Grote's Global Electrical Connections and Accessories Division introduced its new Electrical Connections and Accessories Supplemental Catalog, which includes more than 90 SKU's representing electrical connection and accessory products.
It includes:
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FourKites announced that Craig Fiander has joined the company as senior vice president of business development.
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Mike Weaver, a member of the Facebook Group 9+ MPG Club, had an interesting post the other day. It was a picture of a truck from 1986 called The Phantom, an aerodynamic concept vehicle.
Seeing the photo got me to wondering how long the trucking industry has been working on improving the aerodynamics of over-the-road trucks. Mike pointed me to some background information that I found interesting.
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...Read the rest of this storyCalifornia's Air Resources Board says zero-emissions technology is already available for delivery vehicles such as package vans and medium-duty trucks. Photo: First Priority GreenFleet/EVI
">California's Air Resources Board says zero-emissions technology is already available for delivery vehicles such as package vans and medium-duty trucks. Photo: First Priority GreenFleet/EVI
">With the 2010 Environmental Protection Agency emissions regulations behind, and the trucking industry currently gearing up to integrate the first phase of new greenhouse gas emissions regulations going into effect in January, fleet managers may have thought they'd heard the last from the California Air Resources Board for a while.
But CARB is back with a new slate of initiatives designed to explore zero-emission vehicle technology. At the moment, these proposals are focused on evaluating the current state of ZEV technology, exploring the potential for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of these technologies in the future, as well as looking at other, non-vehicle means of further improving air quality in California. While there are currently no laws or regulations associated with this new CARB effort, industry experts fear that they may soon lead to all-new environmental mandates that specifically target diesel-powered trucks and will make it much more difficult — and expensive — to move freight in the Golden State.
Many fleets find virtually any proposal emanating from CARB difficult to swallow.
The agency itself enjoys a special status among the state's agencies, according to Mike Tunnell, director, energy and environmental affairs for the American Trucking Associations, who notes that the agency is made up of political appointees who take their marching orders directly from the governor's office.
“California is a lot different than most parts of the country,” Tunnell explains. “For starters, Gov. Jerry Brown is determined to reduce petroleum use in the state. And every state-wide office in California is held by a Democrat. So the agency definitely gets a serious push to regulate vehicle emissions from the executive office right on down the line to the legislature to ...Read the rest of this story
Rolf Lockwood
" >Rolf Lockwood
" width="185" height="245">Managing data is utterly essential to the successful maintenance of a truck fleet in 2016. That's a given. But knowing it is one thing – doing it is quite another.
That was the issue tackled by a panel discussion I put together and moderated at the inaugural Canadian Fleet Maintenance Summit in Toronto recently. In a session entitled “The Electronics Revolution and Trucking of the Future,” panelists spoke of ways that data can help address challenges. And the benefits of all that retrievable information aren't limited to big outfits.
“Small fleets can behave as big ones if they embrace the tools that the dealers and the OEM have today,” said Skip Yeakel, principal engineer and government/industry/academia link at Volvo Trucks. He referred to his company's Uptime Center and the way it diagnoses issues remotely as an example. It's there for everyone.
Even though larger fleets have more resources to explore raw data, smaller operations can still look at single reports or receive alerts, added Larry Jordan, vice president of product management at Zonar Systems in California. These are the details that can help avoid breakdowns and delays.
“In a perfect world, I'd like to see a truck tell me what's wrong with it,” said Kirk Altrichter, vice president fleet services for Ohio's Kenan Advantage Group and former chairman of the American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council.
The biggest challenge is sifting through the reams of available data to find hidden info nuggets, he said. Gathering the data can be a problem, and there can certainly be too much of a good thing. Altrichter learned that the hard way after once asking to be alerted about any monitored fault codes.
“We ended up turning it off quite quickly,” he said. The goal instead is distinguishing between the codes that require immediate ...Read the rest of this story
