My last blog of 2011 was about turning over the captain’s chair to my staff while I took a 3 week vacation. A real vacation at that, not glued to my e-mail or solving problems from afar. I let them sail the ship and I relaxed. It was a welcome change.

If you have an experienced team, the captain is only needed when you hit rough water. Steering the ship through a crisis is a learned skill set, sharpened by experience. Whether we have fallen into a leadership position, got forced into taking the helm or arrived at it by design, the short strokes are that every ship needs a captain and every project needs a champion. Why? Because there are always storms to navigate and only one person can make that decision. No two people are likely to approach the same set of circumstances in the same manner. As my older brother likes to say, “There are lots of right answers”.

When I started my business 24 years ago, my older brother’s advice was... don’t do it. He had been in business for a decade already and knew the perils I would face. I believe it was something I was meant to do and as I may have stated before, being overly optimistic and somewhat naive are fundamental qualities of being in business for yourself.

I’ve seen a lot of businesses fail. Solid companies with hard working owners – most spent too much money on the wrong things at the wrong time. Many fell behind with tax remittances. Some coasted when they should have forged ahead. Some forged ahead only to have a dramatic shift in technology or market conditions do them in. I feel very fortunate that my business is solid as we march into 2012.

For anyone thinking of starting their own business or are in business already and questioning their direction, here are 5 tips that people have shared with me and I know to be true:

1.       Don’t bog yourself down with things you’re not good at. Hire the right people to fill the gaps.

2.       Banks never give you money when you need it. Always increase your credit line when you don’t need it so that it’s there when you need it most.

3.       Prepare yourself to work longer hours, take fewer vacations and have more stress than you will ever have working for someone else.

4.       Prepare for the worst and expect the best is appropriate advice and trusting your instincts is critical to successful decision making.

5.       Last but not least, the right decision is always the hardest until you make it... after you make it, you will wonder why you hadn’t done it sooner.

Lee’s quote for the day

“You’ll know when you’re going in the right direction by the number of hills you climb, obstacles you overcome and forks in the road that require decisions to be made.” J

Lee Palmer is the President and Creative Director at Palmer Marketing, a company that specializes in creative marketing and advertising solutions for the transportation industry.

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How many hours should a truck driver be allowed to be behind the wheel? It’s a question critical to our industry yet one we have been unable to answer satisfactorily for all involved – drivers, the carriers who employ them, the labor and professional organizations who represent them and the politicians who legislate them – since we first started discussing it in North America in the midst of the Great Depression.

Not only is the amount of time a person can drive before fatigue sets in a very individualized thing that naturally defies hard rules but any science we can throw at the question is always, unfortunately, caught in the tug of war between the industry need to be more productive and labor’s demand for better working conditions. The two sides often read completely different things into the same research.

Industry media reports of late are full of the criticisms from all sides heaped on the US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since it laid out its new rules, which it hopes will go into effect in 2013. While daily driving time was not changed from 11 hours, the maximum hours a driver can work per week was reduced by 12 to an average of 70. The new rules, laid out by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) also require drivers using the 34-hour reset provision to take at least two nights off between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. According to the FMCSA, research shows that crash risk increases with longer daily and weekly work hours. So it made sense to reduce the number of hours a truck driver should be expected to work because consistently working long hours is associated with chronic fatigue, higher risk of crashes and chronic health problems. But it didn’t make sense, according to the FMCSA, to also reduce the number of hours a driver is allowed to drive in a day because the research did not show a “significant distinction” between the risk associated with working 11 hours versus 10 hours or nine hours.

The Teamsters union and safety advocates, unlike the FMCSA, believe the research shows that additional hour does make a difference in driver safety and health. US carrier executives, although pleased to be keeping the 11 hours of driving time, are not happy about the significant reduction in maximum weekly driving time. Dan England, chair of the American Trucking Associations and chair of C.R. England, believes both the trucking industry and shippers will suffer the impact of reduced productivity and higher costs. England also believes these changes may actually increase truck-involved crashes by forcing trucks to have more interaction with passenger vehicles when the rules require drivers to rest from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. twice per week. The largest percentage of truck-involved crashes occur between 6 a.m. and noon, so this change will put more trucks on the road during the statistically riskiest time of the day.

