I spent some time with Dan Arcy from Shell Lubricants a few weeks back at the Technology & Maintenance Council’s annual meeting, talking about how the concept of “lubricant management” is getting some legs within trucking circles. In essence, lubricant management is about looking at all the engine oils, greases, coolants, and other fluids a trucking fleet uses not so much as individual products but in terms of goals: reduced wear and longer life for engines and components, longer drain intervals to lower overall maintenance costs, etc.

“It’s more than just looking at products individually – it’s also about dialing in the services behind them as well, such as oil analysis, benchmarking results against our collective database, etc.,” Arcy told me. “It’s about getting the whole package.”

Now, obviously, Shell is biased towards this concept, because they see it as a way to secure more of their customer’s business: for the end result of “lubricant management” should be a fleet going with one supplier for all of their greases, engine oil blends, etc.

Yet if you look beyond that bias for a second, the concept of “lubricant management” does make a lot of sense. Lubricant suppliers are compiling tons of detailed data from individual customers on the performance of various oils, greases, and fluids, adding them to a massive internal database. I can see a lot of benefit for fleets to benchmark their results against those of operations similar to their own. For example, that could help them better determine drain intervals and other details that can help save money over time.

(Dan Arcy, at left, and Jonathan Ubil conduct a demonstration of Shells’ Video Check service for engines … more on that farther down in this entry.)

“We can look at everything in great detail: the impact of engine idle time, stop and go operation versus over-the-road, and other variables,” Arcy said. “We can roll the engine oil, transmission fluid, and other lubricants all into one model and look at performance metrics. We can analyze the whole maintenance impact from this kind of data.”

“Lube Match” is one of Shell’s newest services in this arena: comparing the lubes used by a particular customer against data gleaned from hundreds of fleets worldwide in similar operations, using a variety of engines. “It takes a lot of the guesswork out when a fleet is looking to change lubricants and engines,” Arcy explained. “And they can also look at a variety of blends, too, from ‘premium’ down to low-cost products, so they can factor in price as well as lubricant performance in their decision-making process.”

Shell also offers its own unique twist when it comes to engine oil analysis, through its “Video Check” service. Introduced two years ago, Video Check uses a miniature digital camera to inspect the interior components of an engine to spot problems, reducing the need for a costly and time-consuming physical breakdown.

(Shell’s Video Check service in action).

The camera is fed into the diesel engine through the cylinder fuel injector port using a fiber optic cable, illuminating the inside of the engine and transmitting the images to a monitor. The service can inspect the piston crown, combustion chamber, cylinder wall, valve seats and head, Jonathan Ubil, one of Shell’s skilled Video Check operators, told me.

“During routine maintenance, it is virtually impossible to inspect the internal components of an engine to identify damage and prevent failures that can lead to greater expenses,” he said, noting it takes about 20 to 30 minutes too look at an engine this way, versus the many hours needed for a physical inspection. “This is a valuable tool to help identify engine problems and cut down the cost of diesel engine maintenance.”

And it’s not just about getting a “snapshot” of the fleet’s engine health, added Arcy. This system can also be used to look at used trucks pre-sale or verify the impact of extended oil drains on pilot test trucks. There’s many different ways to use this technology to save fleets money when it comes to maintenance, he stressed – again, a service that’s part of Shell’s lubricant management package.

“If we can maximize lubricant life across the fleet, then we save them money.” Arcy told me. “And we use all the other tools we have – our laboratories for lubricant analysis, our database, and Video Check, among others – to verify the results they are getting. That’s what getting the whole package is all about.”

“We need to encourage fleets to invest in safety systems. We need to make the decision to purchase this technology easier.” –Stephen Campbell, executive director, CVSA.

No doubt by now you’ve heard of the growing push to get Congress to pass H.R. 3820, a bill known as the “Commercial Motor Vehicle Advanced Safety Technology Tax Act.” This bill offers tax credits to trucking fleets larger and small worth 50% of the purchase price for various safety systems: up to $1,500 per system, with a maximum of $3,500 per vehicle and a maximum of $350,000 per fleet per taxable year. Technologies covered by the bill include collision warning, lane departure warning, blind spot warning, vehicle stability, and brake stroke monitoring.

