Get Out the Bubbly!

Let’s pop some champagne and lift our glasses to Rachele Champagne.

Rachele’s the trucker from Gatineau, Quebec, who decided in July to organize the first ever all-female truck convoy to raise money for breast cancer research.

A short three months later, on October 18th, it became a reality when 29 trucks convoyed down Highway 401 in Ontario with 29 women behind the wheels.

By Rachele’s estimate, the participants raised at least $15,000.

“For 29 trucks, I’d say that’s pretty good” Rachele says.

I’ll say!

Plus, Rachele got donors to give all sorts of items that the women could take home – from bags containing things like bracelets and coffee mugs; to jackets and a coffee maker; to $1,500 worth of fuel.

“I think everyone left with a smile,” she says.

Will Rachele and the other women stage another convoy next year?

“Absolutely!” she says – adding that she bets there’ll be twice as many trucks next time.

Personally, given the short amount of time Rachele had to organize this year’s convoy, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a hundred trucks in the next one.

So, ‘cheers!’ to Rachele Champagne or en francais, ‘Sante!’

Drill, baby, drill

You’ve heard the chants at rallies across the country: Drill, baby, drill.

Folks are ready to use our domestic oil reserves so we can escape the dependence on foreign oil.

But those folks may have forgotten something. And the sad part is, it’s obvious, and I don’t think anyone – or at least very few people – have figured it out.

We can have all the oil in the world, but what if we don’t do anything to increase our refining capacity?

You can have all the oil in the world, but without the refinery capacity, what you have is a nice reserve of unrefined lubricant. It’s certainly not something you would want to put in your vehicle.

I guess the politicians missed that. Not that I’m surprised.

But we have to think beyond the political slogans and easy solutions. We have to think about the entire process of providing energy to this nation, start to finish.

If we mess up this one, we could damage our nation in ways I don’t even want to think about.

OOIDA employees get TWIC'd

I recently talked to OOIDA’s Joe Rajkovacz and Rick Craig about the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, program. If you listen to the show at all, you probably already know all about it.

But just in case, here’s a quick recap: It’s the security card that all ports in the U.S. will be requiring by next spring. If you drive in and out of any ports in the U.S., you’ll need to have one.

One of the things Joe and Rick told me that surprised me was that you could use the TWIC card as an ID for airport security as well. I guess it makes sense. It’s a Transportation Security Administration thing, after all, and they run security at both ports and airports.

I had to laugh, though, when Rick flashed his card at Kansas City International Airport and was waived on through. Then Joe went next, only to have the security guy stop and wonder what kind of card it was supposed to be. At least the folks at the Los Angeles airport seemed to know what was going on.

It would be easy to dismiss this because Kansas City is a smaller airport. So what does it matter if they don’t know what’s going on, right?

But consider this: On September 11, 2001, a group of men made their way through sloopy airport security and managed to kill 3,000 people within a couple of hours.

The airport where they started? Portland International Jetport, Portland, ME. I’ve been to that airport many times. It makes Kansas City look like New York’s JFK Airport.

Okay, so the folks at the airports don’t know what’s going on, so what? This card is for ports, right? Surely the folks at the ports know what’s going on. Maybe they know, but for now, at least, they can’t do much with that knowledge. There are no card readers installed at the ports yet.

So does that mean you shouldn’t bother with a TWIC card? Well, that depends on whether or not you want to haul freight in and out of the ports. Flawed program or not, TWIC is here to stay.

Let’s just hope the TSA realizes that, too, and fixes those flaws before they become part of the permanent record.

CARB enforcement, no holds barred

CARB has taken the kid gloves off.

The California Air Resources Board announced just last week that it was sending members of its staff into the field to begin strict enforcement of its idling rules – including the five-minute limit for commercial trucks.

Here’s how things work in a nut shell.

Trucks, even those with sleeper berths, are not allowed to idle more than 5 minutes in an hour.

