David A Kolman
David Kolman has shaped the trucking industry through his extensive hands-on experience as a truck owner and operator and communications professional throughout the past 25 years. His...more
I have a dilemma that I need some help and guidance with.
I have a friend who has an acquaintance that knows a guy who every so often comes across boxes that just happened to “fall off a truck.”
The latest “lost” merchandise was a couple of cases of FlabULess.
Never heard of this? Neither had I.
FlabULess touts itself as the first ever arm shapewear for women.
Shapewear, if you’re not aware, are foundation garments designed to temporarily alter the wearer’s body shape by slimming, concealing and reshaping into a more “fashionable” figure. Things liked padded bras, control-top pantyhose and the like.
FlabULess is a pair of compression sleeves that acts as a girdle for the arms, making flabby arms more sleek and slender under tops, dresses, sweaters and jackets.
Here’s the matter I need help with: Do I give a pair to my wife? (Yes, I do have health insurance.)
I welcome your advice, thoughts and comments.
To leave yours, click on the “No Comments” link below.
It’s not what you might be thinking. The Death Van isn’t some comic book or movie character that goes around killing bad guys by running them over or blowing them up.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
This truck does go around killing people. But it kills them legally.
The Death Van is the nickname for China’s fleet of mobile execution chambers. The inconspicuous vehicles, which resemble a tour bus crossed with a police squad car, measure 20 to 26 feet long.
The manufacturer is the Jinguan Group in China The company also makes bulletproof limousines and armored trucks for banks. Talk about technology transfer.
The Death Vans travel to areas where executions by lethal injection might not otherwise be possible.
With the vehicles, small town and cities don’t have to have their own execution faculties or have to be bothered with disposing of the dead bodies. The Death Vans handle both.
Executions in the Death Vans are viewed on closed circuit television so that local law enforcement authorities can view the lethal injections to make sure they are carried out legally. Thoughtful, don’t you think?
Another “nice” thing about the vans is that prisoners sentenced to death can be executed locally, closer to communities where they broke the law. The idea being: to better deter others from committing crime in the area.
China, the world leader in executing convicted criminals, you may interested to know, is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections.
Another interesting item: Jinguan Group’s glossy brochure on its mobile execution chambers are in Chinese and in English.
I imagine it takes a certain type of individual to want to become a Death Van driver.
How’d you like to have to write the driver recruitment ad for that position?
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
To leave yours, click on the “No Comments” link below.
Remember that British television show from years ago, “The Prisoner?”
Actor Patrick McGoohan played a British secret agent who resigns his job and then finds himself captive in a mysterious seaside village under the rule of Number One.
There, McGoohan is under constant surveillance. He comes to know this, and that influences his behavior.
When we know we’re being watched, we’re more likely to do things the proper way. Conversely, when we don’t think we’re being observed, there’s the tendency to find shortcuts and take risks.
That’s just human nature.
That principle is being applied to warehouses and forklift operators to improve safety.
Even trained, experienced operators have an inclination to cut corners when in a hurry, or when management isn’t around. And that’s not a good thing, as accident-inducing behavior creates dangerous situations.
I was surprised to learn that one person is killed every 3½ days by forklifts, and some 20,000 workers seriously injured each year. Those stats come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Forklift-monitoring technology is being developed to allow managers to know what’s happening in the warehouse and on the docks when they aren’t watching.
These technologies help promote operator accountability for reducing accidents and damage, and they’re proving effective.
Consider a study done by ShockWatch, a company that specializes in damage prevention, with a major warehouser.
At first, forklift operators performed their daily tasks but didn’t know they were being observed.
Then, operators were verbally reminded to stay safe, and told that an alarm system would sound in the event of an impact exceeding a pre-determined threshold.
The final phase of the study involved accountability. Operators were assigned keys that allowed them operate their forklifts. The warehouse managers also were issued keys.
When the impact threshold was exceeded, the forklift slowed to a creep, the lift was interrupted, and an alarm sounded continuously until a manager came to the forklift, turned off the alarm and returned the forklift to operational status.
