Comments By Cantankerous Amicus

Over two hours since this was posted and no other replies? Everybody must be very busy driving today!

I'm curious about the mechanics behind the tandem pin retractors in this video - specifically the air-powered type. At the time stamp, the pins are retracted and he goes into the cab to show a shortcut on extending the pins to lock the slides.

In the cab he pushes and pulls the tractor protection valve a few times. He seems to indicate that supplying air to the trailer will push the pins out. Isn't that the opposite of how it should be? Wouldn't needing air to push the pins out be a more dangerous design if the trailer were to lose air pressure? The pins could retract with the loss of air pressure, the tandem spring breaks would engage and that could rip the tandems off the end of the trailer.

Or does it work the opposite way where the pins operate on a similar safety principle as the spring breaks? I.e. without air pressure the default position of the pins would be for them to be pushed out?

Didn't you just get onboard with Veriha a few months ago? Did that not work out?

Use your App Store.

That was the first thing I tried. It wasn't showing up.

Errol, thanks for the link. I clicked on it and got the message that it's not available in my country. It appears that I have to change my Google play country, and Google only allows a person to do that once per year. Unfortunately I'm gonna have to wait for now.

Thanks for the help.

I'm visiting the US and wanted to download the Trucker Path app. I don't see it in when searching Google app store. Does anyone have a link to it? I remember that someone posted a link to it here and I tried searching here but did not immediately come up with anything.

Thanks

Focusing on changing the behavior of a specific demographic is by definition discriminatory.

The board would be given the task to remove “the barriers that get in the way of women pursuing and retaining careers in trucking is key,” one of the co-sponsors said in a news release.

What, pray tell, might such barriers be? Which trucking company is looking at applications and saying, "Oh... You're a woman. Sorry! Can't hire you! We really, REALLY, REALLY don't want women driving for us!" Any of the megacarriers? No? Could we find a small trucking company engaging in discriminatory behaviors against women? Maybe? Aren't there already laws on the books prohibiting that?

What percentage of the truck driving workforce being female is going to be enough? How is that quota going to be made to happen? What percentage of women choose to pursue a career in trucking vs women who are not accepted into the driver's seat? How does that compare to the numbers for men? Are women going to be forced to go into trucking to improve the numbers and give certain people more of the feelgoods? No? What is the alternative? Put an upper limit or a hiring freeze on the number of the over-represented demographic from entering the trucking industry? Who would that affect? How would that improve the driver shortage?

Women are the minority in trucking, but, at 165.92 million women to 159.41 million men in the US in 2017, not the minority of the overall population. If we are talking about a boosting a minority in a particular industry then is it not also fair to take a look at the demographics of something like the NBA and who the minority of players are there? Should there be a bill passed to remove the barriers to more Asian NBA players? Hispanic NBA players? White NBA players?

How does the "Promoting White Men in Professional Basketball Act" sound? How do the white men here respond to the thought of such legislation in their favor being passed into federal law? Is it discriminatory?

I appreciate all the feedback so far. It's definitely good food for thought. I hope to post a few more thoughts on the topic later in the week when I have more time myself.

G-town spends all his time on the east coast with much more traffic than other places in the country. Say Kearsey, Turtle or any of the other masters of the clock did a ton of driving out west with the mountains all week. Would you be willing to say that I, just running back and forth across relatively flat iowa and the surrounding states performed better than them because I maintained higher MPH due to no traffic and not many hills slowing me? I wouldn't be able to participate because I have to unload my truck but I usually turn 1500 to 2000 miles a week depending on how many days I work.

No, those differences wouldn't be comparable. There would have to be a filter or category for the type of driving and region, say, Western Eleven, Great Plains and Midwest, East Coast, etc. In your case aren't you an hourly driver? I haven't made it all the way through your diary yet. I don't know if you have changed jobs.

The idea would be that there would be some filters to narrow things down so that a driver could compare his driving stats to those of a driver doing similar work. Rob T if you are a CPM driver, then also a category for drivers that unload their own trucks. Perhaps it would be helpful to classify the weekly data upload according to type, location of driving, etc. most closely fitting one of the filters. It sounds like G-Town and Turtle would be two drivers that could compare results since I believe they will be doing similar dry van runs with multiple stops in the same general area of the country. Surely there are other drivers who run similar freight in the same area.

Grumpy Old Man, I was mainly thinking CPM drivers. What can hourly drivers do to maximize their income other than maxing our their hours on the job every week?

That does sound like a wonderful idea. There just may be too many variables involved when comparing drivers in different regions. Perhaps new drivers could use something like this to measure their own progress as they gain experience..? Then their progress can be compared with other drivers' progress. IDK

That's what I'm wondering about the number of variables. Hopefully there aren't too many. I also think any driver that is interested in optimizing his performance would be comparing his earlier productivity with what he is currently doing anyway. The real fun begins when we can see how we stack up with some of the top tier seasoned vets doing similar work to us, in similar terrain, in similar traffic, drop and hook vs live unload, etc.

It is more than just using your 70 though. It is knowing when to start your clock and making sure you arent wasting it. I rarely drive in traffic.

Here's an example from my experience, showing how good time planning works: Cincinnati, I-75 N to S. At 3AM, 20 minutes. At 3PM, try 1 1/2 hours. Would you rather take a two hour snooze or sit two hours in traffic? You decide!

Precisely, so the person who took the two hour break and utilizes the 8/2 split to wait out rush hour is going to have a higher average MPH on the 70 clock and thus be more productive due to more miles turned. On second glance, I didn't make that clear in my first post. That's something that would help a driver move higher on the leaderboard compared to others. I am thinking about what metrics should be recorded that would be good indicators for high productivity. Is it really as simple as weekly average miles per hour for a particular type of trucking?

The point of the idea for a leaderboard is so that drivers here can see where they rank compared to other members here. Are they closely ranked or is there a lot of room for improvement? With that information they can look at what they may be doing wrong and improve their productivity, something that is good for both them and their respective companies. From reading some of Old School's blog, I see that companies list such productivity internally, but I am thinking of something with a competitive element that would work here and be instructive and inspiring to newer drivers.

No. $1,675 plus metered electric FOR THE SEASON! Like May 1st - October 15th or so. Guessing something like $200 / mo. or less!

How does it work for the rest of the year? Do you have to find somewhere else to go?