Posts Tagged ‘May-2009’

Just because she isn’t the trucker pulling a quarter million pounds of steel down the Interstate doesn’t mean pilot car driver Lisa Muehrcke is simply out for a carefree cruise. Nope, Lisa’s got her mind on a hundred different transportation challenges as she guides her 2005 Dodge Caravan down the highway out in front of her father Bob Muehrcke’s heavily laden rig. As his beefed-up Freightliner winds out with a 13-axle, three-section trailer in tow, Lisa is thinking thr…

Have you heard? The American Trucking Associations is shifting National Truck Driver Appreciation Week to later in the year. In case you aren’t aware, the observance — a national effort to acknowledge the contributions of truck drivers to the nation’s economic survival — has been moved to November. The week had always been celebrated in mid-August. This year, the nationwide pat on the back for America’s more than 3.5 million professional truck drivers will take pla…

Big! That was my first impression when Dave McKenna, Mack Trucks’ manager of powertrain sales and marketing, brought us into the yard at Orlando Mack Sales where the Titan was waiting. Dave was to be my tour guide and navigator for the test drive. The Titan, built to do big jobs requiring big power, is a big truck. It was originally developed to run the Australian Outback, where triple trailers are all full size, and the roads are often rough and unimproved. The Titan is tall, raised to p…

We hear, and more often, see a great deal about workplace safety. We attend safety meetings. We hear about driving in construction zones, driving at the speed vehicles around you drive and proper use of lanes. We see workers wearing hard hats, safety glasses, orange and lime green vests with reflective stripes and protective gloves. But what about safety in our own workplace?I’m not talking about the open road or city streets. I refer to that little “office” where you spend s…

The joke is that those flashing speed display signs sometimes placed on highways are seen by mischievous drivers as a dare to put up some big numbers. In truth, this traffic calming solution is one of the most effective means of slowing traffic and increasing safety. This is particularly the case around school zones, work zones, transitional speed zones and other locations where speeding traffic is of particular concern.Radar speed display signs, also known as speed check signs and driver feed…