The threat of having to face responsibility for improper driving was dramatic. Daily threshold-exceeded impacts dropped by about 94%.
Maybe there is something to be said for this big-brother-is-watching thing after all.
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
To leave yours, click on the “No Comments” link below.
My other brother Lloyd is a computer whiz. His depth and breadth of computer and information technology is impressive, and he never ceases to amaze me with what he can do.
Something he told me the other day left me dumbfounded. He said that with budgets under extreme pressure these days, companies are cutting back on information security, yet, data breaches have been increasing significantly.
That makes me wonder what the management of those companies is thinking.
Cybercrime typically goes up during economic hard times, as does the risk organizations face from employees who are laid off, fear being laid off, or face personal financial trouble.
What’s more troubling, my brother noted, is that despite advances in technology, data thieves are as clever - and busy - as ever.
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that data breaches jumped by nearly 50% last year compared with 2007.
According to ITRC, breaches are committed by both outsiders and insiders, and they share one common trait: they’re easy to pull off.
That suggests that many companies can appreciably boost security and reduce their exposure by following basic and inexpensive data security measures.
An investigation into data breaches by Verizon Business Security Solutions found that nearly nine in 10 corporate data breaches, the majority of which are caused by external sources, could have been prevented had reasonable security measures been in place.
Consider the words of former White House cybersecurity advisor Richard Clarke: “If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.”
The Verizon study concluded that simple actions, when done diligently and continually, can reap big benefits.
I’ll share those key recommendations with you in my next blog.
A couple of blogs ago I talked about how fleets are using visuals to drive home safety messages.
That prompted a truck driver to contact me and let me know about something his fleet tried for the first time. During a January safety meeting, it discussed the accidents the fleet incurred last year, including one fatality.
Photos of each wreck were shown and the reasons for each accident talked about. Then came a discussion of measures that could have been taken to prevent the accidents.
“But what was really interesting,” the trucker told me, “was that the company shared the costs of each accident. “Even the ones that didn’t look that bad were more costly then we (other drivers at the meeting) imagined.”
The fleet went a step further. It translated those costs into the number of loads that would have to be delivered for free in order to make up just for those costs.
“That really put safety into perspective,” the trucker said.
It started out innocently enough. An over-tired long-haul trucker got into a squabble over some change at a maintenance shop.
But things soon went horribly bad. The quarrel escalated into a fight that ended in the trucker’s death.
The trucker, who has yet to be identified pending notification of next of kin, died at the scene due to a fractured skull, multiple broken bones, and extensive blood loss.
“The fight went on for a good while, a witness said of the altercation. “It was horrible to watch.”
Surprisingly, the other combatant has not been charged.
“The incident apparently began when an automatic retailer (vending machine) allegedly confiscated the trucker’s money after said trucker inserted the correct amount of change into the suspect with the intent of getting - and we find this difficult to believe - a healthy snack,” said New Jersey Detective David Farbish.
“Witnesses told us that when the machine didn’t dispense the snack, the trucker reached his hand up the machine’s orifice to try and grab it, but was unable to. Said trucker then punched this machine in its robotic belly. This was followed by several more solid blows, none of which had any effect, as the snack remained in its place.”
The trucker then began kicking the vending machine, witnesses told police. When this brought no results, he began rocking the machine back and forth, harder and harder, until it fell on him.
“At first, we thought we had a notorious killer on our hands,” Detective Farbish said. “We know of at least 44 documented cases in which people trying to get a drink or snack out of an automatic retailer were crushed to death. Some 114 people have been injured.”
“But upon further investigation, we discovered that this particular automatic retailer was not the wanted killer,” added Detective U L Ulman. “We determined it was merely trying to defend itself from the trucker’s attacks.
“Like all automatic retailers, this one is also very transparent,” he continued. “It even cautioned the trucker about fighting with it. In plain view is a ‘Warning: Tipping may cause injury or death’ sticker.”
The first vending machines were introduced to the US in 1888. They were installed on the elevated subway platforms in New York City and sold Tutti-Fruiti gum.
Instances of vending machines attacking people did not start being reported in the late 1970s.