The “fiscal encouragement” proposed by this bill and being pushed hard by the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) really is a “no brainer” for trucking in my estimation. I mean, seriously: doesn’t this make sense? Give fleets a tax break for installing a set of safety technologies with well-established track records – systems that’ve proven to reduce commerical truck accidents of all sorts.

We need to do this, too, because as Stephen Campbell – a longtime highway safety advocate for this industry – noted so directly above, fleets need help getting over the “cost hump” if you will. “Unfortunately, many fleets look at safety technology just from a dollars and cents perspective,” he said during a press briefing held with reporters this week. “They don’t invest in this technology when times get tight.” And as we all know, times are tight right now.

But we need to look at the larger picture here: the number of people being killed in truck crashes every year in this country. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) paints a pretty grim picture where that’s concerned in its latest dissection of roadway crash statistics for 2006, the latest year for which details are available.

According to NHTSA, in 2006, 385,000 large trucks (with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds) were involved in traffic crashes in the U.S.: killing 4,995 people and injuring 106,000. That means one out of nine traffic fatalities in 2006 resulted from a collision involving a large truck.

Of the fatalities that resulted from crashes involving large trucks, said NHTSA, 75% were occupants of another vehicle, with 76% of the occupants in the other vehicle suffering the injuries.

NHTSA also found large trucks were much more likely to be involved in a fatal multiple-vehicle crash – as opposed to a fatal single-vehicle crash – than were passenger vehicles (82% of all large trucks involved in fatal crashes, compared with 60% of all passenger vehicles), with the truck was struck in the rear 2.7 times as often as the other vehicle (19% and 7%, respectively).

Now, the technologies covered under H.R. 3820’s tax credits can definitely help reduce and probably even eliminate many of these numbers, but they’re not an “automatic” panacea by any means. Truck drivers need to be retrained in many ways so they fully understand how these systems affect the vehicle – especially in terms of their limitations.

At one safety demonstration I attended recently, for example, I talked with some engineers about driver reaction to electronic stability control – a system that cuts the engine power and selectively applies the brakes to prevent rollovers if a driver takes a turn too fast. Many drivers at one fleet using this technology complained that their new trucks didn’t have the power they used to have. In reality, they’d been taking turns way too fast, activating the safety systems.

Speed management is a critical issue here. According to NHTSA, nearly one-fourth (24%) of all large truck drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2006 had at least one prior speeding conviction, compared to 19% of the passenger car drivers involved in fatal crashes.

Drivers are a critical component to getting the full benefit of this technology. They must “buy in” to all this stuff and use it properly – and frankly, they can be won over simply by applying incentives, such as bonuses for safety records. And don’t pooh-pooh that idea out of hand – look at drunk driving rates as an example of the truck driving community’s eye on safety. Less than 1% of commercial trucker drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2006 were legally drunk, compared to 23% of passenger car drivers, according to NHTSA’s figures.

We also need the insurance industry to get off its duff, too. All the technologies promoted by the tax credit bill have been around for years now – lots of real-world data exists backing up their ability to reduce accidents. I mean, come on – the insurance industry gives passenger car and light truck owners a break on premiums if they install car alarms, for goodness sake – one of the truly worthless pieces of technology around. Everyone ignores them today due to their high rates of false alarms. The kind of technology we’re talking about for trucking actively steps takes a role in preventing crashes – the kinds of accidents that cost millions of dollars, especially when someone gets killed. The insurance industry should be falling over itself to help out here.

Then there’s the final point CVSA’s Campbell eloquently illustrated at the briefing: if this stuff is so good, why not just mandate its use by the industry?

“It’s perfectly legitimate to suggest a mandate for these systems,” he said. “But we’re painfully aware that it can take from two to five years for the federal rulemaking process to put such a mandate in place. In the meantime, people will be dying. We need to do something now that will improve safety faster than the rulemaking process can.”

I can think of no stronger argument in favor of H.R. 3820 than that.

To make hybrid technology even more viable for commercial vehicles – especially for Class 8 trucks – it’s all going to come down to the batteries. They are the make-or-break lynchpin for hybrid vehicle growth in the commercial market.

Develop a battery that’s lighter and can hold more electricity for longer intervals between re-charging – as well as one that can do double-duty by not only helping propel the vehicle but also providing power for heating, cooling, and other onboard needs – and hybrid systems will really catch fire with fleets.