The only exceptions for the vast majority of truckers are:

• You are stuck in traffic;
• Idling to service or inspect your vehicle;
• You are using a power take-off device;
• You cannot move because of mechanical failure, or bad weather;

If you violate the new truck idling rules, you could face a fine of $300. And if you do it again and again, you could face even higher fines, sometimes running $1,000 to $10,000.

The situation is dire for some truckers, who face forced confinement in their sleepers for rest periods.

The new enforcement effort has caused a lot of trucker reaction. One truck driver told us that the agency was stepping up enforcement in truck stop parking lots, something he questioned. Is it legal to go onto private property to enforce the rules?

It’s a good question.

I asked OOIDA’s Member Assistance Department about that. They concluded pretty much the same thing I did. There is nothing to stop CARB from doing that.

The truck stop is a public place, a business that welcomes members of the general public onto its property. And once CARB enforcers walk on that property, there’s nothing to stop them from ticketing any idling truck they see.

But that’s just another aspect of the situation – not the fundamental problem.

California has decided to single out truckers among all vehicle drivers as somehow responsible for the state’s air quality.

Admittedly, diesel fumes are worse than car fumes. But California has a heck of a lot more cars than it does trucks, and they’re all emitting tons upon tons of pollution.

Will state officials tell cars to shut the engines off and stop idling? I’d say no.

That’s because, first, so many cars run on the roads there, it would be impractical to try to shut them all down.

Second, trucks are an easy target. There aren’t nearly as many as cars, and with so many groups demonizing trucks, it’s easy to get lawmakers or agencies to pass a rule restricting them.

Of course, that leaves us with a number of problems that CARB hasn’t addressed. So let’s take a look at those.

First, this is inconsistent with other laws. Truckers are required to take their 10 hours off to get rest. How can the government expect truckers to get proper rest in a cab where the interior temperature may be well above 130 degrees?

Unfortunately, many of our laws contradict one another. And we the people pretty much have to live with it. Saying “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” won’t get you out of a ticket.

Second, while CARB could make an argument that owner-operators have the option of purchasing idle-reduction equipment such as APUs, no one can argue with any logic whatsoever that company drivers have that option.

So what should they do? Apparently, CARB’s answer is that they should roast out in the desert heat, which is plain bull.

So what can people like you and I do to help out those truckers?

The best thing is to get some useful information out there that can help those truckers.

We’ve spelled out the rules, which is a good step. But we plan to go much further. For truckers who don’t have an APU or other similar system, we’ll do some research and see if we can get some solid advice for you to follow.

But no matter what, be ready – those fines are high enough they could cause some real financial damage.

Are Some Journalists Taking the Easy Way Out?

When I was in journalism school, I was always taught that question mark headlines – and question mark lead sentences, for that matter – were a no-no. They weren’t expressly forbidden, but they were seen as a last resort of weak writing.

You’d never know that to look at the news today, though. It seems like every news Web site and news network out there is asking questions. Is the economic crisis over? Is the economic crisis just beginning? Are land sharks a danger to you and your family? We’ll have the answer to that question coming up at 11.

ABC News seems to be one of the worst offenders in this category. Look at the headlines from their Web site from Friday, Oct. 10. Early in the morning, the headline read: “Black Friday?” And pondered just how low the stock markets were going to go.

A short time later, the headline was changed to something slightly less apocalyptic: “Gray Friday? World Markets Tank, Dow Flails from High to Low.”

Apparently someone at ABC News decided to adopt the federal government’s color-coded terror watch system and use it for news coverage.

The market threat today has been upgraded from black to gray. I suppose if it recovers, it will go to charcoal gray, then slate gray, followed by light gray. Who knows? If it’s a really good day, it could go as high as off-white.

But I digress. The problem I have with question headlines is that they are a cheap way to draw in readers or viewers or listeners. “Is grass really green?” Well, of course we all know it is, but we might tune in anyway just in case the folks on the news crew know something we don’t.

