It’s that time of year again, the first significant snow fall has created havoc on Ontario roads and already the local new stations have begun complaining about snow and ice blowing off the roofs of trailers. It’s an age-old problem and one without a simple solution – at least not one that I’m aware of.

Due to the nature of the trucking industry, it’s nearly impossible to prevent snow and ice from accumulating on the roofs of trailers. Short of parking indoors every night – and we all know that’s not a realistic option for most truckers – what’s a guy to do?

The Workers Compensation Board doesn’t want drivers climbing up onto their trailers to clear the roof of snow and ice. That’s a recipe for a workplace accident if there ever was one.

Some companies have developed snow removal programs. Our on-road editor, Harry Rudolfs, tells me Purolator hires a crew that shows up with ropes, ladder and shovels and clears off the trailers before they hit the road. But in Purolator’s case, most of its trailers report to the terminal on a daily basis. That’s not the case for most long-haul fleets.

Apparently, there are some scales in Nova Scotia that installed snow removal devices last year. I’m told they work like a giant scraper to clear trailer roofs. A neat idea, but I’ve yet to see them in person so I couldn’t tell you how effective they are. I’d love to hear from anyone who has used these systems. Do they perform as-advertised?

Heated trailer roofs? Now there’s an idea. But I imagine it would be cost-prohibitive to implement and there are likely some engineering challenges as well. That’s all I’ve got, folks. Maybe you have a solution of your own you’d be willing to share? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Permalink | Comments (0)

When speaking to industry groups this year, I’ve been focusing on what I call the “Four Cs” driving motor carrier fortunes these days.

Those four Cs are:

Consolidation
Complexity
Accountability (okay work with me on that one – it does have two “c”s)
and Cost Control

Over the past few months, I’ve been paying most of my attention to that last C – cost control. And for good reason.

Consider the quarterly financial statistics for Canada’s for-hire carriers earning at least one million in annual revenues:

2nd quarter 2006 Revenues up 5.7%; Expenses up 5.7%
3rd quarter 2007 Revenues up 5.0%; Expenses up 5.5%
4th quarter 2006 Revenues up 2.3%; Expenses up 2.9%

While revenues were healthy right up to the fourth quarter of 2006, expenses were either negating, or worse, reversing any gains made.

Now the results from the first quarter of 2007 are in from Statistics Canada and they show another disturbing trend. While operating expenses were down 4.8% for the first quarter compared to the same period in 2006, operating revenues declined 5.9% for the same period.

On a year-over-year basis, while average operating expenses decreased 5.8% on average operating revenues declined 6.9%.

Most importantly, the drop in revenues is now having an impact on carrier profitability.

The operating ratio for Canada’s for-hire carriers earning at least one million in annual revenues deteriorated to 0.94, according to Statistics Canada records for the first quarter of 2007. Motor carriers, on average, are now almost at the edge of profit levels considered healthy for trucking operators.

Permalink | Comments (0)

This may count as my most frivolous Blog entry ever, but I imagine that quite a few of our readers are engineers or at least people with enthusiasm for various kinds of technology. And what I'm about to write may be useful to more than a few of you at some point as I know of at least one company that has advertised with us that sells hand-held gas detection devices that look quite a bit like the gizmos featured in the Star Trek TV series, and I learned in talking to their designers that this was no coincidence and that, in fact, they were serious Trekkies who modelled their equipment on "phaser" guns and so on from that program.

Anyway, there's a new term floating around called "steampunk" that refers to a new trend in which people take modern electronic devices (laptops, computer monitors, electric guitars) and decorate them -- or even rebuild them -- to look like weird 19th Century-type inventions (i.e., with brass fittings and decorative hinges and so on) reminiscent of the steam locomotive era; hence the term "steampunk."

I have pasted some URLs below of some websites that celebrate this interesting trend. Take a peek and you'll instantly see what I mean. I really like this stuff, especially the first website with the "brass" computer monitor. I also think the ladies' laptop is amazing.

Steampunk is a take-off on "cyberpunk" -- the techno-dystopian genre with cybernetics and so forth epitomized in the Matrix film trilogy. Steampunk is characterized by the Wellsian aesthetic of 19th-century technology deployed in crazy, modern ways. There are novels and so forth written like this, and even a game puckishly called Space: 1889.

If you want to see this concept taken to the ultimate level, go see the excellent new movie, The Golden Compass. The whole film is populated with this kind of retro-futuristic equipment, from the compass itself -- called an "alethiometer" to fanciful dirigibles and so on. Even if you don't see the movie, check out the official website and you'll get a sense of how it all looks.

http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

I have a very modern condo and yet I also have various 19th-century-style brass instruments like an astrolabe or sextant and so on that I got at the Bombay Company store. Makes me think I should keep them and display after all.

I think steampunk speaks to our contemporary relationship with technology and the desire for a human connection with the machines with which we interact. Just think of how many hours in a day each of us interacts with machines: computers, cars, kitchen appliances, Blackberry or iPod-type devices.

In the 19th century you could physically see and even touch the various gears and components of a machine, or open it up and see its inner workings, even if you didn't completely understand them. Think of a watch or a steam locomotive.

The gasoline engine made things more complicated but technology was still accessible to ordinary people. From the Model T to a 1980s Camero, a mecahnically inclined person could still work "under the hood" of their car, change the oil, or even rebuild and supercharge the engine. Nowadays you need special instruments to read the computerized monitoring equipment in a car. Topping up or changing fluids is still realtively easy, but most of a car's inner workings are impenetrable and it's going to get more complicated as more and more parts of a car become computerized and electronic (including soon-to-be electric motors that will be emissions free and silent).

The next electronic revolution, followed almost right away by the digital computer age, moved technology further and further away from intuitive comprehension. Devices, as everyone knows, have become smaller and thinner, running on microchips whose inner workings are only visible under a microscope. The iPod and the new iPhone best embody the latest developments -- thin, wireless and, for all intents and purposes -- completely magical in terms of how they work. A DVD or thumb drive mysteriously holds all the contents of an encyclopedia, or all the color and sound and drama of a feature movie.

At the same time as all this nano-wirelessness made new devices "cool" (to the extent that they're now wearable fashion objects, and even fetish objects of a kind) it was quite predictable that people would feel nostalgia for the days when they could relate to machines and tools -- a time when the craftsmanship that went into building a device was evident.

It may be that this is the genesis of steampunk, which could become a major trend. Just as electronic and computerized devices are becoming wrist-watch-sized and credit-card thin, a sizable market could erupt to take these same items -- or at least their essential components and flat monitors, etc. -- and integrate them inside deliberately large, heavy, ornate and seemingly hand-crafted housings.

My guess is that if someone opened up a storefront on a fashionable street selling hand-crafted, one of a kind computer accessories they'd make a fortune! Another business might be to supply easy-to-install retrofit kits for people to customize their laptops, Blackberries, iPhones, etc.

Watch for it. (And if you work for a company that designs or builds special equipment, mayube it's time to dump the sleek plastic look of an iPod Nano and replace it with an aesthetic that might find a place in, say, a Jules Verne novel.)

Now here are those URLs:

http://steampunkworkshop.com/lcd.shtml

http://jakeofalltrades.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/test/

http://jakeofalltrades.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/tick-tock-a-steampunk-clock/

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/lady-steampunk/mod-your-laptop-into-a-portable-typewriter-and-adding-machine-275541.php

http://steampunkworkshop.com/steampunk-strat.shtml

Permalink | Comments (1)