Blog Archives




 

  • December, 2009
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday December 4, 2008
    At this time of year it's customary to look over the previous twelve months and talk about the events that shaped the industry over that time. Right now I'm more interested in what the next twelve months will bring. A year from now there will be no Sterling Trucks. A year from now, Caterpillar will not be taking orders for new truck engines. A year from now, fleets will be teaching their drivers how to use urea (or "Diesel Emissions Fluid," if you prefer) in their trucks, and where to find it. Those are the things we know of for certain. Other things we can only speculate on... A year from now, the local dealer you depend on for warranty work may not be in business. A year from now there may be no Dodge trucks. A year from now there may be...

  • The Road to Nebraska SuperTech
    By Amanda Schuier - Monday December 1, 2008
    The exact series of events leading up to my involvement with SuperTech may be a bit hazy, but I do distinctly remember a friendly email from Larry Johnson. Johnson, Nebraska Trucking Association President, had recently heard of the SuperTech competition from long-time TMC member and mentor Darrell Hicks. Hick's enthusiasm must've rubbed off on Johnson, because next thing we knew, Nebraska was poised to have its first SuperTech competition.  Of course, Johnson had to recruit some volunteers to help guide the competition first. Fortunately for me, Omaha Truck Center is a company that fully supports both the Nebraska Trucking Association and professional development events such as these.   After a brief moment that included virtually no...

  • No Bailout
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday November 20, 2008
    Apparently, the American government can fork over $700 billion of our money to Wall Street gamblers to pay for executive bonuses and meetings at luxury resorts, but it can't spare $25 billion to tide over the big three automakers and save 3 million jobs. Why bail out one industry and let another drown? Could it be because Wall Street isn't unionized? Is the government willing to let Chrysler, Ford and GM flounder because they're hoping it will break the back of the United Auto Workers? We've seen the figures showing that a union lineworker in Detroit makes over $70 an hour in income and benefits, while a non-union lineworker at a Nissan or BWM plant in Tennessee or Alabama makes about $25 an hour. Apparently we are all supposed to be...

  • Collapse
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday November 13, 2008
    There are a lot of things I wish I could write about this week, but with more and more headlines every day warning about the crash of the U.S. auto industry, nothing else seems to matter much. A few weeks ago, when I was writing about the demise of Sterling Trucks, I asked what nameplate would be the next to go. We may have an answer to that: according to the news stories I've been reading all week, General Motors may cease to exist by the end of the year. Think about that: Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Cadillac, Saab, Saturn, Hummer, Vauxhall, Opel and Holden could all go the way of the dodo. And if GM fails, what's to stop Chrysler and Ford from failing as well? You can argue that that may be a good and fitting end to an industry...

  • Urea So Vain
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday November 6, 2008
    Last week I sat in on a webcast hosted by the Automotive Training Managers Council, in which Allen Johnson, Manager - After Sales Support EPA 2010 with Daimler Trucks, and Daryl Blandy, Senior Service Training Developer for Daimler Trucks, talked about what could be the biggest nightmare of everyone in the trucking industry: urea, or, if you prefer, diesel emission fluid (DEF). There was a lot of information given on where the urea tanks will be located on Daimler's 2010 trucks, how big those tanks will be, and in what size containers you'll be able to purchase urea. We learned that the new fluid is a mixture of 32.5 percent urea in water, and that it is clear, odorless, non-toxic and biodegradable. We learned that urea weighs 9.2...

  • State Technician Championships
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 30, 2008
    All it takes is one person to start a state fleet technician championship, and in the great State of Nebraska, that person is Amanda Schuier (pronouced "shoo-er"), from Omaha Truck Center, a Freightliner dealership. Schuier contacted us last month for advice and assistance in launching a statewide truck technician competition, after having been referred to us by Bonne Karim, training manager for the U.S. Postal Service. We here at Fleet Maintenance have put a lot of work into promoting the efforts of state maintenance councils, so we were quite honored both by Karim's recommendation and by Schuier's contact. When I first talked with Schuier on the phone, I was bowled over by her enthusiasm for this project: "This is my passion!" she told...

  • Sterling Trucks: Getting it Wrong
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 23, 2008
    According to a report on the demise of Sterling Trucks in the latest edition of Transport Topics the company was counting on a "pre-buy" of trucks in advance of the restrictive 2010 diesel emission standards to keep sales steady through 2009. When it became evident in recent months that the pre-buy wasn't going to occur as expected, Daimler Trucks North America decided to halt Sterling production in March, 2009, and concentrate on a "two-brand" strategy with their Freightliner and Western Star divisions. How could the company have gotten the pre-buy strategy so wrong? Didn't fleets pre-buy like crazy in advance of the 2002 and 2007 diesel emissions standards? Well, there's an interesting irony there... I can still recall the Freightliner...

  • Post-Mortem on a Great Vehicle Manufacturer
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 16, 2008
    You might have thought I would be writing about the demise of Sterling Trucks, but I'm actually referring to another great nameplate that has passed into the ether. This week I was in South Bend, Indiana, attending the Hybrid Truck Users Forum (HTUF) Meeting (I'll be writing about this in my next Fuel Advantage blog at www.fuelpub.com), and while I was in town I took some time to visit the Studebaker museum. I was only five years old when Studebaker built its last car, but as an old car buff I've always been a fan. Studebaker may have had a hard time finding a place in the US auto market for the last few years of its life, but, with the help of legendary designers Raymond Leowy and Brooks Stevens, the company built some legendary cars...

  • Around in Circles
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 9, 2008
    Let me just start out by saying that tires are indisputably round. Are we all in agreement? All right then, moving on... By extension, shouldn't retreads all be round as well? The folks at Marangoni Tread North Amnerica believe the answer to that is 'yes,' as I learned when I visited their Nashville, TN facility a few weeks ago. It does make perfect sense; if you're putting a new tread on an old casing, the tread should probably match the true shape of that casing before it's glued on. That's where Marangoni's RINGTREAD System comes into the story. In 1976, the Italian company pioneered the splice-less, pre-cured retread, and in 1998 it brought the technology to North America. The process itself is nothing short of amazing; on a production...

  • Working With the Army
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 2, 2008
    The big news at the recent Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Fall Meeting in Nashville (besides the crowning of this year's SuperTech winner) was the announcement that TMC is partnering with the U.S. Army on a four-year, $12 million project to study "Condition-Based Maintenance." What is conditon-based maintenance, you ask? Well, it's not reactive and it's not predictive (the transportation industry wastes $25 billion on unnecessary PM and unrealized cost-reductions on predictive maintenance, according to TMC's man on this project, Duke Drinkard); instead, it's based on the real-time condition of the component. Or, as the Army's representative Paul Skalny said, it's "maintenance based on evidence." According to Drinkard, the...

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