I received a fine the other day: $25 for 32 inches.
We picked up the HEAVY load in Dallas, TX and grossed out at 79,900 (max is 80,000). Regulations state that we can have no more than 34,000 pounds on the trailer axles and the drive axles, and no more than 12,000 on the steer axle. Being as heavy as we were, we had to make sure each axle weight was appropriate so as not to receive an over-weight fine. We have the option of sliding our fifth wheel or sliding the trailer tandems to change the amount of weight on each axle, but not the weight over all. 79,900 pounds is 79,900 pounds, no matter how you move the freight.
Without having the list in front of me, I would wager to say that most states do not have regulations for length; length in this case being defined as the distance between the kingpin and the center of the rear axle on the trailer. California will slap you with a $100 fine if you measure over 40 feet. California in general will try to slap you with any fine they can, and an over-length violation seems to be common.
Since we weren't going through California, and we weighed out our axles to be accurate though we were "longer" than usual, we didn't bother to check if any other states on our route had over-length fines. Turns out Virginia did.
Their maximum length is 41 feet, and we measured out to be 43'8". Because they had pulled me in for weight, they knew I was close on my axles but still legal, they were able to measure the kingpin to rear axle length. Since I couldn't "scoot" any weight to abide by the length regulation, I got a $25 fine (and $50 processing fee and $10 for taxes, or something like that). They sent me on my way with paperwork proving I was already cited, lest I get pulled into another Virginia weigh station (I didn't).
Thankfully, in cases like this, our company will pay the fine, as we would have been overweight otherwise. And, thankfully, this violation will have no weight on my CSA score (the federal government assigns a point value to any violations received; my speeding ticket earned me 9 points. Once you hit a certain amount of points, they revoke your CDL).
Current location: the Freightliner shop in Salt Lake City, UT
Direction headed: the Northwest!
Mileage total this month: 18,000ish
Showing posts with label Laws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laws. Show all posts
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A New Year: A New Incentive
As you may (or may not) be aware, many trucking companies look for ways to decrease fuel expenses, and two of the primary ways are through idling and accurate/efficient routing. With a company as large as ours, with as many trucks as there are, reduction of just one hour per day per truck in idling would save the company hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars each quarter. That's a lot of savings!
Idling one's truck for just one hour uses one gallon of fuel. For the company to heat/cool all of its trucks simultaneously for one hour, the company spends roughly $30,000 in fuel.
Many states have passed anti-idling laws, permitting truckers to idle for a maximum of 5 minutes (or 3 minutes, if you're in the wretched state of New Jersey). This is, of course, being done for emission purposes. However, by our estimation, 75% of truckers still idle their trucks, even in states where you could be fined thousands of dollars for doing so.
It's not hard to understand why a trucker would want to idle: non-truckers are not asked to turn off their heater or electricity when they're not in their homes. Being on the road, the truck is our home. But it comes down to common sense--there is no reason a trucker needs to idle his/her truck when the temperatures are between 40-70. Above 70, yes: if it gets too hot in the truck, the trucker cannot get adequate rest and therefore will not be able to perform to his/her duties in full capacity when his/her shift to drive comes up. Below 40, yes: for the same reasons.
The idling laws, however, are ridiculous in a sense that they are not enforced. We truckers have all been informed of them, however we have never seen an officer write a ticket to a trucker for having his truck on. We've seen some crazy instances of idling though--truckers idling their rigs between the temperatures of 40-70, or idling their truck with their windows open, or idling their truck and then leaving it idle as they head inside a truck stop for a bite to eat or a shower. Can you say wasteful?
Ben and I, since the beginning of this adventure of life on the road, have been very conscious of our idling practices. Thankfully, by being a team operation, most of our time on the road is spent as just that: on the road, moving loads from city to city. Keeping moving is one great way to keep idling costs down. But--when we are shut-down for a period of time due to poor weather or we are working on a restart of hours, we try to idle as little as possible. With our former company, CRST, unless the temperature dropped below 20 degrees, we didn't turn the truck on for the heater warmth. And generally, unless the heat outside was 75 degrees or above, we didn't turn the truck on for air conditioning cool.
Many of our present company's trucks are equipped with bunk heaters; these pull fuel directly out of your fuel tank through a pump and burns it through an ignitor. Both the pump and a fan are operated by the truck battery. Using the bunk heater continuously for 10 hours uses up only one gallon of fuel yet provides more than enough heat--enough that we often don't even need our blankets!
