Uncovered garbage trucks can no longer use the South Road Properties (SRP) road in going to the Inayawan landfill starting Monday.Nagiel Bañacia, SRP’s newly appointed chief executive officer, announced Tuesday that the city will ban all uncovered trucks at the SRP to keep the area clean.
“This will keep the SRP area clean and free from falling garbage and filth,” Bañacia said.
Bañacia said he noticed uncovered garbage trucks from the Department of Public Services (DPS) and the different barangays (villages) using the SRP road in going to the landfill.
Since the trucks were not covered, the garbage fell on the road. This happened especially to speeding trucks.
Bañacia said the maintenance crew at the SRP spent more time cleaning the area of fallen garbage.
Bañacia said cleanliness in the SRP area is important because this is the city’s prime project to attract investors.
He said he made the recommendation to Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña who agreed to his proposal to ban uncovered trucks.
Bañacia said the ban also applies to other types of uncovered trucks like hauler trucks and dump trucks carrying sand and gravel.
“If they want to use the SRP road, they should cover their trucks,” he said.
Starting Monday, Bañacia said checkpoints will be posted at different entrances of the SRP.
Truck production with the new engine will begin March 1, with deliveries to customers in late April or early May, according to David Siler, Detroit Diesel director of marketing. Freightliner, Sterling and Detroit Diesel are all subsidiaries of Daimler Trucks North America LLC, which in turn is an operating company of Daimler AG, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles.
Announcing the new engine availability here at the Technology and Maintenance Council (TMC) annual meeting, Sterling said the DD15 is initially being offered as an option in the set-back axle versions of its A-Line and L-Line models. Set-forward models of the company’s vocational and regional-haul trucks require a slight engine redesign to accommodate the oil pan and will not be available until the fourth quarter, according to Siler.
Detroit Diesel expects to be in full production of the smaller DD13 by the first quarter of 2009, and it will replace the current generation MBE4000 as the standard engine for Sterling heavy-duty models, Siler said. The MBE 4000 will be phased out of production by the end of 2009, as will the Series 60 diesel, which is also currently offered in Sterling and Freightliner models.
The new Daimler diesel uses exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and a diesel particulate filter (DPF) to meet U.S. ’07 diesel emissions standards. The DD15 also features turbo compounding, while the DD13 will, at least initially, use the more common variable vane turbocharging to accommodate power take-off (PTO) common to its vocational applications, according to Siler.
Siler also reinforced Daimler’s commitment to use selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to meet the upcoming 2010 U.S. emissions requirements. While at least two diesel engine builders have recently announced that they will not move to SCR for 2010, Siler told Fleet Owner, “We think SCR will give us a significant advantage because it will be both clean and more efficient.”
Siler also revealed that Detroit Diesel is planning a “stroked out” 16-liter version of its new diesel in 2010 that will product 630 hp and peak torque of 2050 lb.-ft.
Brit European Transport has taken delivery of two new MAN TGA 18.440BL rigids fitted with Andover Trailers low profile flat bodies, together with two new tri-axle drawbar truck transporter trailers.
The vehicles will be used to support the delivery of the Ministry of Defence’s new 7,277-strong fleet of trucks, which are entering operation over the next five years.
The Brit European vehicles will take on a multitude of roles, including collecting and delivering trucks to and from bodybuilders, as well as making deliveries of finished vehicles to MoD sites across the country.
The LPPB26 low profile flat bodies have each been built on converted 6×2 mid-lift chassis with air suspension on every axle and, like the trailers, feature clip-on steel ramps to ensure enough strength to meet the demands of trucks with full body armour. The specification also includes the fitment of Bevola toolboxes underneath the body, transporter flooring, together with two rows of RUD vehicle lashing points along the full length of the floor.
The trailers each offer an 8.1m bed and can transport trucks weighing up to 19 tonnes. Manufactured at Andover Trailers’ facility in Hampshire, they have Granning axles and air-suspension with raise and lower control, together with full LED lighting for maximum safety and visibility on the road.
