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Scania Group Press Release / May 31, 2017 With the company motto “Punktlighet er vårt varemerke” (“Punctuality is our brand”) stamped in large letters on its vehicles, it’s no wonder that Ørland Transport was the first transport company in Norway to order and take delivery of a fleet of Scania S 730 trucks. In one of the world’s most challenging topographies for heavy transport, the power and technology of V8 engines are a must. Kjell Haugland is the owner and Managing Director of Ørland Transport, one of the oldest and largest transport companies in Norway’s Stavanger region. But he still regularly joins his 130 drivers on the Norwegian roads in one of the company’s new generation Scania S 730 V8 trucks. “I started in this company as a driver and I think it’s important to remember where you come from,” he says. “Not only that, it’s demanding to run a business as big and competitive as this, and driving is my way to calm down and feel good.” Haugland says he can’t think of a ­better way to relax and unwind than to take a transport assignment with one of the company’s new S 730s. As a veteran of the road, he has come to know every hairpin bend, steep slope and narrow tunnel along the E39 – the region’s main transport artery. Haugland loves the luxury feeling he gets from the new cab while moving a heavy load up and down the rugged mountains, with the stormy North Sea at his back. “That’s hard to beat,” he says. Today, in two S 730s, he and fellow driver Jan Høiland load 50 tonnes each of prefabricated concrete foundations at a building contractor in Sandnes, destined for the construction of a new school in Kristiansand, 220 kilometres to the south-east along this wild coast. The journey starts by hugging the North Sea coastline and moving through flat farmland, before beginning the serious business of climbing up narrow, winding roads through mountain passes made treacherously slippery by snow and ice. Then it’s downhill along serpentine roads, only to have to negotiate the road through another narrow fjord. The vehicles’ performance is key to managing a mission like this. “For our business, the V8 engines from Scania are often a must,” Haugland explains. “The volume of traffic and average speed on these narrow, steep roads is constantly increasing, and heavy transport missions like ours must have the capacity to follow that flow in a reasonably good way. Very often the power and torque of a V8 engine is a prerequisite.” Fuel consumption As a transport operator, Haugland doesn’t talk about “making money” but “saving money”. And that requires discipline when it comes to service and maintenance of the vehicles. By managing the fleet meticulously, Ørland Transport can reduce fuel consumption – and save more money. “Every vehicle in our fleet has its time, down to the minute, for when it has to be maintained and serviced,” he says. “No well-paid extra assignments can change that. Working this way, our vehicles never fail – and they earn more money!” Ørland Transport’s objective is to reduce the fleet’s overall fuel consumption by 10 ­percent in a year. If they manage this, the employees will share a windfall of NOK 1 million (EUR 114,000). “If we can reduce the idle fuel consumption from 18.9 percent to 6 percent, we are already there,” he says. “And if we also manage to reduce the average speed a bit, we will do even better. That’s ­earning us even more money!” Some of the vehicles in the fleet of Ørland Transport run assignments in the northern parts of Norway. “With those distances and our country’s rugged topography these trucks can be away for months,” Haugland says. “Then it’s great to have Scania’s extensive network of workshops to rely on.” He slips into an impassioned explanation of the partnership he feels he and the company have with Scania. “As an example,” Haugland says, “we never discuss price with Scania any longer when buying new vehicles. Never! We know that we get exactly the perfect trucks for our operations. We know how much money we can earn from each of them. And we know the resale value is high when we change them for new ones. It’s very much about trust. That’s partnership for me!” Fjords Fjords are long, narrow sea inlets created by giant glacier tongues that cut through the Norwegian landscape over a very long time indeed. When is a fjord not a fjord? When the strip of water is wider than it is long then it is not a fjord but a bay or a cove. Synnøve Finden, the famous Norwegian cheese maker, was born in Finnafjord, the smallest of Norway’s fjords. Norway’s biggest fjord is Sognefjord. The largest fjord in the world is Scoresby Sund, in Greenland. .

