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30 FEBRUARY 2016 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com BUSINESS OPERATIONS N E W S ATA: HOURS-OF-SERVICE LANGUAGE IN OMNIBUS BILL CRITICAL FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY L e a d e r s o f t h e A m e r i c a n T r u c k i n g Associations praised Congress for its action on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's 2013 hours-of- service restart restrictions and requiring the agency to meet an appropriate safety, driver health and driver longevity standard before re-imposing those restrictions. "We're pleased that in the omnibus spending compromise released [Dec. 16], Congress has seen fit to demand that FMCSA 'show its work,' before imposing unneces- sary and onerous restrictions on the use of the 34-hour restart by commercial drivers," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. "FMCSA foisted these restrictions on the industry without doing a proper investiga- tion into how they might impact trucking safety and truck drivers' health and longevity, so it is completely appropriate for Congress to establish a safety and health standard." In 2013, FMCSA required that drivers using a 34-hour restart to reset their weekly allotment of hours have two periods between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. in their extended off-duty period and artificially limited the use of those extended rests to once a week. ATA believed at the time, and was shown to be correct based on American Transportation Research Institute analysis of FMCSA crash data, that these restrictions would push more truck traffic into riskier daytime hours, thus increasing—not decreasing—the risk of truck-involved crashes. ATA also believed that FMCSA's driver health and longevity theory had no basis in reality. "We greatly appreciate Congress' attention into this important matter and their insistence that FMCSA properly vet and support the rules they promulgate," said Dave Osiecki, ATA executive vice president and chief of national advocacy. In addition to the hours-of-service language, ATA also expressed disap- pointment that the omnibus bill did not allow for the modest increase in tandem trailer length that had achieved biparti- san support in the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee. VENTURE HOME SOLAR PARTNERS WITH SUNPOWER ® BY VENTURE SOLAR Venture Home Solar will now re-brand and go to market as SunPower® by Venture Solar. Multi-billion dollar SunPower Corp. SunPower® by Venture Solar is a Brooklyn- based full-service solar company with a breadth of experience in the NYC solar market. The company awards the Master Dealer distinction to installers that meet the highest standards for customer experi- ence and installation quality. It has chosen Venture Home Solar as the first Master Dealer to offer its premier turnkey solar solutions to New York City residents. PITNEY BOWES IDENTIFIES FIVE DRIVERS OF COMMERCE FOR 2016 Pitney Bowes Inc., a global technology company, says it anticipates five drivers of commerce for 2016. "At Pitney Bowes, we are increasingly seeing clients of all sizes reexamine how physical and digital technologies converge to power commerce," said Roger Pilc, chief innovation officer for Pitney Bowes. "Clients are already demanding a more seamless way of integrating their physical and digital worlds. Businesses will need to transform their competencies to seam- lessly serve customers across the physical and digital worlds of commerce. For Pitney Bowes, the Internet of Things, machine learning and data analytics continue to be areas of investment to enable us to better serve our clients." 1 . T h e I n t e r n e t o f T h i n g s ( I o T ) technologies will drive better business outcomes across industries When it comes to industrial businesses, the opportunity exists to leverage machine- to-machine and Internet of Things technologies, and extract and analyze data from industrial machines to drive better business outcomes. Industries across the board are experiencing a greater focus on creating and measuring operational effi- ciency in production settings. The business benefits include lower cost of operations, greater productivity and output and higher service levels. Businesses also need the flex- ibility to toggle between the physical and digital worlds to reach their customers in their preferred channels. 2. Small and medium businesses will greatly benefit from the digitization of physical communications Significant shifts in technology, mobil- ity and information are creating new global commerce opportunities for small and medium businesses. New tools and technologies enable small and medium businesses to better target, engage and serve new customers from around the corner to around the globe. These new technologies and cloud-based solutions are becoming available to integrate physi- cal and digital experiences and simplify processes on one platform. Integrating physical with digital is reinventing mail, making it more interactive and more sophisticated. For example, businesses can now complement physical mail pieces with digital experiences through QR codes, create more interactive and targeted direct mail, and deliver messages across multiple channels to boost impact. 3. Personalization and hyper-local- ization will drive explosive growth in global commerce As cross-border ecommerce becomes more mainstream, consumers are becom- ing savvier. Retailers and marketplaces must continuously improve the global consumer experience, but shopping experi- ences across the world are not all the same. The challenge facing retailers is to create deeper, more personalized localized expe- riences that resonate with consumers from varying countries and regions. To make international purchases not only possible, but probable, retailers must deliver what their global consumers want, while also taking into account how they like to shop. 4. Data analytics will play a key role in fraud detection and prevention The same data analytics in the Cloud that help create one view of the cus- tomer are also being used to fight crime, help meet regulatory requirements and detect fraud. Businesses across different industries—financial, insurance, retail,