Stuart Brunt, Fleet Engineer for the Brit European Transport Group, said: “Transporting such specialist vehicles is a complex business and cannot be completed using standard transporters, as they simply don’t have the strength and rigidity to cope with the weight of armoured vehicles.”
The mountain of twisted metal and debris scattered along the Trans-Canada Highway in the Alberta Rockies looked like the scene of a plane crash to crews who worked Thursday to carefully pry apart wreckage from a spectacular chain-reaction collision involving five semi-trailer trucks.
Three people in one vehicle died and five others received non-life threatening injuries when five, fully loaded transport trucks collided around 9 p.m. Wednesday along a narrow, dark stretch of single-lane highway about two kilometres west of Lake Louise in Banff National Park.
“One like this, it’s a little bit like a plane crash because those trucks just came apart,” said Douglas Kerr, area highways manager for Parks Canada on Thursday.
“I’ve seen many accidents involving transport trucks but to have five of them at the same time in the same location is quite unusual,” he said.
The curving stretch of highway that winds through some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the Rockies was strewn with a chaotic jumble of debris from the crash — the impact so great that material being hauled by the trucks was flung about 350 metres, he said.
RCMP are still investigating what may have caused the collision in an area that is used as a main route for transport trucks.
Investigators know that all the vehicles slammed into one another within the space of a few minutes.
“It appears the first west-bound semi lost control and jackknifed across the road which caused a collision with an east-bound semi,” said Constable Brad Malacko.
“From there a second west-bound semi collided with the two first involved in the impact, then a second east-bound semi collided with that,” he said.
The driver of a fifth semi managed to avoid hitting the tangled pile of transport trucks but struck some debris and hit the ditch, Constable Malacko said.
The road conditions at the time weren’t particularly icy and the area had not had snow in the 24 hours before the collision, he said.
Police are investigating whether excessive speed or mechanical issues may be factors. Constable Malacko said it’s not believed the driver of the first semi fell asleep or slammed on the brakes to avoid wildlife on the road.
“He was probably going a bit too fast for the road conditions,” he said.
No names have been released and RCMP are refusing to say which provinces the trucks may have been from.
The highway was closed after the collision and remained closed Thursday while crews worked to clear the debris.
One trucker was airlifted to hospital in Calgary, suffering from broken bones, another was taken to hospital in Banff and was then released, while three others were treated on the scene for scrapes and bruises, Constable Malacko said.
“Basically we’re in the mountains and we have winter driving conditions. People need to drive for winter driving conditions,” Constable Malacko said.
The operators of at least two front-end loaders brought in to help clear away the debris had to carefully avoid toppling into steep ditches on either side of the highway filled with nearly two metres of snow, said Mr. Kerr.
“It’s a fairly confined area so there’s only so much equipment that you can operate at a scene like this,” he said, adding he hasn’t seen the crash site, but workers provided him with detailed descriptions.
The loaders slowly jockeyed back and forth across the narrow highway, scooping up bucket-loads of cultured stone which was flung out of one of the trucks and onto the road.
“A lot of it is unsafe, so you just can’t go in there and start working. You’ve got to understand what may still fall down,” said Mr. Kerr.
“It’s a lot of steel … so you’ve got to be very careful when you send people in there that they don’t get in there trying to deal with it,” he said.
Four large wrecking trucks and several tractor-trailer units hauling flat-bed trailers were brought in from as far away as Golden, B.C,. and Calgary to pry apart the cabs of the badly damaged semis and haul the debris away.
Tractor trailers like the ones involved in Wednesday’s collision can weigh as much as 63,000 kilograms and be almost 17 metres long, Kerr said.
Road conditions at the time of the collision were in fair to good winter driving condition and the road, which had compacted snow, had been recently sanded, Mr. Kerr said.
There’s a high proportion of commercial transport trucks that use that stretch of highway and Kerr estimated 8,000 vehicles per day use it.
The posted speed limit in the area is 90 kilometres per hour.
Emergency crews, including RCMP, volunteer fire departments and ambulance crews from Lake Louise and nearby Field, B.C., had to work in inky blackness Wednesday to find the bodies of the three people who were killed, and to extract the injured from the wreckage.