To the incentive portion of this post: our company is sponsoring a contest, if you will, to entice drivers to reduce their idling time. For the first quarter of 2011, the top 150 trucks with a bunk heater and the top 150 trucks without a bunk heater who have the lowest percentage of idle time will be entered into a drawing to win cash prizes, and the top prize winner will receive a company truck with 300,000-400,000 miles on it (most trucks are good at least to a million miles, sometimes more), and be enrolled in the lease-option program of the company. Typically this program entails that the driver/leaser pays the truck payment, upwards of $500/week, but can make an average of 89 cents per mile (of course, this 89cpm has to cover a range of expenses a company driver is not responsible for, like fuel, maintenance, permits, etc.). However, with the perks of this contest, the grand-prize-winner will get the truck and the company will pay the truck payment! That means that the driver/leaser has *only* to pay fuel, maintenance, permits, etc. costs. Considering that fuel and truck payments are your largest cost in owning your own truck, this is a significant savings! Furthermore, if you complete the lease-option program for two years after receiving the truck, the company will hand you the title for free. That is a whole lotta moolah to be made! Even if one were not to truck any longer after the two year lease-option program, reselling the truck could bring between $25-50,000.
Can you say "incentive"??? While Ben and I are not interested in trucking any longer than we have to to pay off our debt, the grand prize option sure is enticing! If the winner of that grand prize opts out of the truck option, they can instead receive $5000 cash. More money is certainly to be made with the lease-option, but it's nice that the $5000 is also offered.
We have lots of heavy blankets in our truck (and we like to cuddle for warmth anyhow ;-) )and plan to continue keeping our idling down, and hopefully in early April we'll find that we're in the top 150 drivers for the lowest idling percentage!
Present location: Santa Nella, CA (sitting out a winter storm that closed down a 40 mile section of the Grapevine)
Miles this week: 3700
Fun loads as of late: giant rolls of paper for newsprint
Idling one's truck for just one hour uses one gallon of fuel. For the company to heat/cool all of its trucks simultaneously for one hour, the company spends roughly $30,000 in fuel.
Many states have passed anti-idling laws, permitting truckers to idle for a maximum of 5 minutes (or 3 minutes, if you're in the wretched state of New Jersey). This is, of course, being done for emission purposes. However, by our estimation, 75% of truckers still idle their trucks, even in states where you could be fined thousands of dollars for doing so.
It's not hard to understand why a trucker would want to idle: non-truckers are not asked to turn off their heater or electricity when they're not in their homes. Being on the road, the truck is our home. But it comes down to common sense--there is no reason a trucker needs to idle his/her truck when the temperatures are between 40-70. Above 70, yes: if it gets too hot in the truck, the trucker cannot get adequate rest and therefore will not be able to perform to his/her duties in full capacity when his/her shift to drive comes up. Below 40, yes: for the same reasons.
The idling laws, however, are ridiculous in a sense that they are not enforced. We truckers have all been informed of them, however we have never seen an officer write a ticket to a trucker for having his truck on. We've seen some crazy instances of idling though--truckers idling their rigs between the temperatures of 40-70, or idling their truck with their windows open, or idling their truck and then leaving it idle as they head inside a truck stop for a bite to eat or a shower. Can you say wasteful?
Ben and I, since the beginning of this adventure of life on the road, have been very conscious of our idling practices. Thankfully, by being a team operation, most of our time on the road is spent as just that: on the road, moving loads from city to city. Keeping moving is one great way to keep idling costs down. But--when we are shut-down for a period of time due to poor weather or we are working on a restart of hours, we try to idle as little as possible. With our former company, CRST, unless the temperature dropped below 20 degrees, we didn't turn the truck on for the heater warmth. And generally, unless the heat outside was 75 degrees or above, we didn't turn the truck on for air conditioning cool.
Many of our present company's trucks are equipped with bunk heaters; these pull fuel directly out of your fuel tank through a pump and burns it through an ignitor. Both the pump and a fan are operated by the truck battery. Using the bunk heater continuously for 10 hours uses up only one gallon of fuel yet provides more than enough heat--enough that we often don't even need our blankets!
To the incentive portion of this post: our company is sponsoring a contest, if you will, to entice drivers to reduce their idling time. For the first quarter of 2011, the top 150 trucks with a bunk heater and the top 150 trucks without a bunk heater who have the lowest percentage of idle time will be entered into a drawing to win cash prizes, and the top prize winner will receive a company truck with 300,000-400,000 miles on it (most trucks are good at least to a million miles, sometimes more), and be enrolled in the lease-option program of the company. Typically this program entails that the driver/leaser pays the truck payment, upwards of $500/week, but can make an average of 89 cents per mile (of course, this 89cpm has to cover a range of expenses a company driver is not responsible for, like fuel, maintenance, permits, etc.). However, with the perks of this contest, the grand-prize-winner will get the truck and the company will pay the truck payment! That means that the driver/leaser has *only* to pay fuel, maintenance, permits, etc. costs. Considering that fuel and truck payments are your largest cost in owning your own truck, this is a significant savings! Furthermore, if you complete the lease-option program for two years after receiving the truck, the company will hand you the title for free. That is a whole lotta moolah to be made! Even if one were not to truck any longer after the two year lease-option program, reselling the truck could bring between $25-50,000.