So, what kind of battery will fit that bill? We know tried-and-true lead-acid batteries are just too heavy and don’t hold enough juice. Lithium-ion seems to be the frontrunner, but there’s a spate of other technologies out there, too, such as absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries, which are getting close attention for anti-idling systems.

And things are moving fast in the battery arena. In an effort to jump-start the mass production of lithium-ion batteries, Nissan Motor Co., fellow Japanese firm NEC Corp. and subsidiary, NEC Tokin Corp., formed a special joint-venture company in April last year called Automotive Energy Supply Corp. (AESC). Nissan said it expects the joint venture to begin mass-producing lithium-ion batteries for vehicle applications by 2009.

Milwaukee, WI-based Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions (JCS) got the green light in 2006 to start work on developing longer-life lithium-ion batteries for hybrids, part of a 24-month contract partially funded by the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), a group that includes the Dept. of Energy, Daimler AG, Ford and General Motors.

Then there’s the new joint venture between truck maker Paccar and component supplier Eaton Corp. to develop a Class 8 hybrid truck by 2009. Eaton is providing the hybrid drivetrain system — a traction motor married to a Fuller UltraShift 10-sp. automated transmission and four lithium ion batteries — while Paccar subsidiaries Kenworth and Peterbilt provide the chassis, diesel engine and engineering assistance to integrate everything.

(For a video report on Paccar’s Class 8 hybrid, developed with Eaton, click on the link below.)

Paccar’s Class 8 hybrid prototype

Todd Graham, Eaton’s account manager for Peterbilt, explained to me last August that hybrid technology would only add about 300 lb. to a Class 8 tractor, mainly from the traction motor and power electric carrier (PEC), which holds four lithium ion batteries and replaces the standard batteries normally used to power the starter. Eaton is shooting for a five-year life cycle for the lithium ion batteries, he added.

Eaton’s heavy-duty hybrid electric power system will be built using an automated manual transmission with a parallel-type “direct” hybrid system, incorporating an electric motor/generator located between the output of an automated clutch and the input to the transmission.

One benefit of this approach, Graham told me, will be that braking energy captured and then stored as electric energy in the batteries can be used to provide torque from the electric motor and blended with engine torque to improve vehicle performance, operate the engine in a more fuel-efficient range for a given speed, or run the truck with electric power only, said Graham.

The other trick here is to make sure the batteries used on a Class 8 hybrid can withstand trucking’s at-times extremely harsh operating environment. That’s the challenge John Duffy, Kenworth’s manager of advanced technology, faced when developing factory-built battery-based auxiliary power units (APUs) on his company’s trucks, know as the “Clean Power” system.

“We deliberately developed our Clean Power System to run on batteries to totally eliminate any issues with emissions,” he told me during a special ride and drive held at the Paccar Technical Center in Mount Vernon, WA, last year.

“The first stage of that challenge is to improve the efficiency and life cycle of a battery-powered system operating in the harsh environment of trucking,” said Duffy. “The bar we have to meet as an OEM is much higher in terms of reliability and durability, since we are the ones putting this into the vehicle. The actual concept of integrating an all battery-powered APU into a Class 8 tractor took just six months; the other 18 months were spent hardening it.”

Duffy feels that the battery-powered APU not only allows the vehicle to burn less fuel but also to stay ahead of state or local diesel emission restrictions. He said the system uses roughly a gallon’s worth of fuel to be fully recharged by the truck’s engine over the course of the day and consumes energy at about 1/10th of a gallon per hour, compared to 3/10th to 5/10th of a gallon per hour of a traditional diesel-fired APU.

It’s a tricky issue, developing batteries that can do all of this yet be as cheap as possible so the price tag to truckers doesn’t get too extreme. But we’ll be seeing the fruits of all that research very soon, I expect.

“Listen to the wind blow/watch the sun rise. Listen to the wind blow/down comes the night.” –Fleetwood Mac

So it’s official now, with the numbers before us in firm, inescapable, black-and-white reality. The truck sales falloff in 2007 proved to be as bad as everyone thought it would be — a nearly 47% drop in Class 8 sales, echoed by a 22.7% decline in Class 6 & 7 sales, as tracked by our sister company, Ward’s AutoInfoBank.

