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News from Around the Industry
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| Select Area: Port - Trucking - Ocean - Air - Shipper - Rail | ||
| Port - Channels to the World | ||
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The Port of Houston Authority is proud to host the International Association of Ports and Harbors for the 2007 World Ports Conference. We are excited to welcome you to Houston, Texas, to celebrate our theme Anchored by Commitment, Buoyed by Unity. This conference will fulfill all of the business objectives of IAPH and offer the best social amenities of Houston. IAPH Conferences are a biennial reunion of the world port family to discuss issues of immediate and long-term interest and concern and to acquaint themselves with the state-of-the-art port and maritime technology showcased at conference exhibitions. |
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| Trucking - Down the Highway | ||
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Outrageous! February 14, 2008 From: Land Line Magazine
DRIVER ALERT: CA issues $800 fines for missing engine stickers The DOT was set up on the grass alongside four lanes of California’s Interstate 805 on Jan. 17. One officer motioned for Joseph Gomes to pull his 2000 Kenworth over for a random check. Gomes, an OOIDA member from Norfolk, VA, was preparing to head back east from San Diego on Jan. 17 when he was given a random inspection by DOT officers and enforcement officers from the California Air Resources Board. Gomes and a buddy recently purchased the Kenworth at an auction. The truck looked good and had a good price, Gomes thought, but a CARB officer found one flaw that only recently became an offense in the Golden State: the lack of what CARB refers to as an Emission Compliance Label. Since January 2007, CARB enforcement officers have issued 1,465 citations with $800 fines after inspecting 5,050 trucks for worn or missing Emission Compliance labels or engine data plates. Truck owners were given 45 days to obtain a new label, and the entire fine was dropped. Beginning on Friday, Feb, 15, however, missing emission labels will require at least a $300 fine, even if truck owners replace the labels within 45 days. Emission compliance labels typically are made of plastic or metal and are attached to the engine by the manufacturer at the time of production. Besides identifying the date and place the engines were built, the labels state that the engines met U.S. EPA and California emission requirements for the years they were manufactured. Fines for missing labels can be as much as $800, although that may be dropped to $300 if the truck owner is able to obtain the missing label through the engine manufacturer within 45 days. News of the label requirement surprised Gomes, who was making a rare trip to the West Coast. “I’ve only been in this truck for a month,” Gomes told Land Line. CARB officers had Gomes do a snap idle test and watched the smoke coming out of his stack. Another officer dipped a tube into his diesel tank. Finally, they had Gomes pop his hood. The CARB officer pointed to a small spot near the water hose on the engine’s passenger side. The spot was worn, and the officer told Gomes it should have held an engine certification label verifying that the truck met U.S. EPA standards when it was manufactured. Roy Lettieri, Gomes’ friend and the truck owner, received a letter in late January telling him he would be fined $800 if he didn’t obtain an Emission Control Label within 45 days. The label requirement was adopted in early 2007, but California officials said they would allow a 1-year non-penalty phase, a CARB spokesman told Land Line. Karen Caesar, a CARB spokeswoman, confirmed to Land Line that the agency is enforcing the regulation and has been inspecting trucks for the labels since early 2007. From January through September 2007, in fact, CARB conducted 5,005 such inspections and found 1,465 violations. Those truck owners were given 45 days to correct the label issue. Cummins diesel engines are affixed with a metal label not much larger than a business card that is stamped with emissions data, part information and the VIN-like engine serial number, said Christy Nycz, a Cummins spokeswoman. Truck owners with worn or missing data plates can contact their local Cummins distributor, Nycz told Land Line. The company will then move through its engine verification process to ensure the label will include the correct information. “We want to help out as much as we can,” Nycz said. Nycz didn’t immediately know how quickly Cummins can replace an engine data plate, but said the price for obtaining engine data plates is set by individual distributors. The engine company can provide truck owners with a letter showing the engine met EPA standards at the time of manufacture as well, Nycz said. CARB’s engine label requirement has caused OEM dealerships to brace for service calls from truckers with missing or worn