The reality is the new hours of service could end up bouncing around US courts for years before anything is resolved. That has been the case since 2003 when the FMCSA initially decided to increase daily driving time to 11 hours. The rule was immediately challenged in court by the Teamsters union and safety advocates. The 11-hour daily driving limit has actually been rejected twice by a federal appeals court yet remains in effect. Further legal challenges are almost a certainty. Gregory Beck, a lawyer representing safety advocates, has already served notice that renewed legal action is possible. And on the other side, Bill Graves, head of the American Trucking Associations has also warned that his members are not happy with the reduction in the driver work week and will be considering legal options.

Since the US government started considering back in 1936 how many hours a truck driver should be behind the wheel, the number of hours has changed from 15 to 12 to 10 and back up to 11 as of 2003. Were those decisions driven by science or by politics?

Aside from the uncertainty created by the constant legal challenges, what should be a concern is the drain on resources this creates both with the government and with motor carriers. Fighting over whether one extra hour of driving actually has a measurable impact on safety takes time and concentration away from other areas – for example, emerging technologies such as lane monitoring or collision avoidance systems – which could have a larger impact on improving truck safety and productivity.

I also hope you will continue the conversation on issues affecting all transportation modes by joining me in the Transportation Track at the upcoming Supply Chain Canada conference, May 8-9, International Centre, Toronto. Go to www.supplychaincanada.com to register.

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Happy New Year to each one of you! I always get excited in the early months of each new year for the opportunity it represents. An opportunity to fail more, learn more, win more, grow more, do more.

For example in two weeks I'll be facilitating my first workshop in the beautiful language of French in a remote northern community of Quebec.

A sermon I heard last week triggered this question and I'm excited to share my thoughts with you. So lets talk about Mind, Heart & Feet as they relate to my adventure in Quebec and leadership in general:

Mind

My mind has been telling me alot of things. Like:

1) You can do it. You've worked in bilingual positions at Shell and managed just fine. It will be okay.

2) What are you doing! You can't do this. This is a professional speaking gig and they will expect PERFECT French. Yours my friend, is not.

Heart

My heart has been telling me alot of things as well:

1) Fear! Its been attacked by the occasional fear of failure. What happens if they do want Perfect French and I don't deliver?

2) Excitement! Here's an opportunity to connect with a people group you really like ( i have alot of French Canadian friends) and travel to a section of Quebec you haven't visited before. Awesome!

3) Excitement! At the end of this year you will be more fully bilingual in French because of your learnings in the 4 times you go there.

Feet
You likely never knew that feet talked but they do!

In my moments of fear, they've numbed and screamed stop!
In my moments of excitement they've tingled and hesitantly started to walk.

They are however bound in some boots that are moving forward. I've signed a contract to do it and I have a plane flight booked, both which are expensive to cancel. So fear or not, in February my feet will be in Mont Joli Quebec for 2 days of workshops on Behavioral Interviewing... and I know that is a good thing because the only way to learn is to do.

Mind, Heart or Feet? Which is most Important?

My experience is this: The only way to get your Mind to focus on the positive and your heart to be calmed, content and happy is to force your feet to walk and experience the learning and growth that comes from doing. Too much focus on mind and heart can block the steps required to succeed. It would be tragic to spend a life only thinking about what's possible while never having waded in or to let the fear of failure stop you from glorious and rewarding growth & achievement. Take care of people's feet and the rest will take care of itself. Its an important lesson for leaders to apply to not only their team but themselves.

So here is are a couple challenges to you:

I challenge each one of you to make 2012 the year when your feet walk into at least one thing that stretches your comfort zones and that will also be the foundation for your future growth, success & happiness.

I challenge each one of you to similarly challenge every employee who works for you to walk into something new that will be the foundation for their future growth, success & happiness.

What will that be? Only you can decide. Whatever it is, I am excited for you! I know you and they will be glad you did.

Have a great week!

David

David Benjatschek is "Your Man with the Plan for Better Teams and Better Results" . His leadership & communication workshops across North America and abroad have won wide acclaim for inspiring and equipping emerging leaders for success. about.me/yourmanwiththeplan

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Holy Cow!? More and more companies are being audited with a lower violation/ intervention rate as the threshold.