In raw numbers, Class 8 sales overall dropped by an astounding 133,043 units in the space of one year, with Class 6 & 7 sales contracting by 36,608 units. True, much of the record 284,008 sales in Class 8 units back in ‘06 are still sitting along the fences of many a trucking company, as they pre-bought rolling stock to stay ahead of mandated changes to emission control technology on highway tractors — changes that boosted sticker prices by upwards of $10,000 per unit. But that is still one heck of a knock to take in terms of lower annual production volume. And it’s not exepcted to improve anytime soon.

“Class 8 industry retail sales in the U.S. and Canada in 2007 … reflected the impact of the 2006 ‘pre-buy’ as well as the slowdown in the housing and automotive sectors,” said Dan Sobic, senior vice president at Paccar, which builds Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks in the U.S. plus DAF trucks in Europe. “Industry retail sales in 2008 are expected to be in the range of 175,000 to 215,000 vehicles, reflecting continued economic softness through the first half of the year.”

By all acounts, now, OEMs are expecting a similar spike-and-fall when we get to the 2009 and 2010 sales years, when the final stage of emission control regulations go into effect. As with the 2007 mandates, increases in base sticker prices are most likely in the cards — though just how much those increases will be is open to debate.

Some truck and engine makers — notably International and Cummins — have openly stated they are NOT going to use selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to make their heavy-duty engine platforms comply with the regulations, instead using credits they will ‘bank’ from the addition of SCR to their smaller displacement engines. That could substiantly reduce the premium for International’s 2010-compliant heavy-duty trucks as well as those equipped with Cummins’ engines … or it may not. It’s too early to tell what the fiscal impact of their technology path will be.

Either way you look at it, though, we’ve got another yo-yo cycle ahead for truck sales. And if it’s anything like this last one, it’ll be one heck of roller coaster ride for everyone.

I met with Mark Roush recently at the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) annual meeting a week back to talk about advances in trailer engineering. He’s a favorite contact of mine – an engineer always thinking outside the box, aiming for new and different ways to build the products the trucking industry relies on day in and day out to deliver freight for customers.

Three years ago, Roush – director of engineering for Vanguard National Trailer Corp., Monon, IN – and I sat down to talk about future concepts for trailers: how could they be built differently to reduce weight, improve longevity, reduce use of wood, etc. One of the more innovative things turning over in his mind back then revolved around gluing trailers together with “super adhesives.”

Today, that concept is a reality – he showed off two 28-foot “pup” trailers to me at TMC with sidewalls literally glued together, with rivets only used along the top and bottom. It took three guys just 15 or so minutes to put a sidewall together using adhesives, he told me – something that took three times the amount of workers to achieve in the same time frame using rivets.

(To watch a video report on Vanguard’s ‘glue trailer,’ just click on the link below)

Vanguard’s glue trailer

Roush reminded me, though, that this is only the start of the process: after TMC, those two trailers are set to undergo some serious durability test track trails to see if they’ll hold up under real-world stresses. In the meantime, he’s got a 53-foot trailer model with glued-together sidewalls being prepped for the Mid America Trucking Show.

“Glue doesn’t rust and it holds just as well on brackets as rivets do — even better in some cases,” he told me. “What people don’t realize is that the glue we’re talking about has a sheer strength of 2,000 psi [pounds per square inch], whereas your average rivet has a maximum sheer strength of 1,200 psi. So you’re using something that theoretically has a much stronger bonding force between the sidewalls of a trailer and its structure, not less.”

(Vanguard’s 28-foot pup glue trailer on display at TMC)

And again, by using glue, trailers can be manufactured faster and cheaper, without compromising strength and durability. “One of the most costly parts of manufacturing a trailer is the man-hours it takes to rivet the sidewall to the frame, and every rivet represents a metal-on-metal contact point where rust and corrosion can develop over time,” Roush says. “With glue, you’re using one single sheet of aluminum sidewall without rivets. You’re taking a tremendous amount of hours out of the production process, yet giving the trailer more durability in terms of corrosion prevention.”