On Aug. 31, 2005, a dump truck smashed into John Teuber’s 2003 Ford Ranger as he pulled into the intersection of U.S. 71 and Bannister Road.
The dump truck, which was carrying 18 tons of asphalt and westbound on Bannister Road, had gone through a red light. Teuber, 65, died en route to a hospital.
The asphalt was being shipped to a paving project at the Honeywell plant in south Kansas City. The supplier, Vance Bros. Inc. of Kansas City, had hired Trotter Trucking Co. of Raytown to provide the trucks and drivers.
At the time, Trotter Trucking had an “unsatisfactory” rating from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which had placed it “out of service.”
The 1987 Freightliner that hit Teuber’s vehicle was found to have 17 safety violations, including brakes that were out of alignment, air and oil leaks, and missing lights.
Although Vance Bros. had a corporate policy requiring its independent contractors to have “satisfactory” safety ratings, the policy was not conveyed to the manager who hired the asphalt haulers.
Last week, a Jackson County jury found Vance Bros. liable for Teuber’s death. The jurors ordered the company to pay Teuber’s wife and son $12 million in compensatory damages.
The Teubers’ attorney, Mike Ketchmark of Davis Ketchmark & McCreight, called the verdict “a loud warning to the construction companies in town to clean up their act and start hiring safe and competent dump truck companies to deliver their materials.”
Ketchmark said that Vance Bros. could have easily learned that Trotter Trucking had been placed out of service by going to the Transportation Department’s Web site.
Ketchmark said that under Missouri law, Vance Bros. had a duty to exercise reasonable care and hire a skilled and competent contractor.
“Unfortunately, Trotter Trucking was not a skilled and competent contractor,” he said.
The attorney for Vance Bros., Eric Swanson of Schmitt Manz Swanson & Mulhern, said the company was considering its options, but he declined to comment further.
The driver of the dump truck, Stacy B. Stromile, pleaded guilty last January to involuntary manslaughter. Two months later, Jackson County Circuit Judge John O’Malley sentenced him to “shock time” in jail. The rest of Stromile’s sentence was suspended, and he was placed on probation for three years.
Changing climate
Stinson Morrison Hecker has formed a climate-change practice group, consisting of 30 lawyers drawn from its corporate, environmental, energy, securities, regulatory, real estate and litigation practices.
The group will focus on climate-change legislation and regulation and their impact on business.
The group currently is immersed in the standoff over Sunflower Electric Power Corp.’s proposal to build two coal-fired generators near Holcomb, Kan. Kansas Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby rejected the proposal, and Stinson represents Finney County and the Garden City Chamber of Commerce in litigation seeking to overturn Bremby’s decision. The case is now before the Kansas Supreme Court.
Although several other U.S. law firms have established climate-change practices, Stinson is thought to be the first in Kansas City to do so.
Like some institutions that never grow old, but instead manage to adapt to the times and improve themselves along the way, the traditional truck/camper shell union has recently undergone a renaissance of popularity. Fueled in part by innovative design and construction improvements, heightened gas prices, and a new breed of pickup truck purchaser that recognizes a good deal when they see one, the appeal of camper shells has only grown stronger.
Allowing maximum flexibility while giving up nothing in terms of storage capacity and security, the simple addition of a shell–sometimes colloquially known as a “camper” shell or top–makes a truck more stylish, utilitarian, and oftentimes less expensive than a single purpose SUV or RV. For minimal investment, a truck owner can instantly turn his or her pickup into a mobile motel, tackle room, bicycle repair shop, supply room, hunting lodge, locker room, motorcycle garage or moving van.
“People buy shells for any number of reasons: they need more space for storage on a trip, they need to be able to lock their stuff up, or they need to protect the contents of the bed from weather,” says Charles Matocha of DFW Camper Corral, a truck accessory store with four locations in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex area. “A shell gives them that versatility and more because it can always be pulled off if when the need arises.”