Scania Group Press Release / May 31, 2017 Sublime journey. Ube Industries has the world’s longest private highway. “What we have is like a test course for new trucks,” says the company’s head of logistics. The industrial city at the very southern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshū has turned local limestone into cement since the 1920s. Over the years the operation run by Ube Industries has grown so much that almost every aspect of it is gargantuan – from cement kilns to quarries to the transport that carries its 8.4 million tonnes of limestone, coal, and waste product every year. The road connecting facilities inside the site stretches more than 30 kilometres, making it the world’s longest private track, according to the Guinness Book of Records. The trucks that speed at 70 km/h along it carry 80 tonnes of cargo in 30-metre-long double-trailers. And then there’s the ‘minor’ detail of working its 35-truck fleet trucks every single day, from 06:30 to 21:00, to clock up an annual 180,000 kilometres per machine. “What we have is like a test course for new trucks,” says Ube Industries logistics and purchasing leader Hideki Shimazu. “If the Ube road is no problem, then everywhere is no problem.” Putting a truck through its paces in the Ube industrial heartland has many a manufacturer excited, he says, but few can provide the machines that cope with the conditions and meet Ube’s stringent efficiency clauses. In fact, Ube’s active fleet has been whittled down to just three truck brands and each of these has drawbacks. Domestic truck manufacturers have the service capability and lowest costs, but lag in terms of horsepower. Foreign rivals have the machine power, but no direct distribution and parts supply in Japan. “English communication is still very difficult,” Shimazu says in English, before breaking into a chuckle. So, when Ube Industries was introduced to Scania two years ago, Shimazu got interested very quickly. Scania had a Japanese distribution network, a local corporate entity with staff that could literally speak Shimazu’s language, and a 580-hp, high-torque V8 engine that met Ube’s 500-plus horsepower criteria. It was also affordable. Ube Industries moved to add two Scania machines to its fleet from March, and two more are due by the summer. Ube’s drivers are already singing the praises of Scania’s light-touch automated transmission in contrast to the powerful but exhausting manual clutch of another foreign brand currently dominating the fleet. Less than 68.5 litres per 100 kilometres For Shimazu, however, it will be a case of judging Scania’s cost performance over the next three years and the total lifespan. Ube uses trucks for eight years before putting them into the spares squadron. So far, with a fuel consumption of less than 68.5 litres per 100 kilometres, Scania is proving to be one of the most efficient, despite recent model upgrades by rivals. The V8’s high torque means it doesn’t lose out even to a 600-horsepower rival. That and Scania’s use of triple axles allow drivers to navigate inclines on Ube’s road without crimping fuel efficiency. Scania staff is also advising Ube on ways to keep the cost of replacement parts in check, Shimazu said. These advantages will be particularly telling as Ube raises the bar. The company is intent on boosting cargo weight without slowing the trucks. From this year Ube’s double-trailer load will rise by 10 percent. Shimazu is also overseeing the reintroduction of triple-trailers, a practice abandoned in 1999 due to frequent power train failures. “There is a revolution in trucks today,” Shimazu says, adding that this is a chance for Ube to pick a machine for its own next generation of demands. “Scania is one of the makers I have the best expectations for,” he says. Japan Many truckers in Japan wear white gloves as a symbol of their professionalism. A ‘Dekotora’ is an extravagantly-decorated Japanese truck, inspired by the 1975 film Torakku Yaro (Truck Rascals). .

Crossing the Andes with Hugo | Driver's Day | Episode Three Scania Group Press Release / May 30, 2017 On one of the world's highest roadways, Argentinian driver Hugo Valdiviezo takes on high mountain passes, salt flats and seemingly endless desert in order to get his transport to Chile on time. In his Scania R 620 V8, the Trans GOL driver takes on the Paso de Jama, which connects northern Argentina's Jujuy province with the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, and its famous Cuesta de Lipán. .

On The Bus With Mariana | Driver's Day | Episode Two Scania Group Press Release / April 28, 2017 Meet Mariana Torres, a driver for Cartagena, Colombia's bus rapid transit system, as she gives us a look into her daily life, both on and off the bus. .

Renault Trucks Press Release / June 1, 2017 All year round, Renault Trucks T High delivers to all destination throughout Finland from the port of Helsinki. .

