Seeing Safe Driving and Self-Driving as Going Hand in Hand

Mercedes Benz Actros cabover fitted with Daimler AG's Highway Pilot Connect autonomous-driving system. Photo: David Cullen

Bharat Balasubramanian, PhD. laid out his road map to the fairly near future in a colorful and engaging talk (complete with comical video clips) on May 1 at the National Private Truck Council's annual meeting in the historic Netherlands Plaza hotel in downtown Cincinnati.

The arc of Balasubramanian's global automotive career is the stuff of a Bollywood epic, or at least of a recruiting video for a top-notch engineering school.

Born and raised in India, he attained a degree in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. He then followed his passion for automotive design to one its epicenters— Germany-- where he went on to earn a master's and then a doctorate in engineering and launched a 38-year career in research and development with Daimler AG.

Balasubramanian retired in 2012 as group vice president of research and advanced engineering for Daimler. Not content to rest on his corporate laurels, Balasubramanian's next move was to accept an engineering professorship at the University of Alabama as well as the post of executive director of UA's Center for Advanced Vehicle Technology.

The long and the short of his résumé is that he knows a thing or two about applying technology to make driving safer.

“Increasing safety and the [SAE] levels of autonomous driving are two facets of an identical technology set using advanced sensors, actuators and ECUs with slightly different software,” is how Balasubramanian said he sees technology converging ...Read the rest of this story

TRALA Outlines Steps to Prevent Truck Ramming Terrorism

Photo: Jim Park

The Truck Renting and Leasing Association has created a new brochure outlining ways that rental truck company employees can help prevent truck-related terror attacks.

TRALA is responding to a recently declassified report from the Transportation Security Administration that details the risks of truck-ramming attacks in recent years, calling on truck owners and rental agencies to be vigilant about the looming threat.

The association reiterated that it will stand by law enforcement and Homeland Security's efforts to prevent attacks using commercial vehicles.

"TRALA is committed to helping the truck renting and leasing industry remain vigilant against ramming attacks," said Jake Jacoby, TRLA president and CEO. "TRALA already works with the TSA, FBI and other governmental agencies regularly to ensure its members are not only up to date on the latest security developments, but to also partner with those agencies in an effort to stop a future attack."

The TRALA report, entitled Truck Renting and Leasing Security Awareness and Self-Assessment Guide, examines the danger that commercial trucks can pose when used for terrorist acts and outlines some basic steps on deterrence. It emphasizes that mindfulness and demonstration of good security can be an important way to deter a potential terrorist.

The full brochure can be accessed here.

According to the TSA report, there have been 17 ramming attacks around the world in the past three years, responsible for 173 deaths and more than 700 wounded. The majority of deaths from truck rammings occurred in an attack in Nice, France on July 14, 2016, that killed 87 persons and an attack in Urumqi, China on May 22, 2014 that claimed 43 lives.

"TRALA members realize they are often the first line of defense against a possible terror attack that could involve a commercial truck,” said Jacoby. “We will continue to coordinate with public ...Read the rest of this story

Earnings Watch: YRC Worldwide 1st Quarter Loss Doubles

Financial losses for YRC Worldwide Inc., parent to both national and regional less-than-truckload carriers, more than doubled in the first quarter of the year despite a small upturn in revenue.

YRC reported a net loss of $25.3 million in the most recent quarter, or 78 cents per share, worse than analysts expectations. This compares to a net loss a year ago of $12 million, or 37 cents per share. Revenue in the most recent quarter was $1.17 billion versus $1.12 billion a year earlier.

According to CEO James Welch, while the company's regional carriers' performance was in line with results from a year ago, including an increase in tonnage per day, its national LTL fleet ran into problems.

“YRC Freight's results in the first quarter were unfavorably impacted by a year-over-year decrease in revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel surcharge, that more than offset increases in tonnage per day and weight per shipment,” he said. “We expect the improvement in year-over-year tonnage per day to help us execute our strategy of pricing for profitability and moving shipments through YRC Freight, Holland, Reddaway and New Penn's networks that have favorable freight characteristics.”