However after spending some time in Woodstock recently, and going through an all out audit with an MTO auditor, I can honestly say, it was refreshing to meet someone, who knew what they were doing, were reasonable, wanted the job done, while at the same time realized, drivers, for the most part are honest and hard working. He also realized that they are human and make mistakes.

When all was said and one, NO CHARGES WERE laid the violation rate for the intervention was misleading, and the company had their ducks in a row. The company itself, went out of their way, to make us feel welcome, and basically let us take over their office for a while, in preperation and during the audit.

Those of you who have an audit coming up, be prepared, auditors like this one, are few and far between. Make sure you are ready and have everything ready for them. No excuses no mistakes and no problems, Keep things neat, tidy, and easily indentifiable, and easily organzied, and easy on the eyes. Remember in a CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, is the key especially with receipts. Forget the days of throwing everything in an envelope, those days are long gone.

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Lest we forget, Avtar Singh Sandhu was charged with possessing 205 kgs of cocaine after the tractor trailer he was driving was stopped near Milton,Ont.,way back in Feb 4, 2007. Halton Police officers found the coke wrapped inside nine plastic-wrapped bricks in the back of the van owned by Kandola Bros. Carriers, tucked in beside a load of baby carrots bound for stores in the Toronto area.

Sandhu was originally acquitted because the trial judge found that the evidence had been gathered improperly without a search warrant contravening Sandhu's Charter Rights to be free from improper search and seizure.

But on Jan 5, in a decision written by Justice J. A. Simmons, the Ontario Appeals Court set aside the acquittal and allowed for a new trial under a different judge. Moreover, the decision had some interesting things to say about truck drivers and their expectations of privacy, which I'll get into shortly.

The entire incident started as a bit of a surreal theatre, after an altercation between Sandhu and a truck stop employee who noticed suspicious activity at Truck Town Terminals on Steeles Ave. Evidently he had seen Sandhu and another man loading something from a passenger car into the back of the trailer. After confronting the the men, they started up their vehicles and drove off in opposite directions. The truck stop employee followed the truck and managed to impede his progress a few times, finally cutting him off entirely on a ramp from James Snow Parkway onto the 401.

It was then that Ministry of Transport officer Jason Leeman happened on the scene and noticed the strange activity going between the two vehicles. He pulled in behind the stopped truck and turned on his lights, determining at that time that he was going to inspect the vehicle--until driver Sandhu approached and mentioned something about a “gun” Understandably, Leeman called his dispatcher and requested backup. Soon after, a couple of Halton police officers, Paul Kent and Geoff Clarke, arrived on the scene. At this time Sandhu made a more explicit reference to a gun telling the officers, “someone had put a gun to his head and told him he had to put things in the back of the tractor trailer truck.”

This naturally piqued the interest of the gendarmes. They cautiously opened the back doors and while examining the cargo MTO officer Leeman noticed the nine bales, about two and a half feet square. He believed those bales contained narcotics based on his prior experience and training, and stepped back to let the Halton cops take a look. Officer Kent sliced open one of the bales, at first thinking they contained CD ROMs or computer parts. The investigating officer were now pretty sure they had come across a mother lode of narcotics, but it's not until detective Brad Murray arrived on the scene that the call was made to request a search warrant.

Neither of the judges quibbled with the right of the MTO officer to examine the vehicle and its contents. But the trial court judge felt that once Leeman had heard Sandhu talking about a gun, and had called for backup, the incident turned from a regulatory matter into a criminal investigation, resulting in impugned evidence because of a warrantless search.

According to the original judgement, the judge found that the officers “engaged in an intrusive and invasive warrantless search of the trailer with full knowledge and consciousness that they would only have the legal authority to proceed in that way if they first obtained a search warrant” [but]...” chose instead to rely on the questionable authority that cloaked Officer Leeman...” Interestingly, the trial judge also found that the driver had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the trailer, albeit “at the lower end of the scale.”