Reducing the number of weld points on a trailer is another benefit to using adhesives, he explained to me. “Welds create a weak point where corrosion can gain a foothold,” Roush said, “We pre-assemble as many components as possible and try to maximize corrosion protection by taking the pieces of the trailer with the most weld points and galvanizing the entire section. But if you can go to adhesives, you totally eliminate that problem.”

Roush is no stranger to this kind of innovation, as over his engineering career he’s designed and tweaked a wide variety of trailer models, from flatbeds at Dorsey Trailer to refrigerated and insulated units for Kidron.

Finding ways to make trailers less expensive yet more durable has been a challenge wherever he’s worked. And Vanguard is no exception, where the focus is now on finding ways to better protect cargo and minimize corrosion while reducing weight and maintaining durability.

That’s not all he’s cooking up in his research lab, either. Right now he’s working on a trailer floor made with a “pultruded” composite material – lightweight yet durable resins “pulled” into specific shapes with specialized machines before they harden. The benefit here is that Roush could slice 700 pounds out of a standard 53-foot dry van using a composite floor, while also improving traction and longevity.

The perennial problem with wooden floors is that over time, they get wet and start to rot. While Oak is the best in terms of resistance to rot, it’s also one of the most expensive woods on the market. Roush is already addressing that by using metal flooring at the trailer door end, with less-costly Maple wood flooring for the rest of the interior.

He’s even starting to visualize making an entire trailer via pultruded-style materials, with sidewalls, floors, and doors built separately and then combined mainly with adhesives, with bolts and rivets at major connection points. That would really save on trailer unit weight, he believes.

But Roush also cautions that there is a limit to how far you go in reducing trailer weight. “When you are trying to save weight, you usually have to give up something — either take something out of the structure, which can compromise the integrity of the unit, or change the design,” he explains.

Still, it’s great to see all these innovative ideas being applied to what truckers have long considered just plain old boxes on wheels. Whether they work out or not in the long run, one thing is for certain – it’s a sign that trailer engineering isn’t playing second fiddle anymore to anything in trucking these days.

“Courage is being scared to death … but saddling up anyway.” –John Wayne.

You can hear the tires scream as we corner around the orange cones at a shade over 35 mph. Looking in the rear view mirrors perched on the cab’s nose, I can see the tanker we’re pulling keel over sharply. The only reason it doesn’t kiss pavement – taking myself and the driver of our tractor with it – are a long pair of outriggers that keep us upright. The G-forces push me out of my seat nonetheless, my stomach giving a sickening lurch, my heart rate hits the stratosphere, and my body tightens involuntarily – expecting the worst to come.

“Whoa, pretty aggressive on that one,” the driver said. (Talk about understatements.)

Yet the next time we take the corner, it’s a whole different story. This time, the truck’s engine de-throttles in a hurry, the air brakes pulsing in rapid succession, keeping us level with all 18 tires on the rough asphalt beneath us – showcasing the wonders of electronics stability control (ESC). My body still stiffens, again instinctively readying itself for trouble … but the moment passes much easier this time, the violence of our turn removed by active safety systems.

“That’s better,” the driver noted, almost to himself. (Oh, you can say that again.)

It was all part of a comprehensive safety technology demonstration put on by ArvinMeritor here on a wide patch of sandpaper-like blacktop scant feet from the runways of Orlando, Florida’s Executive Airport. Test drivers demonstrated the capabilities of trucks equipped with roll stability control (RSC), the aforementioned ESC, and the company’s newest safety product, called OnGuard: a forward-looking, radar-based adaptive cruise control system with active braking, which improves vehicle safety by automatically using the vehicle foundation brakes to alert the driver and decelerate the vehicle when a pre-set vehicle following distance is compromised.

Pursuing a pair of chase vehicles – a bobtailing tractor and a Chrysler minivan – drivers demonstrated how OnGuard would automatically cut engine power and activate the brakes to prevent a rear-end collision. And this isn’t prototype technology either: OnGuard is currently installed on nearly 200 vehicles and is targeted to become a factory-installed option on several truck brands by the third quarter this year.

(That’s Jon Morrison on the left, talking with Jean-Christophe Figueroa, VP-vehicle dynamics and controls for Meritor WABCO, on the right.)

