April 1st, Not Only April's Fool

Too many said:"You can't get 2 truckers to agree on the time of day", This is the proof they were wrong. In Illinois, in Georgia, in Florida and in New Jersey, Independant drivers have started to make their point. We are not picking up the tab for every one else no more.

I will not blame anyone for a peaceful but yet powerful action. We are consumers too and we need the abuse taken from us stopped. We need to refuse to be put out of business to please shippers.

If you run on a contract that is leaving you with a profit you can live with, that's great and keep it up. On the other hand, if you are not making a decent profit out of your loads, leave them on the docks.

SAY NO TO CHEAP FREIGHT!

Fuel, Fuel, Fuel, When You Take a Hold at our Cahoonies…

The hot topic on trucking talk radio these days, everywhere in North America, is the rising cost of fuel and the turn down of many customers to pay a fuel surcharge in order to help the industry with these increases and the ones to come.

The word is out about a strike in the trucking community but, the only ones that can do a strike are the unionized drivers and this is towards an employer that refuses to negotiate a working contract. The correct words to use by owner operators and non-unionized drivers would be a voluntary stopping period by solidarity. It could be a day or more, why not! Many rumours are that this could happen on April 1^st, unless this is an April Fools day joke. I hope we will see a strong solidarity among the industry.

For the ones that don’t get their fare share of compensation for the high priced fuel, many are going to say that they need the income, so little it is. To loose one day of income is nothing compared to the losses you may have in a very short period of time if nothing is done to correct this situation.

It is not to our governments to take action on this matter. They can help us by taking down some taxes they get from the sales of fuels but our Honourable Ministers of Finances are all smiles with these new revenues coming in to the provinces. The higher the price is, the more money comes in from the percentage of the taxes. Personally, I saw this past week my first fuel bill with four digits between the dollar sign and the decimal point. Will we soon have to deal with a credit officer at the fuel desk instead of a cashier?

Before I took the decision of parking my tractor, my fuel costs were over 65% of my gross income. After many talk with the carrier I was leased with to adjust my fuel surcharge, and the same amount of no’s I got, I pulled the tractor beside the house and I decided to look at the snow melt on it. I currently drive as an independent driver for a small carrier I know in my area.

Many won’t be making the line at to renew their plates in Quebec on March 31^st and many are going to park some trucks nose to the fence until the crisis ends. How long is this crisis going to last?

I can’t tell because I don’t have a crystal ball. The one I used to predict the fuel would be at the $4 dollar mark before the end of summer was wrong. It happened before spring has settled in. As long as there are some carriers, small or large, that is going to haul freight at a cut rate, as long as the trucking association and the Owner-operator association won’t do a spectacular thing toward customers that still think that revenues are plentiful, this crisis will last.

Unless, and I am purely speculating, this is economic terrorism?

For the time being, why not do it this Tuesday and use a modified version of a popular racing phrase: “Gentlemen, do not start your engines!”

Speed Limiter in Ontario and The Rest of Canada

It’s one more step towards making the project of the OTA to make all Professional drivers #3 peas that the Transport Minister Jim Bradley has helped by passing to the legislature the proposal to limit speed of all truck doing business in Ontario. This in the name of safety, even if many studies do prove the opposite, and G.H.G. reductions, this either has not been verified yet.

Many of you reading this blog do know what a speed limiter is but for the others, it’s an electronic chip in the engine control module (ECM) that regulates the speed a truck can operate. This bill, like bill 142 in Quebec, proposes to limit to l05Km/h the speed of all heavy trucks with a GWR of 11,000kg or more. However, the owner can set it up to a lower speed like many large carriers already do. If you are working for a carrier that limits the speed of their fleet to 100Km/h, don’t expect an increase of your traveling speed.

At a time when fuel prices are in excess of $1.25 in Quebec and the national average in the USA is over $4.00, I don’t know any owner operators not doing all they can do to reduce the costs of the fuel they need to operate their business. This is the one item that can take all the profitability out of a small trucking business. At a time when more and more shippers don’t want to pay extra for a decent fuel surcharge in order to limit their costs as much as possible, I still don’t understand why some carriers of any size don’t impose one and accept loads at a lost or with barely any profits in it.

If you are wondering what is OBAC doing on this issue for the speed limiter, I will answer you that all is done but did you do all you can on this issue? Did you write to your member of parliament, faxed or emailed to the Transport Minister of your province? Did you sign up to the association? If your answer is no to any of these questions, you did not do all you can.

I have put on line a petition since July 8^th and up to this morning, less then 900 signatures are listed to it mostly from Canada and the United States. Once again, let the large carriers dictate the ways to do business and mostly, don’t come and cry about YOUR lack of action to protect your rights of a free enterprise.

With both of Canada’s most populated provinces with such a law in the books, the other are going to follow. What is up next? Mandatory Electronic on board recorders for the hours of service? Obligation to haul doubles or triples?

