Yes they do in fact most states when the weather gets bad will not even allow them on the road same for the twin 48’s. There is another issue with the LCV called crack the whip any steering input gets magnified all the way back. A sudden lane change to avoid a car could result in a rollover of the last trailer and once it goes over it will pull the others over also. I lost track of how many times I saw it happen out west where the back trailer goes over and then the others follow followed by the tractor.
That’s all good and well, but it still seems your opposition to allowing higher GVW and longer LCV is anecdotal and predicated on a regional bias. So can I make the assumption that you wouldn’t be in opposition to allowing these changes out West? That’s where I live, and if only us Westerners are the beneficiaries of lower retail prices due to greater trucking efficiency, I have no problem with that.
BTW - don’t you think that the drivers of heavier or longer rigs would get (or at least should get) greater compensation?
FM I ran all 48 states and Canada and trust me the drivers that got paid more were the ones that ran the NORTHEAST. We called them the Loonys anyone crazy enough to take a 53 footer into downtown Boston or New York can have the Extra Money they got. As for a company paying a driver extra to pull a LCV FORGET IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. All that extra revenue will go straight to the owners pockets. The Mega-Carriers like Swift JB Hunt Werner Schiender are all out there cutting rates and trying to drive the small companies out of Business that way they can then force drivers to work for 25-30 cpm and drive trucks that only run 65 maybe 68 mph. The companies leading the charge for the LCV are the Mega carriers why you ask they are the ones faced year in year out with turnover rates of 150% that is right every year they have to replace every driver on avarage 1.5 times in their trucks. Yes they have some long term drivers but when it costs you 5K to hire a new driver and get him into your truck and you have 19K trucks in Swift’s case it gets expensive. Drivers also are forced to wait for hours to get unloaded or reloaded and get paid NOTHING for this time and with LCV’s that would be worse. Who led the charge to get rid of Detintion time for drivers the MEGA-CARRIERS again.
Now lets see here you have a group of companies that are interested in one thing getting their all ready wealthy CEO’s richer on the backs of the people that earn him the money with underpowered equipment that can barely safely maintain highway speeds at current weights. Now YOU meaning FM want to allow them to add another 40K to the gross weight to that while not paying them anymore and also not improving parking or the loading or unloading situation all across the US. Lets also throw in lack of regulations on fresh produce. Remember that Spinach recall last year it was not the GROWERS OR THE RECIEVERS that got stuck with the bill of getting
Dont get me started on pay.
They cann never get the shippers to pay the rates at which professionals can be properly paid. They want a warm body and the freight there Asap at the cheapest rate. As long there is a starving owner operator willing to run the freight for little more than the actual cost of fuel it will drive the wages down for all.
I personally discovered the best pay is in the Trainer and Team Lead positions from a driver’s point of view. To be allowed to become a trainer means to demonstrate the best and have many Company officials sign off together before you start pulling that nice salary that disregards the actual activity of that rig for the week. You could spend 8 days in the lot teaching someone to back properly because the trucking school that taught the person did not do it right and still get paid well.
Team lead is best with a spouse so the two of you can pull all of the revenue to the household. The tax return for that year put both of us into very high income for our area. However the toll on the health pretty much made it irrevelant. We spent our time rescuing loads in trouble from single drivers who were late. High dollar loads, perishables like flowers and other loads that made powerful people very angry and willing to fire the trucking company and find another because singles cannot endure the required trip to get it delivered on time.
I am one of the loonies that lived in Boston, NYC and other points with a friggin 53 foot. The high point of my life was taking those trailers with conventional tractors INTO restraunts designed for straight trucks “Just so” working around paying customers cars on the lot. No problem except getting out and making sure the mirriors I folded on a few cars were unfolded and undamaged.
It costs an astounding number of thousands of dollars to put a new hire INTO a truck. I think it was between 5K to about 12 K Max depending on the situation. To get the fired driver OUT and make the rig ready usually mean
I never did understand drivers wanting bigger trailers. The bigger the trailers have gotten, the lower the pay has gotten. I’ve often wondered if airlines and trucking co. charge customers what it really cost to haul if they paid their employees right and properly maintained their equiptment, would the railroad rates start looking REALLY GOOD?