Rethinking the regional trucking market Sean Kilcarr, Fleet Owner / June 1, 2017 Shifting freight patterns and driver demands may be positioning regional trucking for greater growth. WINSTON-SALEM, NC. The main reason driving Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA) to introduce the new VNR family of trucks to replace its VNM model is a fairly simple one, according to Chris Stadler, the OEM’s product marketing manager for regional haul: “The VNM is an aged truck; it was time for a refresh. We needed a more adaptable truck, too: one that can operate in the city and on the highway.” Yet Stadler also explained to Fleet Owner that shifting freight transportation patterns plus the need to address a growing shortage of truck drivers accelerated VTNA’s decision to build the VNR: a family of trucks that took over two years to design in part due to the input of 2,000 customers and drivers. “Even with autonomous vehicles we’ll need drivers; there’s going to be a need for them [drivers] for quite a while,” he said. “We need to make sure they are productive, rested, comfortable, and less distracted.” Stadler noted that while the regional market is changing, the OEM can’t bank on any one segment doing better than another. “There are lots of good opportunities in the regional market: bulk haul, tanker, city delivers, P&D [pickup and delivery], flatbed, construction, and LTL,” he emphasized. “But there are also lots of changes, too. We had anticipated more regional versus long haul when the expanded Panama Canal opened. Also the oil and natural gas fields are only slowly recovering.” Those are some of the reasons why demand for regional trucks slumped in recent years. For example, according to VTNA data, in 2014 the regional haul market accounted for 66,300 units, humping to 72,320 units in 2015. But in 2016, demand dropped to 54,029 units. Comparing year-to-date regional market sales through March 2016 to year-to-date sales through March 2017, the decline is steeper: 15,519 units against 11,762 units, respectively. Still, Magnus Koeck, VTNA’s vice president of marketing and brand management, stressed that 54,000-plus units remains “a big market.” Perhaps the biggest change in the regional sector, though, is how truck OEMs are now getting more focused on driver recruitment and retention issues, said Stadler, as less and less people want to get into trucking. “They don’t want to be gone weeks at a time anymore and that’s why LTL fleets, for example, are creating more hubs and distribution points: that leads to more short hauls,” Stadler said. “We’ve also heard there is more demand for timed deliveries, too. So we want to put the right truck into the right application and not just for today but for five to 15 years down the road.” That means adding more electronics and “gadgets,” from Stadler’s view, to give the “younger generation” vehicle operating parameters that appeals to them, while keeping it “intuitive” for the current generation of truck drivers. “It’s about making it easier for all generations [of truck drivers] to adapt to using it,” he stressed. “We want to make sure it can be operated by those who’ve never seen a manual transmission in their life. Make it adaptable.” It also must be a more cost-effective truck as well, Stadler stressed. For example, he said the VNR’s improved aerodynamic profile can boost fuel economy 1% compared to the previous VNM model, while the VNR’s Volvo GHG2017 powertrain can offer a further 2.5% to 3.5% gain in fuel efficiency versus the VNM. “Regional can longer be a hand-me-down from long haul; it must offer better performance and fuel efficiency, too,” Stadler pointed out. “While regional [fleets] don’t usually think about fuel economy, fuel is still their biggest cost. So getting an extra one to two miles per gallon when they are operating on the highway is an additional savings in the wallet for them.” Regional customers also keep truck a long time, he added: five to 15 years for some of them. “They’ll start it in bulk hauling, then move to flatbed and then finally to dry van. They use the truck to its full potential,” he explained. “My mission is to give the customer a truck that can do all of those jobs.” .

Volvo VNR Ride & Drive Sean Kilcarr, Fleet Owner / June 1, 2017 Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA) recently showed off its new VNR regional truck model during a ride and drive event in Winston-Salem, NC. A total of three VNR models in four different configurations were made available to attending journalists: a VNR 640 6x2 highway tractor configured with a 61-in. sleeper plus a VNR 400 6x4 tractor configured with a 42-in. mid-roof sleeper, both pulling 53-ft. flatbeds loaded out with concrete blocks; a VNR 300 4x2 in straight truck configuration, fitted with a dry van box and hydraulic lift gate; and a VNR 300 4x2 tractor pulling a 28-ft. pup trailer. Photo gallery - http://fleetowner.com/equipment/volvo-vnr-ride-drive#slide-0-field_images-219741

