Email Disasters
Just a note to let you know I got a good chuckle out your column on email disasters (Deb Whistler, July HDT.)
I think we've all been there many times. Email is a wonderful, and often baffling thing. Sometimes we hate it; sometimes we feel naked without it!
Jim Martin
James D. Martin & Associates
Cost Per Mile
Just a note to say how much I appreciate your magazine and your various columns. I was particularly interested in your latest one (Jim Winsor, July HDT), regarding TMC's initiation of an effort to standardize the methods for computing cost per mile.
As you know, I was a private fleet operator for many years, and I was often interested in benchmarking my fleet in comparison to others. The differences in accounting standards always got in the way, and the attempt to draw any "good, better, best" judgments was virtually always compromised.
Now that I am working in sales for a major truck lessor, I am no less frustrated by the CPM conundrum. Each private fleet is uniquely a world unto itself, and the accounting variations seem to be endless. Our unseen competitor is often "the fleet cost component that isn't there," i.e. the portion of a private fleet operation cost that is allocated elsewhere within the corporate accounting system. When these cost components are ignored or undervalued in a comparison with our outsourced alternative proposal, we often cannot make the value proposition under any circumstances.
Hopefully any progress by TMC will help to lead fleets toward a true cost benchmark standard for honest comparison in the future.
Keep up the good work, Jim!
Ralph Stockmayer
Industry Development Manager
GH 0814
Size Does Matter
Concerning the study, Longer and Heavier Trucks Needed, why not go with what is presently in place in the Northwest and Intermountain regions and be done with it?
Seven axles: 96,000 lbs.
Eight axles: 105,500 lbs.
Then there would be uniformity. Trucking companies in these areas have millions invested in this type of equipment. California, the "Dinosaur State," can't see its way clear to go this route, and I know why (traffic congestion, AAA, bad roads and bridges, Democrats funding welfare cheats and Governor Davis' re-election campaign instead of infrastructure, etc.). Eventually the California carriers will have to switch — or go extinct.
There is a bad side to this proposal, of course. Here's what happened to all of us in Oregon when the law changed back in the '80s: You could go from running a 3-axle tractor and 2-axle 40-foot trailer (80K gross) to a 3-axle tractor/2-axle semi and 3-axle 20-foot "pup" trailer (105,500 lbs. gross) — sure! But the extra money you received in the form of unregulated "market rates" went from 40% extra (in the beginning) down to 30%, down to 25% extra (compared to rates for just pulling a 40-footer). It just does not "pencil out" to pull the pup and wear out your tractor drivetrain for these obscene rates. Add to that the extra expense of additional tarps and tie-down gear on flatbeds, the additional time it takes to load/tarp, untarp/unload and the fact that many customer locations are not "sized" for loading/unloading these "Maxi" rigs, and you have one bankruptcy after another occurring in the trucking industry. But of course all the traffic managers tried to switch all their loads over to 65,000-70,000-lb. minimums, to try to maximize their profits and minimize their per-ton hauling costs. Now who is really making money hauling these loads? No one. If you aren't set up to haul these loads, you either are stuck or have to take loads going to California or other states where you can only operate a 5-axle/80,000-lb. combination.
Companies such as Weyerhaeuser have done away with their private carriers (Green Arrow) and we have seen almost all the "old time" carriers go bankrupt or out of business since the mid-'80s. Very few other ones can now afford to purchase new trucks or trailers because of the poor rates and unregulated entry into the business of inexperienced competitors (who cut rates further to get business, followed 12 months later by their bankruptcies).
Longer and heavier, yes, ONLY when there is a change in federal law to once again have regulated rates, either by the CWT (hundredweight) or hour, or a combination of both. And there also must be detention time and demurrage, to allow carriers to recover their true costs imposed upon them by shippers and receivers.
I worked for years hauling up to eight loads of wood chips and forest by-products per shift, 70,000-72,000 lbs. per load (trucks set up on a daily double shift with two drivers) and only did it because the per-ton rate allowed us to be profitable. It was a volume haul, with contracts, with service guarantees because the truckers on the haul could not let the bunkers at the mills plug up (causing mill shut down). We worked our asses off through every kind of foul weather you can imagine, day, night and weekends to stay ahead of these mills. It didn't matter if there was snow and ice on the roads. It didn't matter if you were sick and puking. It didn't matter if you got hurt on the job — the wood had to be hauled. And we had to preload and park extra trailers to avoid plugging the bunkers. We had to endure the slowdowns as well as the boom times. Would I have done it if I had to worry about some "fly by night" gypo trucker coming in offering to haul it cheaper? Hell no. This happens every day in the Northwest with flatbedders and log haulers.
Sadly, even though I am a Republican I have concluded after 28-plus years in the trucking industry that there is only one answer to unprofitable operations — regulated rates and traffic bureaus. Our present system is broken and does not work.
Jim Pierce
Santa Rosa, Calif.
