Marten Transport - going to Cali but no Smartway "Green" trailer skirts etc??

I am a Marten driver and I asked my OPS manager and he said they have a exemption for rail and if they had to get them than it would drive up their costs to customers in CA, thus they have a 10yr exemption.

 

And yet super carriers swift, jb, sni not only ship by trains and do a lot of shipping in cali. And there trailers are skirted and older trailers are being retrofitted. Sounds like Martin is being lazy.

 

Sounds like they knew someone in Sacramento that likes strippers, booze and cash. You rub my back and I'll rub your . . . never mind.

 

Marten is different from the other major carriers that do intermodal in that *all* of Marten's trailers are specced for intermodal. Unlike England or Central or even JB Hunt, who have a dedicated trailer pool that can go on the rail, when the rest of their trailers can't. Every single trailer Marten buys can go on the rail at any time. That would be why they can use the exemption to skirt skirting (heh!) any of their trailers.

 

I thought skirts were free ( fuel savings )

 

who cares, I dont go to Cali, Canada or any other foreign counties

 

Swift ships trailers by rail new and old, skirted and non-skirted, different styles and makes. UPS and FedEx also put normal van trailers on rail cars. Transwest (Quebec, CA) does the same, though their trailers seem to have more reinforcement than normal where the roof meets the walls. Any normal van trailer or reefer can be loaded on a rail car; Marten trailers are not unique in this respect.

Marten must ship most or all of their California freight by rail, and like Rhino wrote, has a special exemption to avoid the trailer aero mandates.

 

I know that basically any trailer can be put on the rail. My point was that by speccing all of their trailers as rail trailers, they can avoid the skirt rule. It's not so much what they do with the trailers as how they're classified.

 

I think I see better what you're getting at now, Saienga. Marten trailers must be registered differently than normal van or reefer trailers, then. That makes sense to me. Maybe a Marten driver could shed more light on this topic. I'm also curious if they're heading more in the intermodal direction, as JB Hunt and Schneider have done. Prime seems to be investing more in rail, as do England and Werner.