“It’s designed to equip drivers with automated features that help ensure safe following distances and provide active braking as needed,” said Jon Morrison, president and general manager, Meritor WABCO Vehicle Control Systems. “The driver is still the most important element in maintaining vehicle safety; however, the system can provide the additional split-second deceleration needed to maintain control of the vehicle in an emergency situation.”

Meritor Wabco GM on collision mitigation

Description: Jon Morrison, president and general manager of Meritor Wabco, talks about how the company’s new collision mitigation system is built off proven technology.Listen here!

What a safety net for the commercial driver. You get distracted so much in heavy traffic – watching cars merging from the right, coming up on the left – that you can get caught by surprise by a sudden stoppage in front of you. Now here’s a technology that can cover you: providing 500-feet worth of constant forward vision, able to literally “see” around corners due to a gyroscope incorporated into the radar device itself. However, OnGuard’s algorithms are most effective at “locking in” on relevant objects at distances of 275 to 325 feet—a three-second following distance at highway speed. Not only does it warn you of an impending collision; it can actually step into the breech and start stopping the truck for you. (Can I please get this installed on my minivan?)

OnGuard collision mitigation podcast

Description: Alan Korn, chief engineer-vehicle dynamics and control for Meritor Wabco, explains how the OnGuard collision mitigation system is built off existing technology, making it easier to incorporate onto today’s heavy-duty trucks.Listen here!

This is a big deal for the trucking industry. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), such rear-end collisions account for over 20% of all heavy-truck crashes, with the truck the striking vehicle in 60% of those accidents. Inattention or poor decisions (e.g. driving too fast for the conditions or following too closely) are the primary factor in 66% of the collisions where fault is assigned to the truck driver, NHTSA noted.

(Alan Korn, Meritor WABCO’s chief engineer)

Yet … will fleets buy it? It’s not cheap, for starters (list price is $4,500). Second, insurance companies still don’t seem willing to give any discounts to fleets that step up and buy such technology, nor for RSC (list price $700) or ESC (list price $1,700). “We’re trying to work all the angles, especially when it comes to insurance discounts,” Morrison told me. “We’re all trying to show them where the benefits are versus the costs.”

Melletat explains safety benefits

Description: Mark Melletat, senior manager-marketing and communications, explains why driver acceptance of collision mitigation technology is a critical step for fleets, so carriers can gain the safety benefits this technology offers.Listen here!

One fleet even brought its insurance agent to the demonstration, to show them just how revolutionary this technology can be in terms of improving highway safety.

Yet, as Joe Plomin, vice president for ArvinMeritor’s truck components group, told me at some point it’s got to be about more than just the cost of this technology. “It can’t just be all about cost savings, though that’s important,” he explained. “At some point, it has to be about doing the right thing, about improving safety for the fleet, the driver, and the public. The focus has to be on what we can do to make trucking safety.”

Sure, making active safety systems more affordable is critical – trucking is a business after all – but with all the new safety systems now readily available from ArvinMeritor, Bendix, Eaton, and other suppliers, it’s foolish to relegate them to a dusty shelf entirely based on a dollars and cents equation. This technology can save lives – a lot of them. It’s time we find a way to get it to take a more active role in this industry.

I’m sort of a neat freak when it comes to keeping our family cars clean and tidy (which will surprise the hell out of my college roommates, no doubt, who knew me as ‘King Slob’ of our living quarters back in the day).

My wife isn’t a big fan of this behavior, gritting her teeth when she sees me vacuuming or washing one of our aging rides – telling me on more than one occasion that, “If you are such a clean freak, why aren’t you cleaning the bathrooms?” Well, you don’t take the bathroom over to the neighbor’s house, nor do you take the neighbor’s kids and the rest of the soccer team in the bathroom to games. The bathroom doesn’t pick the boss up at the airport, nor does it help your friends move to a new home.

The point is that vehicles become an extension of ourselves, in a way, when we interact with others, either for fun or for business. Their condition sends a message just as a loud and clear as personal dress and grooming habits. I once got a cargo facilities tour from a public relations professional in their personal vehicle and it was so dirty and foul smelling that it made me ill.

Most truckers understand how their vehicle’s appearance – interior as well as exterior – impacts how they are perceived, which extends to their personal appearance as well. But it’s not just about looking good – keeping your truck clean also helps it last longer.