engine labels, said Joe Suchecki, a spokesman for Chicago-based Engine Manufacturer’s Association. Truckers who need an emission label should call their local dealer, who will in turn verify through the engine manufacturer whether the truck met emission standards the year it was built. The sticker can only be applied by “authorized dealers,” according to CARB’s rule. “It is fairly difficult because not only do they have to bring it in, but the dealers have to do an inspection to make sure the engine hasn’t been changed or tampered with,” Suchecki told Land Line. Kenworth Truck Co., the manufacturer of the type of truck Gomes was driving, hasn’t received many calls about California’s engine label requirement, a company spokesman relayed to Land Line on Wednesday. Truckers driving through southern California should be particularly aware of the new emission label requirement. The officer who stopped Gomes told him the new restriction was especially being enforced there because of the heavy volume of older trucks coming over the Mexican border. Gomes isn’t likely to be making many return trips to California anytime soon, he told Land Line. A tightening trucking economy and the increased emission rules make it unlikely he’ll make many stops in the Golden State. “I don’t think I will be going that way again anyway,” Gomes said. “The rates are too cheap to come back.” – By Charlie Morasch, staff writer |
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Down the Highway.... Trucking Industry News 08.07.07 by Danny R. Schnautz
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Ports have a big impact in the logistics chain, and now they are
trying to take their influence even farther by mandating that old
trucks and small operators cannot have access to their terminals.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have proposed a plan to
allow only a small group of companies to have access to the ports.
Two of the criteria for access are newer (less polluting) trucks and
no owner-operators, employee drivers only. The Port of Vancouver
(Canada) has the same intent. This sort of narrow thinking may
clean up the air, and the public will pay the price as rates
increase for the limited competition and new equipment. - Out of service ratings are a big part of the safety criteria for trucklines. After all, the criteria for inspections has long been random selection so a carrier had an equal chance of being found with or without a violation. The trend lately is toward inspecting trucks with obvious defects; so, before an inspection starts, the end is known. This is creating very high out of service (OOS) ratings that is skewing the data for how safe a trucker is. The DOT inspectors are one of a small group of law enforcement officers who are legally able to stop and search without probable cause, and for years they have used random selection as the mode of operation. |
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Down the Highway.... Trucking Industry News 05.07.07 by Danny R. Schnautz - Truckers are spending more time and money, both of which are notoriously scarce in trucking, to obtain a Transportation Workers Identification Card. The security-inspired TWIC was originally intended for those transportation workers without prior background checks who have unescorted access to sensitive areas in ports. But somehow the program expanded to truckers, most of whom already have background checks as part of their Commercial Drivers License. The TWIC card will cost around $130 and take the trucker away from his duties for a daytime/weekday application, and again to pick up the card (they won't be mailed). The US government has spent $99.4 million on the TWIC program since 2001 and so far no cards have been issued and no one is any safer. - Not even truckstops want truckers! The trend over past years has been to change the name "truck stop" to "travel center" and increasingly truckstops are catering more to the motorists. Each day that truckers face less-than-welcome receptions at warehouses, ports, and other facilities, they can now add "truckstops" (make that, "travel centers") to the list of places that would often rather sell to the SUV crowd from the city instead of the weary trucker away from home moving the goods of our nation. - Speed limiters on heavy trucks is one of the hot issues lately that is not what it seems. Some large trucking companies, many of which have driver turnover at over 100% annually and already govern their trucks to a maximum speed below some speed limits, are pressing for a regulation to require all heavy trucks on the road be fitted, or even retrofitted, with a speed limiting device for a 68 mph top speed. Critics of such a regulation point at the overwhelming studies that cite speed differentials as the most dangerous highway condition. Only a small percentage of truck accidents happen at speeds over 65 mph, and many are at speeds as low as 30 mph. The real driving force for the speed limiters is to take away the small speed advantage that small fleets and owner operators have which mean better transit times, more scheduling flexibility, and higher driver pay per hour. |