Sean Kilcarr, Fleet Owner / June 1, 2017 OEM also believes a rebound in the long haul segment will occur by year’s end. WINSTON-SALEM, NC. Roughly five months into 2017, Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA) still thinks the North American Class 8 market will top 215,000 units for the year – truck production volume that is being driven in part by strong construction spending, which the OEM said is at its highest level since 2007. Magnus Koeck, VTNA’s vice president of marketing and brand management, explained to journalists gathered here to test drive the OEM’s new VNR regional haul truck – introduced in Montreal back in April – that strong labor market and consumer spending will drive U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year, with moderate manufacturing growth expected as well, both of which in turn will help bolster Class 8 sales. “Diesel prices are also low and the Department of Energy now expects just a 2.2% annual increase in diesel prices until 2040,” he added. That doesn’t mean VTNA is looking at the commercial vehicle market through rose-colored glasses, however. Koeck noted that the long haul segment is declining largely due to weak freight demand and rates, along with excess used truck inventories. He added that looking at Class 8 registrations year to date though March of 2016 and 2017 side by side, “we see a drop in long haul from 46.8% to 41.2%.” Altogether, total Class 8 registrations dropped from 59,481 units year-to-date through March of 2016 to 45,856 units year-to-date through March of 201, according to VTNA data. Meanwhile, the regional haul market is expected to remain flat in the U.S., Koeck noted, maintaining a consistent 28% of Class 8 market share, though there will be a continued trend towards freight "regionalization" spurred on in part by the growing driver shortage. “For 2017 what we expect is that regional [demand] will stay balanced but flat,” he pointed out. “Yet there’s a change in transportation patterns towards less driving distances and less sleeper use. But we do expect long haul to pick up slightly at the end of the year.” A few other truck trends Koeck highlighted during his talk included: Cheap diesel is delaying the growth of natural gas as a fuel source for the trucking industry. There’s been a recovery in the natural gas and oil field sector in the U.S. and that is translating into more tanker trucking demand. The recent expansion of the Panama Canal and U.S. ports is increasing container and intermodal traffic. There are more partnerships and expansions of LTL carriers between U.S. and Canada. Volvo engines now represent 92.5% of all the OEM’s truck builds, with the Volvo I-Shift automated manual transmission (AMT) spec’d for 90.2% of all Volvo truck builds. .

Volvo Expects Range of Market Shifts to Push Demand for New Model Transport Topics / June 1, 2017 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Volvo Trucks North America expects market shifts that range from the expanded Panama Canal to the strongest construction market in a decade to lift demand for its new VNR regional-haul model, company representatives said. “We see this is a common workday tractor that goes out on local deliveries, supporting the communities, supporting the cities, supporting farming — it is a work truck,” Chris Stadler, product marketing manager for VTNA, said during the manufacturer’s ride-and-drive media event here June 1. Specifically, he listed local deliveries in cities and rural regions as applications that the company is targeting with the truck, which was introduced in April at ExpoCam in Montreal. During the truck’s development, Volvo talked with about 2,000 fleets and drivers to learn what they needed in a regional-haul truck, he said. That included hearing from drivers “what they have to say when they are operating in these markets,” he said. Models in the ride-and-drive event included the Volvo VNR 300 with a 28-foot trailer, a Volvo VNR 300 with a 28-foot refrigerated trailer, a Volvo 400 6×4 flatbed and a Volvo 6×2 flatbed. And market shifts are key to Volvo’s business outlook for the truck, said Magnus Koeck, the company’s vice president of marketing and brand management. At the top of the list is the expanded Panama Canal, and the volume of cargo that is moving through East Coast ports as a result. “It is happening. We don’t see the full effect of this yet, but it is something that we are monitoring very carefully,” he said. Among business segments, Koeck said, the company is seeing some recovery in the gas and oil field sectors, which will boost demand for tanker trucks. The construction industry is another sector that is mounting a comeback, experiencing its strongest performance since 2007, he said. “The construction sector has grown, and we continue to see that probably into next year,” he said. In terms of vehicle registrations, that growth has come at the expense of longhaul, due to weak freight demand and rates, and excess used-truck inventories, he said. As it relates to new trucks, Koeck said, inventory-to-sales ratios remain steady as dealers are maintaining less inventory and restocking more frequently. “We are very pleased with the positive customer response we’ve seen since we launched the Volvo VNR,” Göran Nyberg, president of VTNA, said in a press release issued in conjunction with the event. “Our order intake, especially for the VNR 640, has exceeded our expectations, and we look forward to delivering the truck that meets all of the unique demands of the regional-haul market.” .

China firmly embraces capitalism, while the former Soviet Union went hard core with Karl Marx’s political theories……and the rest is history. Interestingly, Marx was from Prussia (Germany today) and wrote his Communist Manifesto in London with another German philosopher named Friedrich Engels.

Getting a fresh look at Volvo's new VNR Sean Kilcarr, Fleet Owner / May 31, 2017 Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA) provided journalists with a chance to get up close and personal with its new VNR regional haul tractor during a special ride and drive event in Winston-Salem, NC; a tractor that the OEM only recently unveiled to the industry. Highlights for this particular daycab VNR 300 model, shown off to journalists ahead of the event, include its adaptive loading lift axle solution for 6x2 tractors, forward collision warning technology tied to an automatic emergency braking system, light emitting diode (LED) low and high beam headlights as well as turn signals and marker lamps, plus much more. Photo gallery - http://fleetowner.com/equipment/getting-fresh-look-volvos-new-vnr

