin, while Android and Apple iOS abilities allow fleet managers to access information on the go.

Teletrac Navman is also developing the electronic logging device (ELD) feature, set to launch in early 2017.

Features and capabilities of the platform include:
• Configurable live alerts with email notifications for unauthorized vehicle use, excessive idle time or speeding;
• Workflow and dashboard features for quick assignments and easy job completion analysis;
• Live traffic maps powered by Google and search capabilities by address, site, latitude and longitude coordinates, or points of interest;
• Professional and enterprise reporting for fleet utilization, delivery schedules, driver-based fuel efficiency and safety factors, and maintenance and time management reports; and
• Administrative tools for API support, exporting vehicle summaries, developing configuration templates and managing user access, along with advanced tools for password security, user permissions, logs and activity reports, and Bulk Import Tools for driver and site management.

More information at www.teletracnavman.com.

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

Marten Transport Announces Second Quarter Results

Crane collapse closes major NY bridge

Traffic is blocked in both directions on the New York State Thruway after a large crane collapsed on the Tappan Zee Bridge Tuesday afternoon.

read more

Truck Makers Hit With Record EU Fines for Price-Fixing in Europe

Mercedes-Benz trucks on display in 2012 at a pre-IAA Commercial Vehicle Show event. Daimler, as the largest of the truck makers involved in the EU investigation, also faces the largest fine. Photo by Sven-Erik Lindstrand.

The European Union is fining five truck makers nearly 3 billion euros for acting as a cartel to fix prices of medium and heavy-duty trucks and time the introduction of technologies to comply with emissions rules.

It's the highest fines ever imposed by the EU for a single cartel — twice the previous highest amount, imposed in 2012, according to Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's competition commissioner, in a statement.

MAN (now owned by Volkswagen), Daimler, DAF (owned by Paccar), Iveco and Volvo/Renault, which together account for around nine out of every 10 medium and heavy trucks sold in Europe, had been working together for 14 years, from 1997 until the European Commission's investigation in 2011 put a stop to it.

MAN alerted the EU to the cartel's activities and got full immunity from fines. Volvo/Renault, Daimler and Iveco also cooperated with the EU and had their fines reduced.

Paying the fines

Daimler faces the largest single fine, slightly more than 1 billion euros, also a record.

The five truck producers now have three months to pay the fine. However, the case has been under way for some time and most if not all of the truck makers, including Daimler, Volvo, Paccar, and CNH (parent company of Iveco) had already been setting aside funds to cover the anticipated fines.

Daimler had set aside 600 million euros back in 2014, and last week announced it had set aside 400 million for unspecified legal costs, so it already has accounted for the 1 billion.

For instance, in a press release announcing its settlement with the EU, Volvo noted that its 670 million euro fine is mainly covered by provisions made in 2014 and 2016. However, another provision will have a negative impact of 20 million euros on its third-quarter 2016 operating income.

“The Commission case was already more than five years under way,” said Martin Lundstedt, Volvo President and CEO, of the settlement. “Without the settlement we would have been facing many more years of proceedings, with an uncertain outcome. We are now able to look forward and focus on our business.”

“While we regret what has happened, we are convinced that these events have not impacted our customers,” Lundstedt said.

What happened

Senior managers from the truck makers first met in Brussels in January 1997, and for seven years met frequently, sometimes at trade shows or other events, according to Vestager. Starting in 2004, the cartel was organized at a lower level by the truck producers' subsidiaries in Germany.

According to EU officials, the companies were coordinating with each other on increasing the gross list price of trucks, as well as how to respond to the increasingly strict European emissions standards, when to introduce the new emissions technologies required, as well as the pricing for them.

“Delaying the introduction of environmentally friendly technology in agreement with competitors is not my idea of competition,” Vestager said.

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter