Powered Trailer Mover Archives

Truck Weigh Stations – How Do They Work?

What to Know About Weigh Stations

Weigh stations are used to calculate taxes on freight and also to ensure that trucks are below a maximum weight rating. In the U.S., trucks cannot weigh more than 80,000 pounds, and local areas may have lower limits.

Taxing by weight largely eliminates the need for time-consuming inspections. Our powered trailer mover can handle up to 100,000 pounds, but you’d better lighten the load before you drive up to the weigh station!

Truck Weigh Station Methods

Now, about how truck weigh stations work. It’s a lot different than a bathroom scale. Truck scales may be underground or inside of pads, but they all use one of these methods:

– Load-cell systems embedded with wires that sense a difference in electrical resistance depending on the weight

– Bending-plate systems that look like rubber or steel pads and have strain gauges inside

– Piezoelectric systems that use conductors to sense changes in voltage caused by the pressure above

Older technology requires the truck to stop several times with each axle on a scale, but it’s more common to see large scales that look like little landline strips and only require one stop.

As most drivers have noticed by now, there are also “weigh-in-motion” scales that don’t require truckers to stop. Simple versions are pads that truckers can slowly drive over, while more sophisticated technology allows for weigh-ins at freeway speeds.

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Fleet Manager Tips: Preventive Maintenance Protects Your Truck Investment

You already rely on the use of a powered trailer mover to protect your trucks and trailers from damage, but are you dropping the ball on maintenance? Keeping your fleet in top shape ensures productivity, safeguarding your organization’s sales and service goals.

Keeping Your Fleet Road-Ready with Preventive Maintenance is a Worthwhile Investment

With regular preventive maintenance, unscheduled downtime and unexpected repairs are easily avoided. This includes pre-travel safety checks (fluid levels, tire pressure) to ensure a road-worthy vehicle. Sadly, this is often the only time the vehicle gets an all-over once-over!

Keep Drivers In-the-Know

Fleet managers are not the only ones responsible for preventive maintenance (PM). Make sure all drivers know their PM responsibilities, including scheduling and policies on how to handled the need for repair, roadside assistance, or accidents. Common areas of concern include:

Proper Spec’ing: Usage, operating conditions, and the nature of the goods carried must be carefully considered to control cost. Operating an over-spec’d vehicle will inflate costs. Under-spec’ing leads to roadway incidents and damage to goods.

Tire Pressure/Wear: Heard often and practiced rarely, adjusting tire pressure is essential. Affecting tire wear, gas mileage, handling, and vehicle/driver safety, tire pressure should be regularly adjusted for weather.

Use Preventive Maintenance to Protect Your Investment Dollars

When a preventive maintenance schedule is routinely followed, it’s easy to see when maintenance and repair needs rise with vehicle age. The way manufacturers’ warranties cover maintenance and repair will affect your total cost of ownership. Comparing maintenance with vehicle worth will help you realize when selling the vehicle makes more sense than the cost of repairs.

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Trailer Load Theft is a Serious and Growing Problem

Don’t Leave Your Vehicle and Your Company’s Transported Products Susceptible to Theft.

Using a powered trailer mover in the yard protects from damage and injuries, but what about threats to safe transport of goods? Valuable loads carried in commercial trucks make them appealing targets of cargo thieves.

Trailer load theft isn’t a new problem, but improvements in technology give the bad guys new tools that make them even more dangerous. Here’s what you need to know about cargo theft along with tips to protect drivers and product.

Types of Trailer Load Theft

“Straight” thefts occur when cargo is stolen directly from an unattended trailer, often at a truck stop or parking lot. These incidents are generally crimes of opportunity where the thief takes advantage of a situation, sometimes on the spur of the moment.

“Strategic” thefts are planned crimes where the thief uses sophisticated methods to fraudulently obtain possession of the cargo.

What Is Social Engineering?

Social engineering is an increasingly popular technique in which thieves search Internet sources such as public load boards for possible targets. Sometimes they may even post fake loads and solicit bids to get carrier information.