Perish the stereotypical vision of a carpenter pulling up to a construction site with a load of 2×4s. While that segment has hardly waned, thousands of white-collar professionals are now embracing the utility of pickup trucks with equal enthusiasm.
Driving this appeal is the simple camper shell, which immediately adds a Mack-truck sized helping of utility to any pickup.
“People drive trucks now, who never in the past would think of owning one,” says
Jeannie Keough, a marketing and sales manager who works in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. “For both men and women, pickup trucks are now vehicles that professionals choose to drive. Not only is it usually cheaper to buy a truck and camper shell than an SUV, but with the shell we can use the back to store all of our things that are needed for work: sales samples, technical equipment, computers, etc.”
“When we head out to our second home in the mountains, it’s pretty much just my wife, me and the dog,” says 51 year-old Donald Wayne, an electrical engineer who calls Moss Beach, California his primary home. “I bought a SNUGTOP shell for my Toyota Tacoma because I like the styling of it. With the beautiful blue paint job, it looks like original factory equipment.”
With roots dating back to 1959, SNUGTOP is one of the country’s leading manufacturers of fiberglass truck caps and snuglid tonneau covers.
The renewed appeal of the traditional camper shell on a pickup also likely results from the variety of new uses to which they are put by the new generation of owners. Of course, the traditional purposes–such as camping, biking, sports, boating, fishing, hunting and motorcycling–still apply. However, a shell allows a great deal of crossover between avocation and vocation.
“I originally started doing surf videos a few years back, but now I mostly do corporate marketing, training, and educational videos,” states Jeff Killian, 45 year-old owner of Ocean Motion Productions of Newport Beach, California. “I have a Dodge Ram and I needed a camper shell to store and secure all of my production equipment like video cameras and microphones.”
A Kearney trucking company plans to expand its Colorado service with the purchase of a Denver-area outfit.
Brown Transfer Company says it has acquired Eastern Plains Express of Commerce City, Colorado.
Terms were not disclosed.
Brown Transfer President Butch Brown says Eastern Plains Express is a perfect fit for his company, because it will give Brown more delivery points across Denver, eastern Colorado and parts of Nebraska.
Brown Transfer has terminals across Nebraska, Colorado and Missouri and can carry freight coast to coast through a network of partners.
Brown Transfer has about 150 employees. A woman who answered the phone at Eastern Plains Express on Wednesday said she couldn’t comment about her company or the sale.
Used Trucks for sale at Trucks9.com
The Ohio State Highway Patrol cited Cincinnati-based Rumpke Waste Inc.’s drivers 54 times in 2007 for operating overweight garbage trucks on local roads.
Drivers for Rauch Trucking Co. of Dayton were cited 22 times last year for overweight loads, mostly debris hauled from demolition sites.
Police say these and other repeat violators show Ohio’s fines for overweight trucks don’t have enough teeth.
A truck that’s 20,000 pounds overweight can cause as much wear and tear on a road as nearly 10,000 cars, said Sgt. Dave Waggoner of the Madison County sheriff’s office.
Ohio’s fines for overweight trucks are in the lowest 25 percent of all states, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of state fines compiled by the American Transportation Research Institute.
Ohio’s fines are slightly higher than in neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia, but are far lower than in other neighboring states.
A truck found to be 10,000 pounds overweight at the weigh station along Interstate 70 in Preble County, for example, would pay $415 in Eaton Municipal Court. But the same overload would result in $1,100 in fines and court costs just over the state line in Indiana. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, the fine for a truck found to be 10,000 pounds overweight is three to four times higher.
“In Ohio, they consider the fines to be the cost of doing business,” Waggoner said.
Rauch said it is drivers, not his company, who are cited. He said it can be difficult to evenly distribute the weight of debris on a truck.
As it replaces trucks in its fleets, Rumpke is spending an extra $12,000 per truck for “tailgate tag axles,” which distribute the weight of the trucks more evenly, Rumpke spokeswoman Amanda Pratt said.
“It’s not something we disregard,” Pratt said. “We’re making an extreme investment to avoid being overweight.”