The least you can do is to give yourself a voice that will represent you and don’t let the governments listen to only one association that will do all it can to shutdown the small business trucker. The same associations that have cried to deregulate the territories are now asking the governments to regulate more and more how to do trucking when there is many laws already in place to regulate highway use,

Personally I only have one question to our elected officials and I am still waiting for an honest answer.
Will you one day think to have the highway safety codes respected by all road users before making up new rules?

Climate Change or Global Warming?

This Saturday evening of March 8^th 2008, if I look outside and at the thermometer, I am wondering if we should still talk of Global Warming. Geographically, I am located 75Km (47mls) north-east of Montreal. According to the statistics from Weather Channel, in March the average temperature is -2c with the warmest day recorded at 28,6c on March 28^th 1945 and the coldest, March 4^th 1950 with -29,4c. The worst snow fall is still in early March 1971 that is still recalled as the storm of the century in Montreal. The Boomers and the Boomex, like me, too young to be a Boomer but to old to be an X, still remember that storm which paralysed southern Quebec for three days.

As I am writing these lines, it’s stormy outside. M wife is stuck in Drummondville and can’t come home from work. The thermometer shows -7c and another 10 to 15cm of that white s*** is on the way overnight. This week, I was in Halifax and even there, some snow is still on the ground. Halifax is south of Montreal and in the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic.

I did notice, doing some research on the speed limiter issue that for every study on Global Warming, there is one conflicting it. However, the scientific community agrees to say that there is a “Climate Change” and I think this term applies better.

Reasonable Accommodation in Ontario

If you are an Indo-Canadian and mostly speaking Punjabi, you may not be reading this blog but, if you are an English speaking Canadian, this may have some interest to you. A new trucking association now exist in Ontario, the ITA (Indian Trucking Association) and this association has already made many demands to Transport Minister Jim Bradley.

With out being bigot in any ways or xenophobic, only a concerned citizen that is aware of some laws and would like to see them applied or modified, but to read that Minister Bradley has accepted to a demand of the ITA to appoint Punjabi speaking officers at major truck inspections points rose a question to me. The FMCSA law rules that a driver should be able to hold a conversation with an officer for safety reasons. Why is it here in Canada we can’t have a similar law that would require that a driver could at least talk one of the two official language of the country?

Even in air traffic ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation), a UN organisation headquartered in Montreal, stated that English is the air traffic language of communication for the same safety reasons and this worldwide.

OBAC will be asked to put pressure on the federal Minister of Transport to determine a disposition, to speak at least one of both official languages, in the Canadian Transport laws to ensure safety to all road users.

I looked in my crystal ball

Last week I made a prediction while one of my interventions on Livraison XTRM, a prediction I want to record here for future reference.

What is that prediction?

During a trip to Pennsylvania and seen a price of $3,699 a gallon of that precious liquid we need to do our work or to move ahead with our small business, I predicted on air that we would see a price of $4.00 a gallon before the end of the summer. Not only in some states but on the National average calculated by the EIA (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm).

One more factor in our changing industry. How can we react to these price increases and what kind of impact it may have on our everyday life? To readjust the fuel surcharge is a viable solution but in the current state of competition, some won’t hesitate to take a load at lost only to relocate equipment.

How can we make understand that backhauls are a thing of the past and that all loads are to be moved from point A to point B. Do you know your costs of operations to avoid taking a full load at lost?

The most commonly used way to calculate a FSC is based on a price of $1.25 a gallon. This price is deducted from the current average price and then divided by 6. Why 6? This is an average mpg for heavy trucks.

Ex Current price $3.55
Reference price $1.25
Difference $2.30
Surcharge of $0.38

You can calculate with a different base price however, this is the mostly used price. Also if you take a load from a broker, assure yourself that you are given the full fuel surcharge that the broker gets. After all, you are the one paying the fuel bill.

Nice effort Mrs Minister!

This morning the Minister of Transport Julie Boulet announced a plan to upgrade the road network of Quebec for the 2008-2009 budgets. A well made plan of 2,7G$ that should change the face of the patchwork our network is currently in. Looking at some numbers in the press release made the few hairs, I have left on my thick skull, rise up.

The envelope of 842M$ that is allowed to fight the aging of the infrastructures is an increase of 88% of last year amount for the same framework. It is a step in the right direction but, if that envelope kept an inflation increase in the previous plans, we shouldn’t be surprised of the poor state of the bridges and viaducts.

Another part is allocated for the roadway surfacing and totalises 736M$ to put up significantly the network. The development of new roads counts for 774M$ and is mostly turned towards Autoroute 50 and provincial roads 175 and 185.

In order to maintain the actual network, 71% of the budget is being allowed to this field, associated with 1G$ for safety and correction of dangerous areas such as, curves, unpaved shoulders, ruts in the pavements, etc.

As a bonus, the projected 1850 construction sites will maintain and create 36,000 jobs for the workforce. This may not include the workers of the orange barrels companies or the sign makers.

The only thing that worries me in the entire plan. Is this budget related to the vote in the National Assembly of the provincial budget? Both opposition parties are only awaiting a chance to turn over the actual government and all this nice effort could be gone.