Fields tried to fire Hinrichs before being ousted from Ford Automotive News / May 31, 2017 DETROIT -- Days before his May 19 ouster as CEO of Ford Motor Co., Mark Fields was proposing to fire his top lieutenant, Joe Hinrichs, in an effort to relieve some of the pressure he was facing from a skeptical board of directors, Automotive News has learned. Fields intended to get approval from the board for his decision to fire Hinrichs during the week of May 14, sources said. Fields' plan backfired, however, when the board decided instead to part ways with him and communications chief Ray Day, following a Friday, May 19, meeting. Instead of a pink slip, Hinrichs was given a promotion to the newly created position of president of global operations, in charge of Ford's global product development; manufacturing and labor affairs, among other things. Jim Hackett, the former head of furniture maker Steelcase and chairman of Ford Smart Mobility, was named Ford's new CEO as part of a wide-ranging management shakeup. Hinrichs was conspicuously missing in a round of retention bonuses the company paid out to top executives on Wednesday, May 17, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. But Hinrichs was added to the list the following week, getting a $5 million stock bonus. Fields faced increased scrutiny during meetings with Ford's board of directors ahead of the company's annual shareholders meeting on May 11. The board had grown impatient with Fields' strategy for the future and irritated with the automaker's sluggish stock price, which had fallen nearly 40 percent since he took over in July 2014. Fields believed he could deflect pressure from himself and pacify the board by ousting Hinrichs, the sources said. Fields did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ford said in a statement, "Joe is a critical part of our leadership team for taking the company forward, as he knows Ford inside and out and has led many parts of our business. We do not comment on rumor or speculation." Hinrichs, 50, had been president of the Americas since December 2012. Since he took over, the company earned about $38 billion in North America, which represented 92 percent of its total pretax profits during that period. He also oversaw the successful redesign of Ford's best-selling vehicle, its profit-generating F-series pickup. However, U.S. sales are down 5.1 percent through April, more than double the industry decline as the industry plateaus. The automaker has lost four-tenths of a percentage point of market share during that same stretch. Part of that sales decline is due to a planned drop in fleet sales. Ford had front-loaded fleet sales at the beginning of last year, so this year's comparisons are much lower. In April, Ford reported first-quarter net income of $1.6 billion, down $900 million from a year earlier.

Fleet Owner / May 30, 2017 Daimler Trucks North America is recalling approximately 698 model year 2017 Freightliner Cascadia and 2017 Western Star 5700 trucks equipped with Detroit NFD (New Final Drive) tandem rear axles. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), during the hardening process, the axle assembly output shaft may have been made brittle, possibly resulting in the output shaft fracturing while the vehicle is in use. If output shaft fractures while descending a grade, the compression braking will be ineffective. Additionally, large debris may land in the road. Both scenarios increase the risk of a crash. DTNA announced it will notify the owners, and Detroit Axle dealers will replace the output shaft, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin on July 9, 2017. Owners may contact DTNA customer service at 1-800-547-0712. DTNA's number for this recall is FL-738. Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153), or go to www.safercar.gov.

The truck plant in Steyr, Austria has produced superb trucks since 1920. Though acquired by MAN in 1990, it continued to build Steyr Type 92 trucks thru 2003, AND Steyr trucks, engines, transmissions, axles and suspensions continued to be built in China. Even today, modernized Steyr components are still in production in the Middle Kingdom. The Type 91 and 92 trucks were virtually indestructible. . . . .

MAN Truck & Bus Press Release / May 26, 2017 The highest quality in assembly expertise proven time and again // Anniversary vehicle customer: traditional brewery Stiegl On 9 May 2017, MAN celebrated a proud anniversary at its site in Steyr: since the first TGL/TGM-series pre-production vehicles rolled off the line in late 2004 and series production got fully under way for all series models in 2006, exactly 200,000 vehicles have been produced. "We are particularly proud that our customers have placed their trust in the superior quality of our products, and especially the TGL/TGM series, for over a decade. For us, this enormous number, which we are celebrating reaching today, is not only the proof, but above all the motivation for our work," explains Thomas Müller (Dipl.Chem.Ing.), Production Manager at MAN Truck & Bus Austria, Steyr plant. The customer and future operator of this anniversary vehicle is the Austrian traditional brewery company, Stiegl. Dr. Mario Partl, Head of Truck Sales and Internal Service Operations at the MAN Sales Company in Austria, handed over the symbolic ignition key to Thomas Gerbl (MBA), Managing Director of Stiegl, and highlighted the value of the longstanding partnership between MAN and Stiegl. Thomas Gerbl (MBA) stressed that the superior quality and reliability of MAN's products was a significant criterion and key element of the partner-ship. "Above all, our two companies are characterised by the link they cre-ate between awareness of tradition and future-oriented sustainability." Mr Gerbl expressed his sincere thanks again to the production team assembled before him and then welcomed them to the ceremony with a round of drinks from the Stiegl brewery - alcohol-free of course! Stiegl is also a partner of the consortium CNL (council for sustainable logis-tics), which, in autumn, will receive nine TGM trucks with electric drive, pro-duced by MAN at its plant in Steyr, for field trials. Production of the lightweight and medium-sized trucks continues to be the core activity at the Steyr site, although, since mid-2015, expansion has been taking place to incorporate new competencies, in the fields of special vehicle construction, plastic part paintwork and electromobility. .