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May 4 , 2007
Two truckers stopped to help a pregnant woman who was being assaulted on the side of a New Mexico highway last week. Two truckers pulled over and stopped on Friday, April 27, after seeing a man running over a woman with his pickup alongside U.S. 84 near Espanola, NM. The driver of an SUV, Michael Rutkowski, also stopped but was struck and thrown more than 50 feet by the truck as he ran to try and protect the woman. “As he was running to help the girl, he was struck,” said Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Freddie Trujillo. “It killed him.” The woman is OK, Trujillo told Land Line, and the Sante Fe New Mexican reported that her unborn baby was unharmed. The New Mexican reported that truck drivers Brian Peterson and Ronnie Greene stopped to help the woman. Trujillo told Land Line that one of the men pulled the woman to the step of his rig to keep her from being struck again by her raging 23-year-old boyfriend. Christopher Branch, 23, has been arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder and aggravated battery on a household member. Branch is in jail in lieu of $1 million bond, Trujillo said. Branch told police he’d been drinking all day. Rutkowski was an engineer with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New Mexican reported. – By Charlie
Morasch, staff writer |
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| Ocean - Waters of the World | ||
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Panama voters back canal plan
Voters in Panama
overwhelmingly approved the largest modernization plan in the 92-year
history of the Panama Canal on Sunday, backing a multibillion-dollar
expansion that will allow the world's largest ships to squeeze through
the shortcut between the seas.
Despite predictions of a close vote, more than 78 percent of Panamanians voted in favor of the expansion. Opponents of the expansion spoke of electoral foul play. Shippers have said that the Port of Houston, which handles the largest share of container traffic along the Gulf Coast, will be a big winner if an improved canal leads to more traffic of the bigger ships. International shipping companies have generally backed the plan as a way to create further options for trade between Asia and the East Coast of the United States. Double capacity The $5.25 billion overhaul which would allow the canal to handle modern container ships, cruise liners and tankers that are too large for its current 108-foot-wide locks. The plan is to build a third set of locks on the Pacific and Atlantic ends by 2015. The Panama Canal Authority says the project will double capacity of the waterway. Expansion will be paid for by increasing tolls and take in more than $6 billion annually in revenue by 2025. |
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| Air - Up, Up & Away | ||
World's First AirlineDELAG, Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (German: acronym for "German Airship Transport Corporation") was the world's first airline. It was founded on November 16, 1909 with government assistance, and operated airships manufactured by Zeppelin Corporation. Its headquarters were in Frankfurt. The four oldest non-dirigible airlines are Netherland's KLM, Colombia's Avianca, Australia's Qantas, and Mexico's Mexicana. |
LZ 10, a DELAG zeppelin |
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| Shipper - Pack 'em up & Move 'em Out | ||
| No article at this time. | ||
| Rail - Doorway of Commerce | ||
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Port of Orange, Texas, carrying out rail rehab project The
first two rail cars recently arrived at United Res following a railroad
rehabilitation project at the Port of Orange, Texas, according to a report in
The Orange Leader. Phase 1 of the project enabled the heavier rail cars to move
down the one-mile track after obsolete 60- to 90-pound sections of track were
removed and upgraded to 119-pound sections. In addition, all of the crossties
were replaced.
Railcars travel to United Res from area chemical plants loaded with plastic products to be unloaded and bagged. The product is then loaded on to trucks for distribution. ?Phase 2 will consist of finishing the rails at the Union Pacific switch yard. The finishing touch will be Phase 3. Port Officials have applied for federal funding for a crane to lift and load truck containers on to river and ocean barges. Officials are also planning to develop a site for loading the barges. The port is within a mile of the Intracoastal Canal and hundreds of barges travel on the canal daily. Containers loaded on barges can hold 20 percent more weight than containers loaded on trucks traveling the interstate. |
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The
25th IAPH World Ports Conference - April 27 - May 4.
