Two big trucking articles in weekend edition of USA Today

LA is the problem in this story.

 

The picture tells the true story; the guy in the filthy, garbage strewn sleeper, sitting beside a bottle or urine. He's one of those that says, "My dispatcher forced me to drive illegally."
Sure, the dispatcher held one of his family members hostage pointed a gun at the driver and told him to drive illegally or else.

 

Automated ports will cure many of those problems. Once an automated port is fully functional, the robot cranes, etc. will be able to unload 150 containers per hour off the ships with only 9 employees operating the entire port. That's why their nicknamed "ghost ports", no humans in sight. I saw a film of one that's fully operational and it's really a sight to see; cranes and trucks moving all over the port with no drivers. The Ghost Ports are already being designed and constructed on the west coast.

Here's a ship being unloaded with robots only. When the truck arrives at the port to pick up a container, there's no waiting, if the container has been offloaded from the ship. No Longshoremen to cause delays or problems for the drivers any more. The driver gets something that shows where to go and get his container. The container will be already on a chassis or will be automatically loaded on the truckers chassis, then he leaves the port and makes the delivery with no hassles from lowlife Longshoremen or security guards.

 

It's press like this that makes me wonder how they will ever relax the hours of service rules , if anything they might take away an hour from our 11 hour clock .
Any flexibility or increase will be demonized , and our representatives are not the bravest sheep in the flock

 

More and more articles and posts about tired truckers fatal accidents ect ect after the elog mandate and encouraging elogs is what I'm getting from the articles.From posts I'm getting blame elogs for something a stupid trucker does.I can't figure out how elogs equates into what happen.Its not elogs fault its the driver for not being professional and not caring about his job.Companies are more to blame for letting these yoyos loose.They let the mighty dollar cloud there judgment.

 

Insurance companies executives are reading this here on the first day of the year that are going to crank up the rates tomorrow on premiums. You know your insurance rates are always based on secret numbers

 

Press could recommend European clock and cut you back to 9 hours. AAA and ATA would be tickled pink

 

last time they were doing their listening tour about HOS (and that's a joke in itself) they were talking about 9 or 10 hours , I wouldn't be surprised to see them cut daily hours and weekly hours , it would make the 14 hour clock less restrictive , and of course just think of the safety benefits

 

Miller beer uses automated forklifts for pallet relocation and beer storage. Not the docks yet.