In overturning the acquittal, the Appeals Court suggested that there was no reason that a regulatory investigation could not take place in parallel with a criminal investigation, and cited another famous truck/trafficking case in Saskatchewan. In Nolet vs. the Crown, a couple of guys were bobtailing around the prairies and were stopped by an RCMP officer who noticed an expired fuel tax sticker. During a “regulatory” search of the truck cab, the Mountie stepped on a duffel bag that “crinkled,” and opened it thinking that there would be documents like log book sheets inside (believe it or else). Anyway, inside the duffel bag is papers all right, $115,000 in cash, which is enough for them to get arrested on the spot according to the law (libertarians take note, if you're carrying a large amount of money police figure it's the proceeds of a cime).. A further search of the vehicle found 392 pounds of pot hidden in compartments. The boys were evidently booting around in tractor and wholesaling pot until this sharp-eyed Mountie pulled them over.

Regardless, the Appeal judges leaned heavily on the Nolet judgement, which they add, in fairness, wasn't available to the trial court judge: “Where police (or enforcement officers) have conducted a warrantless search, the onus is on the Crown, 'to establish on a balance of probabilities that the search was authorized by law, that the search itself it reasonable, and that the manner in which the search was carried out was reasonable.'”

The Nolet judgement apparently set the bar. “Commercial driving is a highly regulated industry and truckers can expect to be subject to random inspections from time to time.” And further, trailer privacy issues had little to do with the Sandhu case, according to the Appeals Court since the respondent (Sandhu) did not own the truck or trailer, had no authority to determine what was loaded in the trailer, did not load goods onto the trailer himself, etc.

The last part of this appeal intrigues me. I'm not sure how much Avtar Singh Sandhu had to do with his illicit load, most drivers don't have any say in what they're transporting, we just hope the shipper is honest and law-abiding. As my friend Rick Geller is always saying, you could ship an Exocet missile domestically by FedEx, call it a popcorn maker, and no one would know the difference.

This case could well end up in the Supreme Court as did the Nolet charges. Showcasing that peculiar balancing of a state's rights with those of an individual which haven't quite been worked out yet...to be continued at the Superior Court in Milton, Ont., September 2012.

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At the start of December a new study of 34 countries showed that income inequality is at a record high among industrialized nations and that the gap between Canada’s rich and poor, although not as bad as in the US, is above the 34-country average.

The OECD research shows that the average income of the top 10% of Canadians in 2008 was $103,500 – 10 times that of the bottom 10%, who had an average income of $10,260. Back in the early 1990s the top 10% made only 8 times more what the bottom 10% made. The richest 1% of Canadians meanwhile, saw their total share of income rise to 13.3% from 8.1% in 1980. At the same time, the top federal marginal income rates dropped from 43% in 1981 to 29% in 2010 so the richest Canadians got to keep considerably more of their earnings.

Of the 34 countries compared, the US has the fourth worst record and Canada the 12th worst but a September study by the Conference Board of Canada reported that income inequality has been rising faster in Canada than in the US since the mid 1990s.

If you are a professional driver, of course, these numbers are just proof of what your eyes and pocketbook have been showing you for years. It's a sad commentary on the plight of the US motor carrier industry, for example, that drivers make no more today in real terms (taking inflation into account) than they did in 1990. While I don’t have comparable figures for Canada to share with you, Statistics Canada records show that average weekly earnings (all employees, including overtime) in the Canadian for-hire trucking industry in 2001 was $687. By 2010, despite some of greatest growth years the Canadian economy has ever experienced, weekly earnings had climbed to $851.

The numbers I’ve mentioned are not the result of the recent recession; although weekly earnings in Canadian trucking did hit their peak in 2008 they averaged just $859. Wages in trucking have remained depressed through both good times and bad. It’s a mirror into what has been happening in our country overall as income inequality has increased during both recessionary and boom periods and despite employment growth during the boom periods.

Growing income disparity is a concern (among both protesters in the Occupy movement and prominent figures such as Warren Buffett) because a growing wage gap actually hurts everyone. Countries with greater income inequality tend to see shorter, less sustained periods of economic growth, according to a paper published by the International Monetary Fund last fall.

For trucking, the consequences are even more immediate. We need to ask ourselves why it is that despite high unemployment rates across North America, we still face a driver shortage? And then shippers, carriers and government must come together to figure out how to make the driving profession an attractive one once again because trucks don’t drive themselves and an advanced trading nation such as Canada can’t survive without trucking.