Tim Brady, one of our excellent contributing editors and former owner-operator himself, told me he used to keep a small pressure washer handy in his truck so he could clean off all the road salt and grime off his rig at regular intervals – reducing the affects of corrosion. As Brady worked in the moving business, he added that keeping his truck clean helped immensely on the public relations front, too, as he’d be parked in front of someone’s home for long stretches of time.

Keeping it clean for me extends to keeping my rides regularly maintained as well – with the crankcase filled with clean oil, the transmission with clean fluid, the radiator with clean green coolant. Keeping tabs on those metrics helped make my S-10 pickup last 16 years and my Jeep go 11 years – and that’s some pretty good life cycle value, if I say so myself.

Highway tractors take a lot more pounding in some wretched conditions than anything I ever faced, of course (and my vehicles never pulled 80,000 pounds on a daily basis, either), but I’ve seen first-hand the benefits truckers can get by keeping their rigs in tip-top shape.

More times than I can count, wending my way along the parked rigs at the Mid America Trucking Show, among others, I’ve been struck by how many 10-year-old (or more!) tractors I see out there, weathered but clean, ready to roll out and haul more freight. Their drivers show them off with obvious pride, and it’s hard not to notice the clean dashboards, seats, tidy sleeper berths, etc., they maintain. They might not be show trucks, but they are always clean as a whistle and ready to roll.

You know, trailer security is a pretty big issue in this country, although it rarely makes the headlines. That’s a direct result in the booming growth in cargo theft – a crime that, in many places, still carries little in the way of penalties while offering a hefty monetary return.

Annual losses to cargo theft are hard to pin down, though. Estimates range from $3.5 billion annually, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to between $10 billion and $15 billion per year, as calculated by the International Cargo Security Council. Indirect costs related to cargo theft – not including all law enforcement or security technology costs – range from $20 billion to $60 billion each year, according to several industry estimates.

“Cargo theft is our number-one priority,” said Unit Chief Eric Ives, who heads the Major Theft Unit in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division in a report issues by the agency last year. According to Ives, the average freight on a trailer is valued between $12,000 and $3 million with the most common theft “hotspots” bring truck yards, hubs for commercial freight carriers, and port cities.

One way the trucking industry is looking to combat cargo theft while also getting some other efficiency benefits in the bargain is by tracking trailers. Making trailer tracking technology affordable, however, is a debate that’s raged for many years now in trucking. Now it looks like the latest chapter is going to be opened next month (January 8th to be precise) courtesy of an online “webinar” hosted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the American Trucking Research Institute (ATRI).

The January 8th “webinar” will focus on carrier utilization of un-tethered trailer tracking systems (UTT) and their potential to improve asset management while beefing up security in trucking operations. One of the participants is Mike Gabbei, chief information officer for Celadon Trucking Services. He’s someone I’ve interviewed before on technology topics and let me tell you his insight will be particularly valuable as he has a good knack for turning “technospeak” into clear English. Another will be Al Hoffer, director of trailer operations for Landstar Systems – another carrier that’s no slouch when it comes to using technology to improve efficiency (and thus cut costs while boosting profits).

To register for the webinar, send an email to FMCSA_Host@dot.gov and include the words “UTT Webinar” in the subject line. The online conference starts at 12 noon eastern standard on Jan. 8 and should run for about one and half hours, according to ATRI. Confirmation notices will be emailed within 24 hours of registration, containing the web address, phone number, and other relevant information for participation.

Whether you are considering using such technology or not for your fleet, I think it’s well worth attending, because one day – I am most certain of this – commercial truck trailers will all be equipped with some sort of tracking device, maybe by federal mandate.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Talked to Darry Stuart last week about trends in truck maintenance, focusing on the rapid increase in technological complexity of trucks, plus the computers and other electronic the tools technicians use to take care of them. While he freely admits that you can’t properly take care of trucks, nor run today’s modern shop, without the aid of computers and related technology, it’s still “the simple stuff” that costs fleets the most money in terms of maintenance – and generates the most vehicle downtime.

“Tires and brakes: those are still the top two maintenance items, in terms of dollars and out of service rates,” he told me by phone from his office in Boston. “The most basic things on trucks relate to the highest maintenance cost. That’s the reality of life in this business.”

