Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/933951
Voices channel 19 6 | Overdrive | February 2018 Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' CHANNEL 19 BLOG at OverdriveOnline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com. "2018 will be hell" was about the only commentary on offer under a December poll at OverdriveOnline. com, and Overdrive's typi- cally loquacious Facebook page commenters were more or less mum on the question. Uncertainty may well be the watchword for the coming year, even with evidence of intense truckload-rate dynamics over the holidays and into the new year. On-highway anecdotes of $5/mile and higher load offers weren't hard to come by. Owner-operator Mark Kirbyson told tales of loads he'd heard about: a Toron- to-to-Houston roundtrip offered at $16,000-plus; $12,000 one-way from Colorado to Poughkeepsie, New York; and $6,000 from Albany to Chicago. Kirbyson's business has seen rate increases as well. Running newly on an electronic logging device and seeing firsthand spe- cial-case constraints in the congested Northeast, at the same time he looks at the heat building in the market and questions the full context of it: How long can the upward pressure last before it hits all of us with consumer cost increases? And how long before the inevitable hangover? New time pressures put on truckers under the ELD mandate's by-the-minute hours accounting, plus the what-goes-up-must-come- down feeling of inevita- bility around spot market rates, probably are driving much of the new pessimism evidenced in the poll. The share of owner-op- erators who believed 2018 would be worse than 2017 for income was twice as high as the corresponding percentage a year ago. However, operators were split almost evenly on whether 2018 would be better or worse than 2017. One can hope, I suppose, that rates hangover doesn't materialize. Poll respondents split on 2018 outlook HOW DO YOU EXPECT YOUR BUSINESS TO TREND THIS YEAR? Better than 2017 33% Worse than 2017 34% About the same 11% Not sure, time will tell 22% An inoperative head- light is a common reason why roadside inspectors stop and inspect a truck, particularly in states where maintenance violations are a high priority. The Light- ing Bug is intended to help avoid those violations. I first heard about the device at the spring 2017 workshop of the Commer- cial Vehicle Safety Alliance. Inventor Marcus Boykin spoke to CVSA's vehicle committee about his tech, which turns the "high-beam side on at the brightness of the low beam" when the low beam goes dark, Boykin says. It also maintains high- beam functionality when in operation. Boykin's conversations with officials at the CVSA workshop led him to believe that a failed lamp being corrected by the Lighting Bug wouldn't generate a violation if inspected while the bug was operative, despite the inoperative bulb. Better yet, I think, it might keep you from get- ting stopped entirely. Read more about it in the Jan. 2 post on Channel 19. New failsafe for inoperative headlight Costing about $100 per pair of headlights, the Lighting Bug system is a small piece of tech that plugs and plays into your existing head- lights, monitoring them for failure. The Bug is being sold at the TAG Truck Center location in Jackson, Tennessee, and is being considered by truck stop chains and other distributors. " I once saw a truck with a head- light out go through an inspection station outside of Atlanta, and they didn't call him in. Go figure. " — Dennis Musselman " I've caught a light out in the middle of the day that I would never have noticed till dark. I run head- lights all the time, so this could be very helpful. " — Landon Beachy Overdriveonline.com poll, as the new year turned