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Welcome to 2012. I know this sounds very cliché but 2011 flew by in a flash, and it seemed to me to do it with little or no notoriety. Why? Probably because all sectors of the economy were sluggish. Certainly freight picked up a little but only marginally, unemployment was and is still out of control, yadda and yadda. I am much better off when I ignore what’s going on in Europe with their debt crisis and the things that legally trained politicians everywhere in the world seem to be messing up, almost daily, (just a thought but should it be illegal for a lawyer to be a politician, think about it driver?) I have heard of 2011 being nicknamed the “Year of Fear” makes sense to me.

I realize that I am much better off when I ignore this minutia, but in some circles these days you need to know some of what going on in this world or people seem to ignore you. Whatever! One thing that I can share on a brighter note for me is the fact that my new role as CEO of Transrep Inc. www.transrep.ca is going well and I am enjoying it more and more each day. One thing that has opened my eyes in this new role is all the new technologies and systems that I now have time to learn about. One of the significant challenges of this effort is how difficult it is to get trucking executives to spend time with some of these new things. They are so busy doing what they have always done that it is very difficult to get them to learn something new; even though you know that it will save them time and money. Of course they are also busy managing the 10,000 moving parts that go into running a trucking company; been there, done that and I get it, to some extent!

Through this whole experience I have gained a respect for those companies that are open to new ideas and systems, the ones that make innovation part of their culture, whether they are a big or small carrier. Typically, we in this industry will let everyone else test the waters before we entertain the possibility of the indoctrination of a new process or system. I thoroughly understand the old analogy of pioneers being the first ones with arrows in their backs, but by the same token none of us would be where we are today if we hadn’t taken a little risk in our lives and our business.

The secret to deciding on whether or not to try a new product or service, whether you’re an Owner Operator or a fleet owner is in the comparison of the risk/cost factor to the potential revenue/reward. In the difficult decisions I have had to make in my career I have typically followed the same procedure after all the facts are collected and an ROI (return on investment) has been estimated; I would draw a line horizontally down the middle of a lined piece of paper. On the top of the page I write what the new service, procedure or product it is that I am considering moving forward with. Under that I also articulate in one short sentence explaining what I see as the potential benefit of this change. Next step was that on one side of the page I write the pros and on the other side the cons concerning the implications of making this decision. When I was done I would put it aside for at least 24 hours and continue to think it through. Part of this exercise might just reveal additional information that you need to precede to your final decision.

The other method I used a lot when time was of the essence and I needed to move quickly is the smell test. It works like this. I look things over as completely as I can and then try and find where it stinks. Sounds simple and sometimes it is, other times though, not so easy. The root of all of this is that there are times when you just need to trust your gut, hard as this might be; trust it. For years I was intimidated by people with education and academic credentials. Here I was this young trucker who never made it out of grade 12 sitting around boardroom tables with Lawyers and Chartered Accountants and talking to bank managers. You kidding me man?

It took me a number of years to learn that all the education in the world will not begin to replace common sense and courage to follow your natural instinct and unwavering passion. Many of the decisions that I regret the most are the ones where I didn’t trust my instinct and followed the advice of someone who had the educational credentials but didn’t have my instincts. My bad not theirs, I blame no one for where I am in this world. I did everything perfectly for me to be where I am right now, no doubt about it and by the way so did you!

I vividly remember when Connie and I decided that we would start a company and apply for an operating authority and our own company. I went and spoke to two professionals; one was an experienced transportation Lawyer in London and another was a local Chartered Accountant. They both told us to play it safe and not take the risk. In retrospect, it might have been because we already had two mortgages on our house at the time. Of course we didn’t listen and went ahead anyway.

In between then and now there has been a lot of water under the bridge, some of it sweet smelling and some of it foul. That being said I am not one of those folks who suggest that if they had it all to do over again they wouldn’t change a thing, because I definitely would change many decisions that I have made. But in retrospect and despite some of the advice from my educated advisors and my own bad decisions, I believe that I have made more good decisions than bad.

Safe Trucking
Ray J. Haight

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