Until the notorious automatic retailer killer is captured, Detective Ulman advised people not to fight or wrestle with vending machines.
“They’re big, have bulky frames, and have substantial weight,” he said. “They can take a lot of punishment, but can also dish out a lot of pain, retribution, and even death when they’ve had enough of someone messing with them.”
As the trucking world twirls, more and more of us are working longer and longer hours.
There is more work to do because there are fewer people to do it as companies downsize.
As my brother Steve is fond of preaching: “It is what it is, and you need to do what you need to do.” True enough but, putting in too many long hours could be affecting our brains.
A recent study found that compared with working the typical 40-hour week, middle-aged workers who put in more than 55 hours per week had significantly lower performance on a series of mental skills, reasoning, and vocabulary tests.
More disturbing, the research adds to the increasing evidence that establishes a link between cognitive impairment and later life dementia.
The study stated that the “cognitive functioning between employees working long hours and those working normal hours is similar in magnitude to that of smoking, a risk factor for dementia.”
You might want to share this blog with your boss when you leave the office - on time - today.
With everything going on in the world these days, you may have missed a most interesting read: the National Highway & Traffic Safety Administration’s report entitled, Commercial Medium Tire Debris Study.
The agency contracted researchers to adopt a scientific approach to determine the causes, extent, and impacts of tire debris.
You’re probably shaking your head thinking: Kolman needs a checkup from the neck up. Right?
Not so fast.
I’ll have you know this 214-page report is chock full of educational, useful, and thought-provoking material. In addition to discussing the whole matter of tire debris, subjects addressed range far and wide - from the processes of tire manufacturing, retreading, and regrooving to fleets and their tire programs to truck tire failures to tire safety and durability issues to wide base tires and more.
One of the many things that caught my attention was that overall, researchers collected more than 86,000 tons of tire/rubber casings and debris, of which 1,496 items were assessed to determine their probable cause of failure. Talk about labor-intensive.
The researchers found that the top three reasons casings were removed from service were:
- Road hazards - 32 %.
- Maintenance/operational factors - 30%.
- Overdeflected operation (underinflation) -14%.
“Slightly less than 10% of all casings identified showed any manufacturing or process-related conditions that could be expected to contribute to the tire being removed from service,” the report stated. “Of this slightly less than 10%, the vast majority appeared to be retreading process issues, such as casing selection and repair, or tread rubber application issues.”
An underlying message throughout the report, published in December, is that proper tire care and maintenance is essential to keeping tires operating safely and at peak performance.
What do you get when you combine the green movement, with renewable energy researches, and outside-the-box thinking?
You get the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp - basically a “green” speed bump that generates electrical energy when vehicles drive over it.
The device operates by virtue of a series of articulated plates set in a pad that is practically flush to the road. When a vehicle’s weight is exerted on these plates, they are moved up and down by means of a special mechanism which drives a generator capable of producing AC or DC current.
The generator’s output will vary according to the frequency and weight of traffic, but in general terms, it is capable of producing between 5 and 10kW of energy.
Each ramp is covered with a hardwearing elastromeric membrane to avoid any problems with vehicles gripping or skidding when crossing the ramp, and to seal the mechanism from the ingress of dirt, water, and anything else which may harm the mechanism.
Unlike a conventional speed bump, the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp is not hard, and has a damping effect to avoid causing discomfort to vehicle occupants.
This “sleeping policeman” - what the English have nicknamed speed bumps - can be used for generating electricity to power street lighting, traffic lights, or road signs. Electricity can also be stored in a battery for later use.
Highway Energy Systems, a research company in the United Kingdom that developed the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp, says the device not only produces green energy, it is free energy, once the capital cost of the equipment has been paid.
A pilot program using the ramps is set to begin soon in London.
Depending on the outcome of the testing, it might not be that long before green speed bumps start showing up across the US.
Comments, observations and thoughts on the world of trucking from editor-in-chief David A. Kolman. These entries are based upon his diverse experience in many facets of transportation, including truck driving; truck owning and operating; fleet and driver management; safety; warehousing; commercial truck sales; industry trade associations; and trucking radio and TV.