Can you say "incentive"??? While Ben and I are not interested in trucking any longer than we have to to pay off our debt, the grand prize option sure is enticing! If the winner of that grand prize opts out of the truck option, they can instead receive $5000 cash. More money is certainly to be made with the lease-option, but it's nice that the $5000 is also offered.
We have lots of heavy blankets in our truck (and we like to cuddle for warmth anyhow ;-) )and plan to continue keeping our idling down, and hopefully in early April we'll find that we're in the top 150 drivers for the lowest idling percentage!
Present location: Santa Nella, CA (sitting out a winter storm that closed down a 40 mile section of the Grapevine)
Miles this week: 3700
Fun loads as of late: giant rolls of paper for newsprint
Friday, November 12, 2010
We Have a Theory
The last week, we've spent some time in the warmer-climate states (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee), and have two incidents of significance to note on aggressive driving. This leads us to our theory that the warmer the climate, the more aggressive the drivers (especially when you add Florida and California to the mix). Of course, Chicago, New Jersey as a whole, and New York City have their fill of them too, but our experience with the rest of the country has been pretty mild with road raged drivers.
Incident #1
Ben was driving west of Baton Rouge, east of Lafayette, LA. The interstate was three lanes wide, and we were in the far right lane. Upon approaching an on-ramp (i.e. traffic entering the interstate), there was no room for us to merge into the middle lane to allow for the on-ramp traffic to enter the far right lane.
Mind you, it is not required by law that drivers in the far right lane do such a thing. It is courteous, yes, but not legally mandatory. Drivers on the on-ramp, after all, are required to yield to those already in transit on the interstate.
Anyway, a very shiny black BMW with a very fancy cycling road bike attached to the trunk was trying to get in from the on-ramp. We were driving faster than he but could not merge left, so we held our lane. He had to *gasp* slow down and make the merge in behind us. He then (obviously because of his speed, small vehicle size, and raging anger) merged into the center lane, sped up beside and then in front of us, and proceeded to merge back into the far right lane to be the vehicle directly in front of us. Can anyone guess what he did next? Yes--this mature piece of work SLAMMED on his brakes.
Now, I've never been known for my mathematical skill or knowledge of the laws of physics, but what do you think a tractor-trailer combination weighing up to 80,000 pounds could do to his less-than-5000 pound fancy foreign car?
Thankfully, we had a safe six second following distance (minimum) and avoided any such catastrophe.
Incident #2
We were on our way back to the interstate in the Memphis area after having a mid-route drop for our last load. We had several miles of three-lane traffic (i.e. with stop lights) to battle through before we got back to the outer loop of the city. We were less than 3/4 mile from the particular on-ramp we needed, and were in the middle lane of three. Traffic was moving extremely slowly, but because there were so many trucks/four-wheelers in front of us, we couldn't quite tell what was going on. What we did know, however, was that the far right lane was mostly empty, so the cars behind us would zip around to get in front. We then employed our tactic that we like to call "plugging the hole". We maneuvered around enough to see that some utility work was being done ahead and the workers had blocked off both the far right lane and the center lanes. Our "plug" was to take up both of those lanes so as to prevent more four-wheeler traffic from zipping by and slowing down the process for everyone else.
I moved right to block these lanes just before a "big bad pick-up truck" (BBPUT) with a small trailer of his own tried to get by me. He was ticked off so bad at my plug that he made sure he was seen in my driver's side mirror, where he proceeded to fist pump his extended middle finger three times through his windshield, and then two more times out his window. It didn't take a genius to see that he was flaming mad! I continued to hold both lanes until a kind four-wheeler driver (they do exist) let me in front of him to get in the far left lane just as I came upon the orange cones blocking off the two lanes I was plugging. BBPUT guy had to merge in a few vehicles after me.
Just after the utility work lanes opened back up, I got back into the far right lane as the on-ramp was following the next traffic light. BBPUT guy sped up to meet me window to window, screaming and hollering at me, wagging his cell phone in one hand and his cigarette in the other. I pulled up just enough to where he wasn't even with me anymore, and couldn't be (a vehicle was in front of him at the traffic light). Ben told me I should smile and wave. That dude was an angry bully and I was not going to give in to his loathing attitude of my action.
