Arkansas Trucking Association

Larry Rambeaux, sales manager at Purkeys, a battery solutions company located in Lowell, Ark., was chosen this year for the Silver Spark Plug award by the Technology Maintenance Council (TMC).

“The Silver Spark Plug is our industry’s highest honor, recognizing professional excellence in commercial vehicle maintenance,” said Robert Braswell, TMC’s executive director. “This year’s winners represent the pinnacle of our industry and we are pleased to bestow this honor on them.”

Skylar Hatfield has been named the director of safety services of the Arkansas Trucking Association, a role partially supported by funds from the Arkansas Commercial Truck Safety and Education Program (ACTSEP) to promote safety on Arkansas roadways, awarded by the Arkansas Highway Commission.

Hatfield will serve as a liaison with the FMCSA, Arkansas Highway Police, OSHA and other regulatory bodies.

Louisiana legislators debated a bill to cap the number of billboards in the state and regulate where they can be displayed to minimize distraction for drivers.

Rep. Jack McFarland proposed a resolution to increase licensing fees, double the amount of space required between billboards, prevent any new billboard construction, and ban a company from billboard advertising more than 3 miles from its place of business.

“It’s just gotten out of hand,” McFarland said. “You can’t go down a highway, state highway, or any of the interstates now without seeing a billboard every 500 feet.”

New York City drivers will be the first in the nation to pay cordon congestion pricing, beginning in 2020. The pricing plan is intended to reduce traffic by charging drivers who enter the city’s business district. Cordon pricing charges drivers to enter a congested area. While other U.S. cities have variably priced lanes and facilities to control congestion, New York City is the first to implement cordon pricing.

New York City has some of the most congested streets in the country. The gridlock is especially challenging for emergency vehicles that maneuver through the city to save lives and respond to crises.

The exact price point is still undecided, but the once-a-day charge is predicted to raise $1 billion each year for public transportation.

According to a recent study by the American Transportation Research Institute, female drivers pose lower crash risks.

In its most recent Crash Predictor Model, which statistically quantifies the likelihood of future crash involvement based on specific truck driving behaviors, ATRI found that female truck drivers were determined to be safer than male counterparts in every statistically significant safety behavior, with men 20% more likely to be involved in a crash.

Volvo announced it is installing cameras inside its vehicles to monitor driver behavior and intervene if the driver appears to be drunk or distracted.

The cameras will monitor eye movements to gauge distraction. If a driver isn’t watching the road or fails to keep their hands on the steering wheel, they will get a call from a representative from Volvo’s on-call assistance centers to check in. And if a driver doesn’t respond, the car can slow down and stop.

The Arkansas Trucking Association is pleased to announce the 2019 recipient of the Carl Tapp Memorial Scholarship Fund. High school senior Ryan McKnight of West Fork High School will receive $7,500 to pursue training for a career in medium/heavy duty truck technology.

“Arkansas relies on the trucking industry as a major employer in the state. One in twelve working Arkansans have a career in our industry. It is vital to the state’s economy that we capture the right talent and make the highly skilled training accessible to trucking’s future technicians,” says Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association. “This year’s scholarship recipient will someday be caring for the machines we share the road with every day, and we wish him well in their education and careers because their success is our safety.”

Amazon recently patented a plan to turn public buses into mobile delivery stations.

As buses lose ridership to Lyft and Uber, Amazon proposes an additional use for the vehicles. A removable delivery module would be attached to the bus, from which customers could pick up their packages at stops along the bus’s route.

The National Safety Council released a new report on preventable deaths that found, for the first time on record, the odds of dying from an accidental opioid overdose are greater than dying in a motor vehicle crash.

Americans now have a 1 in 96 chance of dying from an opioid overdose, according to the council's analysis of 2017 data on accidental death. The probability of dying in a motor vehicle crash is 1 in 103.

The American Transportation Research Institute released an analysis of the impacts that emerging e-commerce trends are having on the trucking industry, including the challenges and opportunities that more regionalized retail supply chains and the proliferation of urban “last mile” deliveries have presented.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Thomas Donohue has launched a contest for the “best, most viable ideas” for long-term, sustainable funding for infrastructure improvements. The winner will earn $25,000.

“As everyone knows, the challenge is how to pay for it,” Donohue said on Jan. 10.

The Chamber has lobbied for a 25 cent  increase in the fuel tax over five years to raise the funds for infrastructure maintenance and modernization, but raising the fuel tax, which hasn’t changed since 1993, has been unpopular politically in recent history.

The U.S. is not the only one with a driver shortage problem. The Ontario Trucking Association in Canada is calling on the provincial government to launch a pilot program that would allow freight carriers to bring in immigrant workers to fill a critical driver shortage.

The driver shortage across the border is caused by the same problems faced in the U.S. like an aging workforce.