Saftey Valve did not mean to offend you about that Looney comment I was lucky the companies I drove for kept me normally west of Nashville everynow and then I would see Newark for airfreight and get the hell out of there. I know what you mean about recusing loads from solos that could not make it I was a driver at my last company that if needed would throw the comic book in the bunk and figure it out when I dropped the load. Needless to say having to figure out how to log 6K miles in a week gets hard. I get so tired of hearing FM say well just let them raise the GVW or let them pull 2 trailers that will make it easier. He is stuck with theories not with real world solutions. Lets see him take 80K down Cabbage in a Blizzard on ice with out chains since it had just hit and praying you do not hit anything as you see your trailer try and pass you.
I had three log books, one for DOT, one for the company (They get destroyed after 6 months… oh well) and one for me for hash figuring.
I should have been prosecuted badly if I got caught running off the books like that. But the sad state of truck enforcment, apathy in the logging and precise set points and trip-points made it possible to really work the system. All of that needs to be torn up and thrown away. It’s rather easy when that state owned scale inspection site has rusted shut for 10 years on the “Closed” sign. Pilots will never get away with that with the oversight from thier company and FAA.
That was years ago, If confronted with that situation today I would have laughed at dispatch and hung up on them taking my required time off.
Ed, no offense taken. WHen I got out of trucking school I started on the docks, learned the rough ways fast and went to the markets next up there. Im one of the few drivers wanting to go TO the markets while the rest of the drivers waiting on dispatch want to run AWAY from there. Just more money that’s all.
Now out west means keeping food, water and power in the truck for two people sufficient for 8 days. You leave out in the morning into a winter storm on the divide and dont know if you are going to spend 4 days in the ditch waiting for a tow while the storm progresses. For the locals who grew up in that area it’s not a problem but for us it was something to behold.
And the pay? If that load of apples paid me 1.00 a mile from Yakima to Little Rock, the resulting prices on those apples at the food store will be way too much to pay despite my taste for 5 apples a week.
What kills me is that company drivers dont get the pay they deserve. I think the freight rate on those apples is about 1.70 a mile or so and the company sucker gets paid .32 of that. The rest vanishes into the pit of the trucking company’s pockets and shareholders. They proclaim profitibility in a tight business known for bankrupcy while the truck
Know what you mean about the logs books. There’s about as many ways to doctor them as you can fit them in the truck. Sad thing is it’s actually cheaper to tell DOT you don’t have one then show him and get fined for every little thing he finds. I don’t know how the new ones are set up, but that 70 hour limit was the big killer. You’d be down every four days if you ran it to the tilt legally. Forget 3 days coast to coast, it’d take almost a week. And if running a reefer, imagine how much fuel you’d burn on one load taking a week to get cross country legally. Talk about higher prices. The only ones that made the logs work were the unions. 4-10 hour days on, three days off. Never run out of hours. But you can’t run cross country like that.
My wife and I would run LA downtown to Edison NJ in roughly 55 hours flat. And back again to LA by the end of the week. That’s 6000+ miles. When the DOT questions about two oil changes (One every 15,000 miles) in a month there better be two drivers in that cab.
It gets a little bit mind bending because you meet and make friends with a single out of LA pass him on the way through Barstow, come back to see him slogging across Texas or New Mexico and then catch him again in New Jersey at the end of the week. he would be looking forward to the weekend off to sleep while we are just getting ready for a dinner and movie later on friday.
Once in a while I will pay the Man the hundred dollars, sit the required out of service hours and move on. It’s cheaper that way than to actually show a logbook they can inspect in some states. In other states you need to be perfect in every way or they will hang you out to dry. If all states were like the few that actually takes safety seriously, I fear that the trucking industry as a whole will suddenly become incapable of actually running freight the way they do.
Tell me again about the hog law where the train crew cannot move that engine one more inch after 10 hours. You might need to drive 300 miles evauating parking spots for 6 hours past your hog law.
I know exactly where you are coming from. In the late 90’s I was running team with my father and we wee called Fed-Ex at the company we got loads there that no one thought could be made. The month of Jan 98 we ran close to 40K miles paid the only reason why we did not get more was I handed the owner of the company the wrong logbook. You know you are running to hard when a team is running 2 books each. All we were doing was Madison WI to Fullerton CA to Aurora IL as fast as we could go. We had a slight advantage our truck was supposed to have been goverened out at 68 well the computer fried and the boss forgot to reset it and needless to say it would go faster late at night when I was running with the big boys.
