Archive for July, 2009

When the phone rings or the email pings at the Women in Trucking office, it’s often a driver who needs help. And though WIT president Ellen Voie has spent her career in the trucking industry, she never drove. It was a gap in her trucking knowledge she decided to fill. “We have a lot of driver members, and we get a lot of calls from women asking how to become a trucker,” she says. “ I wanted to better understand the training process and get my CDL.” She did, then w…

What do you get when you combine the green movement with renewable energy researchers and outside-the-box thinking? You get the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp, a speed bump that generates electrical energy when vehicles drive over it. The device operates through 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 move up and down by means of a special mechanism, which drives a generator capable of producing…

It can be hard to tap into your creative side after a long day at work, but for Navistar employee Kyle Rose, being immersed in the world of heavy duty vehicles got his juices flowing. With a background in marketing, he began to see big rigs as the perfect vehicle for a children’s book. He created a cheerful truck named Brutus, who unthinkingly went through his day looking down on smaller or duller trucks, only to see their strength later.While the words flowed freely, art is not Rose&rsq…

Kristina Kremer, a longtime driver, is hoofing it from Delaware to California. Putting one foot in front of the other, she thinks about the 1973 Kenworth sitting at home and the 1991 Peterbilt she drives over the road. “When I see big trucks go by, I really miss my truck,” she says. But she’s walking for a good reason. She loves horses, and wants to help them. A friend had been training for months for A Walk Across America to raise awareness of the problem of abandoned horses. …

For a trucker, Big Rig Limo offers the perfect vehicle for a trip down the aisle.The company, based in Scotland, offers a decked-out truck and driver for hire, so bride or groom can truly make a big entrance. “We always wanted to own our own American truck,” says Kevin Nimmo, who runs the company with his nephew Lee. “We got the idea of converting a truck into a limousine from people in the U.K. who use old fire trucks for bachelor and bachelorette parties. We thought we coul…