Iveco Trucks Press Release / May 28, 2017 An adrenaline-fuelled weekend full of challenge for IVECO: it’s another win for the Bullen of IVECO Magirus with Jochen Hahn at the Italian Truck Race. Centre stage in the IVECO paddock were the Stralis Emotional Trucks: the brand new Hahn Racing Emotional Truck, the Team Schwabentruck Emotional Truck, and the Team PETRONAS De Rooy IVECO Emotional Truck, which celebrates the successes of De Rooy’s team at the Dakar rally raid. The Bullen of IVECO Magirus – Hahn Racing and Team Schwabentruck – have just completed the Grand Prix of Italy of the 2017 edition of the European Truck Racing Championship in Misano (RN). Defending champion Jochen Hahn brings home another victory in the second race of the first day with his new IVECO Stralis 440 E 56 XP-R race truck mounting an IVECO Cursor 13 engine specially prepared by FPT Industrial. The Italian Truck Race took place over the two days of the weekend with four competitions, two on Saturday and two on Sunday. The first of the four competitions of the Grand Prix in Misano turned out to be particularly difficult for the pilots running on the Misano circuit due to the high temperatures, which put the engines to the test. Gerd Körber, Team Schwabentruck, was not discouraged by starting last on the grid and succeeded in making an impressive recovery, overtaking five competitors and finishing in seventh position. Jochen Hahn drove a steady race, finishing fifth. The second race of the day saw the Hahn’s triumph, and confirmed his competitive spirit on the track. Gerd Körber started in first position and took the lead in the second lap, and soon gave way to the faster Hahn, who was close behind him. Körber’s chosen strategy was to control the competitors who posed the biggest threat to Johen’s lead, allowing him to race ahead to victory. Gerd stayed ahead of the strongest pilots in the category for several laps, slowing their pace, and finished in fifth place. Also Sunday’s first round was very demanding: Gerd Körber started in eighth position on the grid and drove a good race, finishing sixth e demonstrating again his strength in a fierce duel against a competitor. Jochen Hahn ended in eighth position. The IVECO paddock welcomed the visitors of the Truck Driver’s Week End event during the two days of the Misano Truck Race. They were able to test drive the vehicles, speak with specialized personnel and meet the pilots of the Bullen of IVECO Magirus, who were on the stand to meet their fans. In this round too, IVECO showcased its famous Stralis Emotional Trucks – its special tribute to the world of motor sports: the brand new Hahn Racing Emotional Truck in its blue and white colors and the Team Schwabentruck Emotional Truck were on display with the PETRONAS De Rooy IVECO Emotional Truck that celebrates the successes De Rooy’s team at the Dakar rally raid. For IVECO these two days were also a valuable opportunity to be in direct contact with its customers and with all the Stralis drivers who are every day on the road across Europe – and who share a great passion for Truck Racing. The next Grand Prix of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship 2017 will take place at the Nürburgring circuit in Germany on July 1st and 2nd. .

