ATRI survey highlights trucking concerns

Sure, it’s a study looking at trucking in the U.S., but I think the American Transportation Research Institute’s latest Top Industry Issues survey has relevance here too. Not least because…

Diesel isn’t dead, and its future might surprise you

Is the diesel engine on its deathbed? You might wonder after hearing Navistar say its new S13 is the last internal combustion engine it will ever…

Will wars be fought over rare minerals?

There’s something missing in all the enthusiastic chatter about electric vehicles, and it’s a huge deal. Like monumental. With the potential to change the world order. I’ll get to that…

You really can read a book by its cover

You really can read a book by its cover more often than you think. Might not get the whole story, but how often do you really need that right away?…

Driver training and retention are connected

There are a zillion reasons to improve trucking’s drive-training system, if it can actually be called a “system” at all. It can’t. One of those reasons may not be obvious,…

Farewell to Laurence Marshall, a trucking legend

We lost a good guy in early May. If you live in Medicine Hat or Bella Coola or Sydney you’ll probably never have heard of Laurence Marshall, but he’s something…

Towns should think about how much they depend on trucks

Lots of folks have been asking what sort of reaction I got to my recent column in which I ranted about the misguided siege of Ottawa by disgruntled protesters, some…

Did talk of autonomous trucks begin with cruise control?

The buzz about autonomous trucks is slowly getting louder, but do we really want them? Or need them? I’m not a big fan but it doesn’t matter what I think…

Ottawa siege left trucking with a black eye

Before I write anything else, let me start this way. While I’m passionately in favor of Covid-19 vaccines for all, I think it was a massive and unnecessary over-reach by…

Drop the cell phone and focus on the road

Twenty years ago I wrote a stupid editorial in this magazine. Like, really stupid. I admitted that I should be the utterly responsible commentator and agree that cell phones are…

Trucking is at a watershed moment, needs big-picture thinking

Never have I been able to keep one, so no resolutions for the new year in this quarter. It’s just an exercise in frustration. And I’ll bet that most of…

Truck drivers are re-evaluating their lives, too

There’s a clumsy sign taped beneath the menu and ordering screen at my local coffee joint’s drive-through lane. It bugs me a lot. It’s on ordinary white 8.5×11 printer paper,…

Hydra Energy retrofits add to a changing truck market

What on earth have we seen unleashed in the truck-making world? Everybody and his third cousin twice removed has launched a new truck or soon will. If not a new…

Most of you can ignore the electric truck ‘hype’

The hype is extreme. Everywhere I turn, I’m assailed by news about the wonders of the plug-in battery electric truck (BEV), and no less about fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) in…

How to lead a productive meeting — if you have to

Thankfully, and I really mean that, I don’t have to take part in multi-person meetings any more, being mostly retired. Not the awful Zoom things that the pandemic created for…