Ours was governed at 67 mph visible on the speedometer but personal Laptop GPS revealed the true goverened speed to be 63 mph yeilding a max average of 42-43 mph possible with actual trip planning at 28-35 miles an hour. When I approached the saftey dept with the GPS data and asked to be “Up-governed” to the proper company speed of 67 I was told to keep quiet as the company makes alot of savings this way.
No, I ran dollar trucks long ago and used to keep a list of mile markers regularly used by LEO’s and would begin the braking to come out of the 110’s down to whatever speed 5 miles out. Anything sooner will mean you show blue smoke from hot brakes on flat ground at 70 mph to the LEO. If that isnt a waving the red-flag in front of a bull I dont know what is.
NYC to Youngstown disappeared very quickly at those speeds. Miles burg hill at 90 mph upgrade loaded for the first 7 of 10 miles until momentum wore off was a thrill… coming over the top at 65+ fully loaded while the poor saps slogged at 15 mph in the right lane or shoulder.
Ive had R model macks at 3 grand in the far left lane on the Legion Bridge at the VA/Md Border. Something that is not possible today. The first 4 of 6 to the silo to unload makes an extra load or 70 dollars for that day’s work making such speeds worth the risk as citations back then were only about 60 dollars and a few points.
Ive been beat by faster trucks and am humbled at the engineering that makes such fast rigs possible. Elpaso to Houston… 150+ mph or more I dont know.
I do feel those days are pernamently over.
In my last days on the road I was more than content to slog up hill and get down with brakes still cold and ready in case I needed them.
OK. I believe 100 or 110, but I don’t buy 150. No offense intended. You’re a good guy.
The apples from Yakima to Little Rock belong on a train, not on a “dollar” truck. Yo
[quote user=“greyhounds”]
OK. I believe 100 or 110, but I don’t buy 150. No offense intended. You’re a good guy.
The apples from Yakima to Little Rock belong on a train, not on a "dol
The price increase on each item is more than a few cents it is more like 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents on many items. Buy 20 items and you will definitely pay at least $2 more a week than one year ago, if you shop carefully. If you are not watching for sales you might pay $10 more a week.
Andrew
Good conversation.
I believe quite a bit of pricing increases these days is “because we can”. I noticed it a couple of years ago when petro chemical costs went up and companies used it as an excuse to bump prices 3-5%…then did it again 6 months later.
Regarding the life of truck drivers, these are fascinating tales. When was it possible to run a tractor/trailer 100mph? The speeds have really been pinched down the past few years. I dont ever recall a trucker at anywhere near 100, but I do remember getting behind many trucks in the 80mph+ range back in teh day.
ed
About the time electronic engines promised fuel savings back in the early 90’s
I think in those days we ran 300 or 350 big cam IV’s and 370 detroits, 425 cats. All naturally air breathing desiels with hardly anything fancy tied to them electronically.
Suddenly Management found that they can push buttons and communicate, follow trucks and turn them off and on via satellite with the new Qualcomm. It spread like wildfire.
We are still getting around 6 miles to the gallon, rolling throwaway lease trucks, mileage each week is not much better and delivery success is worse off than we were back in the days of regulation.
For me the Mid 90’s with a Freightliner COE with the 470 detroit gave me a 108 mph top speed and the harder you pull on those detroits the more it refuses to give up power until you lug it below 1100 rpm.
Then the engines were cut down from 2300 rpm down to 2100 and eventually to just over 1600 on the govenor.
At first we would find a Owner operator with a diagnoistic unit and a few dollars later had a unrestricted engine or slightly adjusted governer sorta bumped to the top of the RPM range and it would not be discovered until 6 months later at the company shop. “What? Speed changed? Huh. I dont know nothing about those fancy computer stuff.”
Now companies demonstrate total control or nearly so over properly equipped trucks. They can download real-time information as you drive and order replacement parts to catch the one that is showing indications of breaking or failing.
I remember another one that used a onboard computer called Trip Master. If you did not run the engine at stop lights (Shutting it off and restarting it again) you stood to make an extra 130 dollars or more on top of your already fat paycheck. I have always wondered how many starter motor replacements it took for them to stop that little practice.