Despite the challenges, Welch said YRC believes the pricing environment remains stable in the less-than-truckload sector and the company's goal for 2017 is to beat its 2016 EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) numbers.

To help meet this goal, YRC implemented a plan during the first quarter of 2017 to eliminate approximately $25 million of costs over the next year. The savings include downsizing the management and other non-union workforce by approximately 180 positions.

“Headcount reduction is the most significant source of savings while other changes included increasing collaboration across our companies and reducing the utilization of external professional services,” said Welch.

During the first quarter, YRC Freight recording an operating loss of $10.5 million ...Read the rest of this story

Delta apologizes for ‘booting’ passenger off flight

A video was posted online by Brian Schear on Wednesday, claiming that Delta "booted" him off a flight, along with his wife and two infants, due to overbooking. "We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta," the company said in a statement on Thursday. This comes nearly a month after United Continental Holdings Inc (UAL.N) sparked outrage for dragging a passenger by his hands, out of an overbooked flight.

Inside U.S. Xpress’ Award-Winning Leadership Development Programs

U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Deborah Lockridge

We may hear a lot about the driver shortage and even the technician shortage, but increasingly trucking is facing a shortage of talented leadership as well. U.S. Xpress has been taking steps to combat that, and recently was recognized with a national human resources award for its innovative efforts to recruit and develop talent.

“As we look at a lot of our peers, they have near retirement level management teams and are looking for talent to backfill that,” said CEO Eric Fuller, “I think they're not finding, all the way to up the executive level, the type of talent they need to fill those positions,” he told HDT in an interview at the truckload fleet's Chattanooga, Tennessee, headquarters.

Earlier this year, Fuller was named CEO and Lisa Quinn Pate was named president and chief administrative officer, the culmination of a five-year transition process to new leadership for the company. The two put into place their own management team that reflects the way they want to pivot the company, “to become what we call a more professionally managed orientation, focused on metrics, data, and processes,” Fuller said.

And sometimes, Quinn Pate explained, there were people who had been with the company for a long time but weren't the right fit. “That was a very painful process to go through,” she said. “We realized we may need to go outside the company, but our philosophy was that we want the best people for the job in that seat — and they may be internal or they may be external.”

That experience helped lead to the launch of a two-year leadership development program called Xpress Elite, designed to identify high-potential employees inside and outside of the company and develop them into future leaders for U.S. Xpress.

HR.com ranked ...Read the rest of this story

Cummins Guidanz App Helps Improve Uptime

Cummins has released the Guidanz mobile app, allowing users to read prioritized engine fault codes and other key engine information from a vehicle.

The Guidanz app offers critical information about Cummins 2007 and later on-highway engines and Tier 3 and later off-highway engines. The information can be emailed to an operations manager, service providers or a Cummins Care representative directly from the app to initiate the service process.

The Immediate Assessment feature of the Guidanz app is available to certified service providers to help improve shop scheduling. As providers begin to adopt Immediate Assessment in the coming months, they will not only be able to read the fault code, but assess the severity of the fault, how quickly it can be repaired, what repair parts are likely needed, and start a work order before a customer enters the service bay.

To operate, the Guidanz app must be paired with an Inline mini Bluetooth adapter or Inline 7 and requires an iOS or Android device. Though the Guidanz mobile app requires a smartphone or tablet to operate, it will still function when the device is offline. Customers are provided a list of fault codes regardless of connectivity, so even when operating in remote locations customers are still able to access with enough information to call operations managers, service providers or Cummins Care and initiate the service process.

“The Guidanz mobile app with the Immediate Assessment feature is giving customers back valuable hours that used to be spent troubleshooting by arming customers and service providers with information backed by immeasurable amounts of data and analysis done by Cummins experts,” said Ryan Kikendall, executive director, service event solutions at Cummins.

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Crude oil is sinking like a stone: NYSE trader

Alexis Christoforous s joined by Alan Valdes, director of floor operations at Silverbear, at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the plummeting price of oil.