This remote factory is where Trump may finally draw the line on trade The Washington Post / May 29, 2017 HAWESVILLE, Kentucky — When Bill Hughes went to fight in Iraq in 2003, members of his Army unit lined their vehicles with scrap metal, sandbags and bulletproof vests to protect themselves from roadside bombs. By the time his younger brother Ryan Young was in Iraq in 2008, the vehicles were made of a high-purity aluminum alloy that was much more effective at absorbing the blast. “At the beginning of the Iraq War, the Humvees were folding up like pop cans,” Hughes said. “It was a really big deal until they started putting the different metals in.” Today, Hughes and Young work side by side here at the last U.S. smelter that makes the high-purity aluminum used in armored vehicles, sons of a region where jobs in the metal industry, ubiquitous for decades, have become a rapidly disappearing way of life. Hawesville’s Century Aluminum Co. plant constantly teeters on the edge of shutting down, typical in an industry where a glut of cheap metal from China has forced many plants to close. But hope came to Hawesville in April, when President Trump announced that his administration was considering restricting imports of foreign-forged aluminum in the name of national security, arguing that domestic plants needed to be protected to ensure that the country can make its own war machines. “When that come out, there was a buzz in the area. You could just see the excitement on people’s faces,” said Hughes, 34. A decision by the Trump administration to use national security to protect an industry would be among the most dramatic — and risky — moves in the president’s trade agenda, which seeks to limit what he regards as unfair foreign competition. While intervention could be a boon for Hawesville, it could raise prices for other customers and companies — including the federal government, which ultimately buys the armored vehicles and fighter jets made from the aluminum. And amid the debate over how far the government should go to protect certain industries in the era of global competition and technological change, some trade and industry experts are questioning whether the administration is simply using national security as an excuse for economic protectionism. The decision — based on a Commerce Department investigation — will come out in June, Trump said in a tweet Saturday night. “Will take more action if necessary,” he wrote. The debate over aluminum’s future in the United States comes after 20 years of China flooding the global market with the natural resource, depressing prices to a level where few U.S. companies can compete. The United States has gone from having 23 operational aluminum smelters in 1993 to just five today, with only two running at full capacity. Over the last five years, Hawesville’s Century Aluminum has twice issued notices that it would shut down permanently in 60 days, before pulling its business back from the brink. It has laid off more than 300 people in just the last two years and has been scrapping unused machinery for extra cash. Another dip in global prices could shut its doors forever. The more than 200 jobs that remain, while they pay well for the area, are grueling ones, often 16 hours of physical labor in temperatures reaching 140 degrees. If the administration’s investigation finds that the country’s defense capabilities are being compromised by the decline of aluminum plants like the one in Hawesville, the president would have the power to impose tariffs or other restrictions on imports. Because it’s in the name of national security, Trump could circumvent a longer, more complicated process for changing trade policy at the World Trade Organization. The Obama administration filed a complaint about China’s aluminum industry at the WTO in January, but it has yet to deliver a ruling. Instead, the Trump administration has relied on a rarely used trade measure known as a Section 232 probe. The administration has also announced such a probe into steel. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called the kind of high-purity aluminum produced by the Hawesville smelter “a hugely important thing to defense.” “Our industrial base is our most important, competitive weapon in any kind of global conflict,” Ross said. “I’m not a warmonger, but the best way to be sure you have to fight a war is if everybody knows you are incapable of defending yourself.” Yet any resulting action could have unintended consequences. Past administrations have used Section 232 sparingly, because of the concern that this exception to international trade guidelines might become the new rule. “If we can use national security to block aluminum imports, other countries can and will use it to block agriculture and aviation imports,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Widespread use of 232 by the United States won't just curb imports, it will curb trade.” Others question whether the investigation is really motivated by security concerns, or whether it is a veiled effort to protect U.S. companies from foreign competition. Tom Leary, an analyst at the consulting firm Harbor Aluminum, said the United States has plenty of access to aluminum in Canada, a top ally from which the U.S. government already sources a lot of defense equipment. Chinese producers don’t directly export raw aluminum into the United States, so tariffs may have little effect on the country that many in the aluminum industry say is the real culprit. Chinese aluminum production has hurt U.S. producers by flooding global market and depressing prices everywhere. Chrystia Freeland, the foreign minister of Canada, said she had pressed Trump administration officials about the investigation’s potential effects. “It’s amazing and astonishing and absurd to me that Canada would be considered in that frame given our shared security interests,” she said in an interview. If the Trump administration chooses to restrict aluminum imports, that could keep the doors open for Century, which operates mostly in the United States, but it would raise costs for other businesses — like the industries that mix the metal into alloys, roll it out into long sheets or stamp it into automobiles and window frames. It could also mean higher costs for the ultimate buyer of American-made defense goods: the U.S. government, said Dan Stohr, a spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade association for the defense industry. The national security is a wrinkle in a larger debate over manufacturing in America: whether the government should intervene to shelter a place like Hawesville from the winds of global trade. It’s a familiar topic here, where locals have been buffeted by forces beyond their control for decades. The Whirlpool factory moved its jobs to Mexico. A glut of Russian metal put the local steel mill out of business. Competition from China forced furniture factories to close. Trump’s promises to punish companies that moved their operations abroad resonated here, with locals saying they just want a level playing field. Like his brother, Hughes voted for Trump. “I wanted to see some kind of different change. The previous eight years didn’t work out so well for us,” he said. “When you start seeing places close down, you start looking for an answer.” The community still has jobs, but it shows signs of wear. In Cannelton, Ind., across the Ohio River, shop windows are boarded up. At the Century plant, the jobs, already taxing, have become harder with cutbacks. Union members say that four employees now do the work that 10 once did. Overtime is common, with workers tending smoldering vats of molten metal for up to 16 hours a shift. Even though the factory is open to the breeze, the temperatures can climb to 140 degrees in the summer. Workers drink two or three gallons of water a day, and at the end of their shift they can wring the sweat from their clothes. Despite the grueling work, locals say these are good jobs that are worth protecting. Hughes and Young rely on them to raise four kids each. The average job at the Hawesville plant pays $23 an hour — $10 or more an hour than the jobs that their friends who have been laid off from the smelter have found in furniture factories, prisons and lawn care services. The difference, locals say, is affording three-bedroom house vs. being stuck in a trailer. Before coming to Century Aluminum, Hughes and Young used to work across the river in Indiana at an iron foundry and then at an aluminum smelter owned by Alcoa. Young was at the Alcoa plant in January 2016 on the day it announced that it was closing its doors, laying him off and hundreds of others. He counts himself lucky to have found a job at Hawesville — and frets about what its potential closure could mean. “If you take this job away, you're taking one of the best-paying jobs in this area,” Young said. “If we lose the smelting jobs around this area, it's going to destroy this community.” Yet the forces buffeting Hawesville won’t be entirely mitigated even if Trump announces tough action to protect aluminum. Locals say that, in addition to trade deals and the rise of China, part of the reason for job losses is the declining fortunes of coal, which is what brought the aluminum industry to Kentucky in the first place. To produce aluminum, smelters run a powerful electrical current through the raw material, alumina. When it was running at full capacity, the Hawesville plant used nearly 500 megawatts (MW) per hour, comparable to a city the size of Austin or Columbus, Ohio. Because the process is so energy-intensive, smelters tend to crop up in places with energy to spare — like the oil-rich Middle East or the geothermal hot spot of Iceland. But in the United States, changes in the economy have made aluminum smelting less viable. In Washington state, for instance, the smelters that used to operate near the hydroelectric power plants along the Columbia River have been priced out by the power-chugging server farms of tech companies such as Microsoft. As U.S. regulations on carbon-intensive coal electricity have gotten tougher, Hawesville’s rationale for aluminum began to fade. Young hopes smelting jobs survive in the Hawesville area, but he’s preparing in case they don’t. He said he’s going to preach to his kids that education is the only way to succeed. “I don’t want my kids to have to work the schedules I’ve had to work, the long hours I’ve had to work,” he said. “I want them to know that there’s more out there than just backbreaking labor.” .