Tips to Prevent Cargo Theft

According to experts, educated and alert drivers are the best defense against trailer load thieves.

– Be well-rested and attentive to surroundings at all times.

– Conduct a walk-around inspection of the truck before and after every stop.

– Fuel up before loading.

Shippers can also take steps to reduce theft risk:

– Work only with licensed brokers who implement thorough vetting of carriers.

– Always verify driver, truck and pickup confirmation numbers at the pickup point.

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Extreme Cold Impacts Semi Truck Performance – What to Know

As climate change continues to fuel winter temperature extremes, trucks and truckers shoulder an increased burden. Though your powered trailer movers will push on through such extremely cold temperatures, your hauler may not, pulled down by the weight of fuel gelling.

Frozen in Time

With extremely cold temperatures, diesel fuel and diesel exhaust fluids freeze. More than an inconvenience, this poses a rather large problem as the regeneration process necessary from an emissions control standpoint cannot sustain at certain temperatures. What’s your best chance of keeping vehicles on the road?

Weighty Matter

In colder climates such as in Minnesota and Canada, drivers understand the risks of temperature extremes, swapping their usual fuel for a winter-weight diesel fuel mix and additives that allow them to keep their vehicles moving. Fleet drivers in warm to moderate climates, however, are often ignorant of this need, watching their progress literally freeze as soon as they go north and their vehicles come to a stop.

Half Empty/Half Full

When driving in winter conditions, it is strongly advisable to keep the fuel tank at least half full. This will allow drivers to keep rigs running long enough for the vehicle to hit the temperature necessary to go into its regeneration cycle. Otherwise, haulers may get stuck due to emission controls.

When Push Comes to Shove

In normal weather this is not an issue, however sub-zero weather requires more energy (fuel) to sustain the vehicle’s temperature necessary for regeneration. Idling overnight or warming the block with a heater are not enough – the vehicle must be driven, even if it’s just a few yards at a time.

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The Logistics Industry Hits a Growth Cap Due to the Current Labor Shortage

Tips to Protect Your Warehouse Employees and Boost Performance

Is your powered trailer mover tapped out? Warehouse workers are too. With the rapid growth of e-commerce, labor supplies are drying up.

Unsustainable

There will be an estimated 452,000 warehouse and distribution positions in need of fulfillment in 2018-19. However the industry is already labor-strapped, with the volume of positions outpacing the labor pool’s ability to fulfill demand by 180,300 positions per year since 2013. How will the industry cope with this shortage as e-commerce sales continue to accelerate?

Filling-in the Blanks

Retailers, delivery companies, and third-party logistics firms are dealing with the labor crunch in each (or all) of these three ways:

• Recruiting from Other Industries

Recruitment from other industries has proven successful in recent years, with government data showing a 66% increase in employees moving to the transportation and warehouse sector from other industries from 2011-15, though this arena won’t lend enough to meet demand.

• Automation to Boost Efficiency

Robots and autonomous vehicles can boost the productivity levels of existing employees.

• Market Expansion

Moving into new sectors with readily available workforces.

What Metros Offer Light in the Darkness?

Federal employment data points to multiple markets with the right combination of availability, quality, and cost of labor, as well as proximity to large customer populations for warehouses and distribution, including Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Louisville, Denver, Indianapolis, and Oakland, to name a few.

Intelligent Design

Smart analysis of labor sources is essential. To protect the bottom line, intelligent site selection efforts take into account the fact that labor contributes to more than 20% of total supply chain cost as well as 75% of final-touch distribution.

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Three Trends Changing Fulfillment and Logistics

Trends to Watch in Fulfillment and Logistics

As a leading supplier of semi trailer movers, we stay on top of news and trends that affect the warehouse and supply chain industry. Here are three current trends changing the role of fulfillment and logistics for e-commerce, which is the hottest segment of retailing today.

1. Pop-Up Shops

Small to mid-sized e-commerce retailers have discovered that pop-up shops are a way to distinguish themselves from Amazon and other industry leaders. A pop-up shop is an actual brick-and-mortar storefront that opens for only a few months, offering the advantages of in-person shopping with few of the common drawbacks.