Using the tractor-trailer to "plug" may not be the kindest of actions to perform, but 90% of other drivers on the road non-verbally support and often follow this action. They don't like dealing with that BBPUT guy type who think they're so important they need to zip around everyone violating safe driving practices just to be the first in line.
What to learn from these two examples? Don't be that aggressive driver! It's not worth it!
Present location: Greencastle, PA
Where we're off to next: Las Vegas, NV
Miles this week: 6000ish (we just came off our home-time and they're running us hard!)
Friendly encounter: Dianne and baby Charlie came up from Front Royal for a lunch date--it was great to see them!
Incident #1
Ben was driving west of Baton Rouge, east of Lafayette, LA. The interstate was three lanes wide, and we were in the far right lane. Upon approaching an on-ramp (i.e. traffic entering the interstate), there was no room for us to merge into the middle lane to allow for the on-ramp traffic to enter the far right lane.
Mind you, it is not required by law that drivers in the far right lane do such a thing. It is courteous, yes, but not legally mandatory. Drivers on the on-ramp, after all, are required to yield to those already in transit on the interstate.
Anyway, a very shiny black BMW with a very fancy cycling road bike attached to the trunk was trying to get in from the on-ramp. We were driving faster than he but could not merge left, so we held our lane. He had to *gasp* slow down and make the merge in behind us. He then (obviously because of his speed, small vehicle size, and raging anger) merged into the center lane, sped up beside and then in front of us, and proceeded to merge back into the far right lane to be the vehicle directly in front of us. Can anyone guess what he did next? Yes--this mature piece of work SLAMMED on his brakes.
Now, I've never been known for my mathematical skill or knowledge of the laws of physics, but what do you think a tractor-trailer combination weighing up to 80,000 pounds could do to his less-than-5000 pound fancy foreign car?
Thankfully, we had a safe six second following distance (minimum) and avoided any such catastrophe.
Incident #2
We were on our way back to the interstate in the Memphis area after having a mid-route drop for our last load. We had several miles of three-lane traffic (i.e. with stop lights) to battle through before we got back to the outer loop of the city. We were less than 3/4 mile from the particular on-ramp we needed, and were in the middle lane of three. Traffic was moving extremely slowly, but because there were so many trucks/four-wheelers in front of us, we couldn't quite tell what was going on. What we did know, however, was that the far right lane was mostly empty, so the cars behind us would zip around to get in front. We then employed our tactic that we like to call "plugging the hole". We maneuvered around enough to see that some utility work was being done ahead and the workers had blocked off both the far right lane and the center lanes. Our "plug" was to take up both of those lanes so as to prevent more four-wheeler traffic from zipping by and slowing down the process for everyone else.
I moved right to block these lanes just before a "big bad pick-up truck" (BBPUT) with a small trailer of his own tried to get by me. He was ticked off so bad at my plug that he made sure he was seen in my driver's side mirror, where he proceeded to fist pump his extended middle finger three times through his windshield, and then two more times out his window. It didn't take a genius to see that he was flaming mad! I continued to hold both lanes until a kind four-wheeler driver (they do exist) let me in front of him to get in the far left lane just as I came upon the orange cones blocking off the two lanes I was plugging. BBPUT guy had to merge in a few vehicles after me.
Just after the utility work lanes opened back up, I got back into the far right lane as the on-ramp was following the next traffic light. BBPUT guy sped up to meet me window to window, screaming and hollering at me, wagging his cell phone in one hand and his cigarette in the other. I pulled up just enough to where he wasn't even with me anymore, and couldn't be (a vehicle was in front of him at the traffic light). Ben told me I should smile and wave. That dude was an angry bully and I was not going to give in to his loathing attitude of my action.
Using the tractor-trailer to "plug" may not be the kindest of actions to perform, but 90% of other drivers on the road non-verbally support and often follow this action. They don't like dealing with that BBPUT guy type who think they're so important they need to zip around everyone violating safe driving practices just to be the first in line.
What to learn from these two examples? Don't be that aggressive driver! It's not worth it!
Present location: Greencastle, PA
Where we're off to next: Las Vegas, NV
Miles this week: 6000ish (we just came off our home-time and they're running us hard!)
Friendly encounter: Dianne and baby Charlie came up from Front Royal for a lunch date--it was great to see them!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Finally! A Welcome Law From the Fed!
I am pleased to report that US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a federal ban on texting while operating a commercial vehicle. This ban is effective immediately, and is enforceable by a fine of up to $2750.
Now, when will this law apply to "four-wheelers"?
Now, when will this law apply to "four-wheelers"?
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