Today you can consist the trailer to the tractor. Back with McKesson as soon as you put it on th
I worked for a small fleet owner that turned the RPM’s down to 1700 on all ten or so of his Detroit motors (and Cats and cummins too, come to think of it, but that’s not part of the story.). Anyway, he kept having problems with the engines spitting out turbos, and wound up changing motors on at least two that I know of, and doing a cam change on a third. From what I remember, Detroit was blaming the problem on the RPM settings, and threatened to deny his warranty claims for these motors. Keep in mind, all these engines had less than 500k on them. Owner never budged on the governor settings, don’t know what became of the warranty bit, but I do know that owner lost his Western Star dealership…
Oh, yeah we had “triple digit” trucks. I had a Pete that loved to run…Wyoming, Nevada, Nebraska, Utah among others. Loaded with fresh eggs out of Salt Lake at 10:00 pm for a 7:00 am delivery in Reno and still wanting to stop and fuel/eat/shower?..no problem. Running grain or flour out of Salt Lake to L.A. ,The boss had a “Jesus” list -2 turns one week. 3 the next. That is about 16,000 miles a month. This way you were home every other day for a few hours.
I recently retired from 28 years on the road. I was an owner-operator a lot of that time. I ALSO was an owner of a company that ran LCV’s. The real problem with them is the freight rate. Anymore the rate is almost the same as a regular truckload. In fact, the last few years we quit pulling both LCV’s and Hazmat because of the insurance costs. We were hauling fuel and the customers got to the point that they would only pay the costs of hauling 7,000 gals of diesel, but wanted 11,500 gals delivered.
If you run the Intermountain West,(Nevada,Utah,Wyoming,Colorado,Idaho) you will see super tankers almost exclusively. They have to run them because all of the competition has to. The driver pay is only about .05 more per mile on the average, so the drivers really do not want to pull them. You can lobby for longer, heavier rigs, but that does not mean that the market will bear the costs.
The wear on the roads from LCV’s is also much greater. However, to run LCV’s, your drivers/eqiptment, and your company must pass very stringent audits from your state and insurance companies BEFORE you are granted the permits to even pull such rigs.
I now work for a Media Relations company in L.A. as a consultant on Railroad/ Trucking and LCV issues. I also still work for DETAILS WEST part time making detail parts.
Keith Turley
Hm.
I remember a few trucks covered in oil after turbos failed. Seems quite a few did.
A desiel feels really good in the old tradition when you were about the mid-point between high torque and max horsepower on the engine’s curve. I think different engines had different curves where there was what we called the “Sweet spot” and with the older desiels my favorite memory is when the engine did settle into that spot between 1450-1700 rpm give or take a few the resulting music was really good. You could just hold the hammer just so and run.
The newer governed engines required you to put your foot on the floor all day and the night. I got tired and have a bad foot to show for it. Always kicking that POS engine that seems to fall off it’s spot, never quite developing full boost on the turbo and quite literally feeling like it’s half full of water and rated at 80 horsepower. It did not matter if you were at sea level or passing Esienhower at 12,900 feet.
I actually relied on that cruise control to keep that engine at the top of the availible governed capacity. You get up to Kansas against the winds running to Denver by way of Limon and it gets aggravating having to drop a gear because your casterated mill wont hold torque or lug worth a damn.
I recall hauling steel with a tiny M11 cummins rated at 2100 and not restricted at all. Driving that Volvo was a JOY compared to the Freightsled with the big 370 cut down at 1600. Rip across the great smokies with the Volvo with hardly a thought to shifting while on the other hand fighting and kicking a POS casterated governed truck up the hill, over the top holding it down all the way to the bottom and over again… BLEAH.
I complained at length about the poor driveablity of some of the badly governed engines and dont expect non drivers to understand.
here is another try at explaination. Im stuck behind grandma at 45 mph on a 70 mph interstate. I see the coast is clear, pull out into the dead lane and acceler
Agreed I will never forget that 88 International I drove 444 Big Cam turned I should say properly rebuilt to handle it to a 780 HP beast no top end governor and turning a 13 double over with a set of 3.55 rears holding 24.5 tall rubber in the back. One night coming back across SD hooked up with Randy Marten of Marten Transport. He was coming out of someplace after picking up a bike for himself someplace. He had heard about my rig and goes her is the deal you PASS me I buy you dinner even if you do not I am still buying the fuel for you across the state. If we get caught by LEO’s my lawyers will keep the ticket off your CDL and I will post your bail and pay the fine. Now lets go. We were clicking off milemarkers at roughly 24 seconds each when I noticed he was maxed out. I looked at my tach and saw I had 300 RPM left before hitting the REDLINE. I ended up with a free steak dinner in Sioux Falls. I miss that truck.