Tires, for example, are typically the third-highest cost in any fleet’s budget – right behind labor costs and fuel. Then there’s brakes: according to the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), brake-related citations remain the number one reason for putting vehicles out of service (OOS), with 30.1% of OOS citations pertaining to faults in brake-adjustment in 2005, with another 25.2% involving brake systems. By comparison, in 2005, lighting problems accounted for just 11.8% of OOS citations, tires and wheels 8.9%, safe loading 8.5% and suspensions 5.1%.

“The basic stuff – the non-computerized stuff – is what keeps the truck up and running,” Stuart said. Part of the problem revolves around how maintenance is being conducted in this computerized day and age, too, as fleet managers today are more likely to be holed up in their offices hour after hour, glued to computer screens and data files, rather than walking around the shop to see how things are going.

“Even today, with all the electronic data available, I still firmly believe ‘management by walking around’ must remain a key part of the maintenance manager’s day,” Stuart said. “You’ve got to be out on the floor where the work gets done, to see what’s going smoothly and what’s not.”

That also applies to the part’s room, he stressed. “You need to know not only what parts you have but where they are located,” Stuart emphasized. “A computer does not keep a part’s room neat and clean. It may tell you what’s in the room, but what good is that information if you can’t find it?”

It’s a reminder indeed that no matter how technologically advanced trucking gets, keeping a close eye on the simple stuff must remain a bedrock management principle.

“I’m going to rise today/and change this world.” –from the song “Rise Today” by Alter Bridge.

Couple weeks back, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) made a pretty bold move in my estimation to beef up commercial vehicle safety: asking all the major North American heavy truck manufacturers to make anti-rollover devices standard equipment on all new Class 8 trucks.

Right now, two heavy truck OEMs – Volvo and Mack – have made one of the three currently existing anti-rollover systems standard equipment on all their new Class 8 trucks, with the others offering anti-rollover technology as an option. The CTA’s CEO, David Bradley, stressed that while such technology won’t prevent every rollover, it’ll go a long way to eliminating the majority of them.

“Of course, any stability system cannot prevent all situations and is in no way a replacement for good drivers and good driving practices,” he said in a written statement. “However, CTA is convinced that the current anti-rollover technology performs well with all types of tractor-trailer configurations and should become part of all standard new vehicle packages.”

The CTA started hammering on this issue after a spate of rollover truck crashes in central Canada this past summer that caused fatalities, serious injuries and/or highway shutdowns in some cases. “Whether all or some of these rollovers were the fault of the truck driver, or more than likely the fault of a car driver who cut off a truck, does not change the fact that our members feel from experience that the truck anti-rollover devices currently available for installation on new tractors can help prevent some of these incidents and is therefore pretty cheap insurance,” said Bradley.

He also noted that the next step is to consider wider use of electronic stability control or ESC on commerical trucks, which adds directional control benefits to the anti-rollover package. The U.S. government is mandating ESC for all new cars and light trucks by 2011 and Canada is considering whether to create a similar light-vehicle mandate as well. Bradley said that, while neither the U.S. nor Canadian governments has yet made a move to mandate the technology on heavy trucks, regulatory options are being investigated.

Before fleets on this side of the border start grousing about the cost of complying with such mandates – and fleets will pay extra bucks to cover the cost of making anti-rollover technology a standard feature, make no mistake about that – consider some of these numbers.

When Volvo made Bendix’s Electronic Stability Program (ESP) a standard feature on all of its VN and VT Class 8 tractors, it added about $995 to the base price of both models. In terms of dollars, what is that $995 for an ESP system really buying? Volvo crunched the numbers and the results are pretty compelling. The average cost of a single rollover is $109,000: $50,000 to repair the vehicle, $20,000 in cargo claims, $10,000 for towing, $10,000 for clean-up, $10,000 in down time, and $10,000 for higher insurance premiums

At a 5% profit margin, a fleet would have to generate $2 million in revenue to pay for one rollover accident, Volvo calculated – so paying $995 is pretty cheap by comparison.

Of course, this is just the start of the debate – the CTA is calling only for voluntary action right now. But it’s worth noting that this isn’t a government agency or safety group calling for this – these are the fleets themselves, the folks who’ll have to pony up the bucks for this safety technology. It’s good to see this kind of support shaping up for safety systems.