Well, there aren’t enough drivers so they’re using rail - at higher rates. This B a good thing.
http://fleetowner.com/news/topstory/truckload_dedicated_intermodal_021605/
Load 'em up, move 'em out, send 'em a bill.
The days of the long haul for solo is finished. It is now teams 24/7 if you expect to be on time. This is not to say that solos cannot make it… but there are just too many problems.
I recall when railroads cranked up intermodal boxes in a big way, everyone thought that the largest carriers will simply stick 400 trailers on a train and ship the whole thing to the west coast (or east coast if you prefer) and not need long haul drivers anymore.
Also it is not too bad when you have a new hotel under construction on one coast and a furnature factory completing it’s total requirement of furnature and putting it on a train which will take 5-10 days to cross the United States. Furnature is something that does not require JIT or Expedited service. Now, Frozen Food, Produce, Refridgerated and other time sensitive products require time service that only 24/7 teams can do crossing the nation in 80 hours. (3 days and some change) Trains are not yet that fast.
I consider the late 80’s the end of the era of a true long haul part of trucking. Schedules, GPS Satellites and Data communications as well as management focusing on truck/trailer useage by time and revenue all have speeded up trucking so much that you need Teams to keep good service 24/7.
I will not address the cultural changes that has become apparent in the last 5 years. The biggest thing is the waiting time which can be in the excess of 40 hours a week with no pay on down to personal hygene and nutrition being sacrifaced in order to keep a load moving and the job as well. People refuse to live and work in those conditions for too long. 3-6 months max. The ones that stay a year or more will always be able to survive the industry. The rest seek a better life or back to school.
You will always need a truck to get the box to and from a train or ship. Keeping those trucks manned and rolling (loaded) is a awesome challenge facing anyone who hauls cargo for hire in the United States. Especially in face of ou
Why is it more expensive to ship a trailer by rail than by over the road? This doesn’t fit the economic models. Trucks have higher labor per revenue/ton costs, higher ton/mile fuel use, they pay higher fuel costs per gallon than do the railroads. Hmmmm…
Eventually, this situation is going to lead trucking lobbyists to call for higher GVW and length limits to improve the labor and fuel productivity. The railroads have a chance to head this off by pricing for future possibilities rather than the here and now, but…
Mny highway departments are concerned about what the current weight of trucks does to their maintenance costs now!
MHO is hooray. The more trucks not moving on the roads makes the roads safer for kiddie car drivers.
That wont happen. Try getting out of Hunts Point New York to the Throgs Neck Bridge with anything bigger than a single 53’ In fact we used 45’ ers and cab overs back in the day for getting into some of these places.
Higher gross weight? only in certain areas that can take it. Michigan B trains come to mind. Kentucky Coal is another. Rocky Mountain Doubles is a third item and let’s not forget the turnpike doubles of NY and Mass.
I had a vision years ago when I was stuck in Chicago trying to hunt down one specific box with a 12 digit number in a land full of boxes stacked 6 high with trains coming and going and yard jockeys cursing and yelling as commerce groaned it’s way thru chicago threating to gridlock the entire metro area with no hope of ever getting out this century.
I am motivated by the memory of my very first legal 53 foot trailer on a 245 Inch conventional tractor. This was back in early 90’s. I pulled onto the scale house down by I-64 at the Richmond Va bypass. There was an old platform scale that refused to fit the entire unit on and traffic stacked up a mile behind me as the Va State police struggled to determine if my wheelbase was correct for the weights shown on the axles. I certainly was not the first truck at that chicken coop with the problem.
The solution was new scale facilities where they can weigh a truck in motio
You’ll never make the roads safer unless you get those “soccer moms” and “nascar dads” off too. They are just as bad if not worse. Lets not forget people talking on the cell phone, doing their hair, eating, or whatever while they are driving. Lets not forget those that are prone to road rage and being drunk. I don’t know about you but I can live with trucks on the road.
As for long haul trucking going away, to an extent average miles per trip are going down, but don’t think its all going on the train. There is plenty of freight for solos and not everything is going to teams, even though teams have always been a high priority to trucking companies. There are many reasons why freight miles are down to an extent. Major manufacturing is going overseas(which ends up on a train anyways) to take advantage of the kiddie labor, manufacturers are closing down old plants and consolidating plants and moving them closer to their customers or distribution centers. Look at Kraft. A few months ago they announced that they were closing a bunch of their plants. True some of the freight is going on the rail but mostly from high out put manufacturers like paper and consumer goods. And even then they put it in a trailer or a domestic container. Alot of this freight is coming from trucking companies just to get the business. Why do you think the majority of trailers belong to Schneider, Swift, JB Hunt, etc. They are all large truckload carriers or ltl carriers that need to meet speedy gauranteed delivery times. Also remember just cause you see a trailer on a flat car, don’t assume its full with freight. Trucking companies have been known to put trailers on rail just to get them from one area of the country where there is a lack of freight to an area where freight is at a high demand. Same goes when major companies buy n
I agree with you there Slim. Kraft was one of those places where you were supposed to wash your trailer and ensure no odors or they wont load you. There will always be truckers to take the stuff to and from places just in a different way.
I have seen some of company trailers on trains and understood that motor freight so and so wont put that trailer on the train unless there was a need to. Strategic thinking related to how many loads of widgets that are needed to be run today and how many trailers are going to be needed somewhere else to fill orders tomorrow?