But think about it this way – if they know so much more than you, why do they keep asking such stupid questions?

I’ll have the answer for you at 11.

Trouble in the land of TWIC

We reported recently that after years of delays, the federal government has finally opened all the enrollment centers for the TWIC card – the Transportation Workers Identification Credential.

Of course, we still don’t have all port facilities using the cards. And we don’t have the electronic readers necessary to check them to ensure they’re valid.

But, hey, you can enroll. I guess that’s something.

Or is it?

A trucker called in to OOIDA headquarters recently to tell us what we suspected would happen all along. To enter the ports he services, he has to have not only his TWIC card, but also a card for that port, a card for some terminals, a whole box of cards just to do his job.

The whole original idea of TWIC was not only security, but to replace all the other cards.

You may remember that back then, Todd Spencer said that TWIC would not replace the two dozen or so cards some truckers have to carry – it would be just one more card. And here we are, years later, watching that prediction come true.

This is a boondoggle, a waste of taxpayer money that has yet to yield any result for the American taxpayer or the American trucker.

Unfortunately, it’s also a reality right now. Truckers who want to work the ports have to sign up, have to turn over some very personal information, have to travel the miles and miles to get to an enrollment center, have to pay the fee.

It’s been a big concern for me to hear it’s causing truckers this kind of inconvenience … although that word hardly describes what a pain in the butt this has been.

The problem here, though, is not just the pain. It isn’t even charging a fee for what could be your fourth government background check.

It’s a philosophy of how government interacts with industry – a philosophy carried out only halfway.

The federal government has been very reluctant to put more regulation on big businesses. Some of you may read that and think, hey, I thought they wanted to deregulate all business.

But the fact is, you and all the other truckers out there know that the amount of regulation you face has not decreased one iota. You have logbooks and FAST and cargo securement and hazmat endorsements and medical cards and chain laws and spring thaw restrictions and weight limitations and split speed limits and kingpin-to-rear-axle limits and IFTA and IRP and drug tests and on and on and on.

But big business … well, things are running pretty smooth for them. The current folks running things in Washington have been pretty lax in enforcing regulations in regard to them. Ask anyone who’s talked with their carrier about possible violations of the leasing regulations.

So when the feds put TWIC out there, they said it would replace these cards, but then they did nothing to make that happen, no regulation requiring ports or terminals to use it in place of all the other cards. They just accepted that it would happen; call it a faith-based security initiative.

Well, no one is accepting on faith that you fill out your logbook. You are required to meet the regulations imposed on you. Why shouldn’t the shippers, receivers, brokers, big carriers, and yes, port terminals be required to do the same?

If TWIC is going to work, they can’t just enforce it on the trucker; they have to do something about getting the ports to use it to.

Of course, there’s also the other option – they could give up this nonsense and come up with something that actually works.

What a concept, what a radical idea! But then again, we are dealing with the feds … so don’t get your hopes up.

What’s in your wallet?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight.

We’re on the brink of a financial Apocalypse because greedy Wall Street suits handed out so much bad credit … and our only salvation is to pump billions into the credit markets so the suits can start handing out credit again.

Great.

I’m going to do my patriotic part by running up the credit card at 28 percent interest.

Then I’m going to get one of those adjustable rate mortgages and put the family upside down in our payments.

Will the bank give you a home improvement loan, a vacation loan and a cereal malt beverage loan if you’re not making your monthly house payments?

If so, I’m gonna get me some of those too.

After all, the administration has set the example for borrowing – the national debt now tops $10 trillion, up from $5.7 trillion eight years ago.

That means I – and every other man, woman and child in this country – already owe $33,000, just to pay off the national debt.

China alone has underwritten $500 billion of our debt and unless they pull the ‘nuclear option’ (dumping those US treasury notes) they’ll probably lend us more.

So what’s a little more personal debt, eh?

I say let’s loosen up those credit markets at any cost – and let the good times roll!