– Customers can see and touch the products.

– Retailers can build their brands by focusing on specific items without the trouble and expense of carrying a lot of inventory.

– Orders can be placed online for quick delivery, sometimes as soon as same-day.

– Vendors aren’t locked into long-term leases so they can easily test different locations.

2. Data-Based Forecasting

Maintaining accurate inventory levels can make or break a business. Too much inventory ties up valuable capital, while too little means risking unhappy customers due to stock outs.

Savvy merchants are using modern technology to compile historical data from all aspects of their business, including orders, sales channels and customers. Once the data is integrated, it creates a clear picture that makes forecasting more precise.

3. Fast and Affordable Shipping

With so much purchasing being done online, customers are demanding timely shipping at low rates. In many cases, losses from inexpensive or free shipping are more than offset by the increase in sales.

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The Pain Continues with the ELD Data Shift for Compliance

Be glad your powered trailer mover is functioning correctly. Some ELDs still aren’t. ELD pain continues across all sectors, hitting small fleets and independent owner-operators particularly hard, including Jon Hose of Texas, who was issued a false-log violation in Missouri in June of this year following the malfunction of his ONE20 F-ELD.

Out of Production

Using the most inexpensive ELD on the market, Hose’s violation occurred just two weeks before the manufacturer ONE20 stopped support for the device on June 18. ONE20 recently made the news this summer for losing support from its principal investor, owner of PeopleNet, Trimble Companies, after which it stopped production and support of its F-ELD devices.

Out of Luck

Hose noted en-route malfunctions of his ONE20 F-ELD were common. In an Overdrive Radio podcast he stated he’d noticed ongoing issues with the device: Automatic duty-status changes he still can’t explain, despite his master’s in data science. After one such occurrence, he believed he solved the issue and proceeded to his destination, where he unloaded and attempted to return home, but was instead stopped by a Springfield, Missouri officer.

Out of Service

Believing his ELD wasn’t even connected, and noting yet another malfunction Hose couldn’t explain, the officer put Hose out of service with a false-log violation. He has since switched to provider BigRoad, with no issues to-date. Since this master’s in data science couldn’t explain the issue, those hoping for leniency would do better ensuring the right equipment aboard their rigs, allowing access to logs from an admin account (independent) or ensuring a direct line to key support personnel (fleet/partner carrier), or ELD provider.

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Tire Safety Tips Every Semi Truck Driver Should Know

Maintaining Your Vehicle Is of the Utmost Importance When You’re on the Road Often.

Is your semi trailer mover toting unsafe equipment? Keeping an eye on the condition of the tires on both your trailer and hauler is key to avoiding costly citations, worsened gas mileage, and potentially deadly wrecks. Put these things on every pre-inspection checklist to ensure a safe, efficient arrival at your destination…

Air Pressure Check

Inform yourself about tire air pressure specifications for your tires and load, making sure tire pressures are at the proper setting for your hauler and cargo. Use an accurate gauge, checking when tires are cold (pre-trip), ensuring adequate pressure and avoiding under-inflation. If maintaining air pressure is a problem, inform your maintenance department ASAP. Low pressure is a major cause of blowouts, fires, and other tire issues.

Check Tire Wear and Damage

Uneven tread wear is a sign of improper air pressure and potential alignment issues. Now, not later, is the time to check for and manage air leaks, axle alignment, tire repair and replacement needs.

Tread Check

Low tread depth impacts traction, reducing your hauler’s ability to brake quickly and efficiently. It can also increase the likelihood of hydroplaning on wet roads, and blowouts – especially when you run over road debris. To ensure safety and keep your hauler on the road, ensure a minimum tread depth of 4/32 on every major tread groove of your steering tires.

Mid-Trip Incidentals

When mid-trip, immediately replace missing valve caps to keep gunk out of valve stems and safeguard tire pressure. If you hit/run-over road debris, don’t keep on trucking. Always pull over and check for tire damage and foreign objects.

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