I was with JB Hunt after 9-11. We were in a situation where there was too many empty trucks for loads in various parts of the Nation. My dispatcher (Bless him) sent me to St Louis to Busch for beer. The problem was that about 570 trucks are also expected to arrive in St Louis when I do and only 230 will get loads that day. The rest are either committed to other loads or waiting until loads tomorrow. So I was happy to have a load going to no where Iowa with 4 days to pull it (only need 2) when I knew others are having to consume food while not being loaded and rolling.
Another time at the City Dock in Philadelphia a ship pulled in with Grapes. Ruby Grapes, Thompson Seedless etc etc… You literally could see the hundred or so orders going out the doors to ship to the resterants, cold storage facilities and into Walmart centers for thier grocery stores along with other food stores wanting the product. It was a good day for business that day.
But that ship has to travel back to wherever the grapes came from (My guess is europe) and get reloaded and make the return trip. In the mean time these drivers and companies who had alot of business today will have to find more cargo to run for a profit until that ship returns.
Regarding the soccer moms and Nascar dads… dont get me started. I have two photo graphs which I will be placing into my photobucket in about a month showing a high speed car going o
High Iron I can’t agree with you more. I one time saw a guy on The PA Turnpike in memorial day traffic no less while driving he HAD BOTH FEET ON THE DASHBOARD AND HAS TALKING ON A CELLPHONE. If he had had to hit the brakes forget it no way he could have reached them in time I was never so glad to get passed someone in my life.
I once had a lady in Baltimore who refused to yeild to my milk truck down by the dairy at a light. I needed her to back up just a hair because I was on green and needed the room to swing at that corner.
She refused to budge. I could not back up due to traffic stacking behind me. Finally light changes to green for her and she started to yell at me saying that she has the god given right to use the road and now I was blocking her.
I whistled up a street cop who sees this all the time, he whistled up a large 3 Axle tow driver who tows big trucks… that rig loomed up behind screaming lady’s car and dropped a hook big enough to carry her mercury. Cop asks nicely “Lady, settle down and please move or we will move you” Lady moved. It was the sight of the tow truck big enough to tow MY rig dropping the hook on her car that made her move.
Was that all necessary? No. But people sometimes feel that they are sovereign right to rule the kingdom from the wheel of a car and we have alot of fun situations because of that.
Perhaps we can train drivers to run as Engineers do. With firemen to assist in signal recognition and dispatchers to issue track (road) warrants from point A to point B across the city. Run the road system like a railroad.
Imagine if trains were allowed to drive up and down the rails whenever they wanted to.
The highways are the major health problem for most civilized countries.
But the research money has been going to get people to “spend more time in cars”
It shouldn’t suprise you to know that it is possible to raise or eliminate GVW and at the same time reduce wear and tear on roads. The current weight limits of 20,000 lbs for a single axle, 34,000 lbs for a tandem, and 42,000 lbs for a tridem are all based on the federal bridge formula from the 1950’s. Subsequently, you now have trailes with two single axles spaced nine feet apart that are allowed to carry 20,000 per axle (40,000 lbs combined) which is only slightly less than allowed by a tridem. Obviously, a tridem axle set spreads the weight over three axles at 14,000 lbs per, and this causes less road damage than the two 20,000 lb axles, yet because of the regulation it is cheaper for the truckers to go with the two spread singe axles than a tridem axle set.
What is needed is a modernization of axle weights, perhaps allowing a max per axle of only 15,000, but make it consistent per axle, so that tandems carry 30,000 lbs and tridems carry 45,000 lbs, even add quads at 60,000 lbs, and this would encourage truckers to go with more axles to spread the weight over more area, which in turn would decrease road wear. Then, the truckers can carry more cargo per load, which would reduce the number of trucks on the highways e.g. 5 trucks at 145,000 GVW will carry more cargo than 9 trucks at 80,000 GVW.
Spread the weight over more axles, and you can increase GVW without increasing road damage.
“rolls up sleeves and cracks knuckles…”
The laws governing driving time dates from the 30’s Regardless of when the laws are written, you are absolutely correct on the weight limits in the Interstate Highway System.
Trailers with two axles spread apart are usually flatbed
There also is another problem not mentioned here.
Bridges are built for a certain weight they can support. While road would happily carry 15 klbs/axle trucks with little care for total truck weight - bridges do not. Three trucks of 80 klbs cal happily run on a bridge, but three 145 klbs trucks are too heavy for the bridge to support. This leads to a problem of increased wear, maintenence costs and may even end in a catastrophy.
This is the reason why european railroads do not use bethgon-like 6-axle hoppers - thousands of bridges are not built to withstand such weights.
My feelings are hurt, you forgot triples! Yes, I know you’re in the east and this is a western thing…But how could you forget one of the first exceptions to federal highway standards.
1980 at Sparks, Nevada - a set of triples bound for Las Vegas from Reno, NV, I’m the driver!
Jim - Lawton, NV MP 236
Been doing this for 35 years now, plan on doing this truck driving thing for another 10 years. I’m the professional, it is my responsibility to compensate for the other guy. That’s why I get the big bucks.
Do I get pissed-off at times…Yes, but as the pro it is my responsibility to compensate!
Do I have pet peeves, yes! But at no time do these enter into my driving decisions! My job is to get stuff from one place to another place without incidents!
Jim - Lawton, NV MP 236