Did you have your local Mack brand dealer look at the truck and provide you with an in-depth diagnosis? If necessary, they could have their district service representative come in to look at it (I assume Volvo hasn't cancelled that Mack position).

Today's Trucking / May 29, 2017 This six-video series looks closely at Freightliner's New Cascadia. It's not a rework or a remake of the popular Cascadia, but clean-page design that improves much of what made the Cascadia popular. Fuel efficiency is said to be 8 percent better than the current Evolution model and a whopping 13 percent better than the base-model Cascadia. In this video, number four in a six-part series, we dig into the Cascadia's fuel saving potential and explore the technology that makes those savings possible. Click on the link below to watch all six 2018 New Cascadia videos, along with our full line-up of Ultimate Test Drive videos. http://www.todaystrucking.com/video-test-drives .

A savvy plan for the Trump era Automotive News / May 29, 2017 Automation allowed Gentex to close global plants ZEELAND, Mich. — The Trump administration has a vision for U.S. manufacturers: It wants them to rely less on overseas factories and to hire and train more American workers. Easier said than done? Well, Michigan automotive mirror-maker Gentex Inc. offers a glimpse of what the future might look like in the Trump era. The supplier has figured out a way to move production from overseas to the American Midwest — and things are working out just fine. In recent years, Gentex closed its two foreign plants in low-wage Mexico and China and consolidated all production into a single factory complex in western Michigan. The Zeeland plant now produces self-dimming mirrors, garage door openers and everything else in the Gentex product catalog for global markets. This is the sort of business model the new president is pressing manufacturers to adopt. But Gentex designed its plan not for political reasons, but for purely competitive ones as its products become more complex. And for champions of the push to create U.S. automotive jobs, Gentex has sobering news: Making modern car parts in America today is going to take a whole lot of robots. Factory automation is what made it possible for Gentex to move production from overseas to the Midwest. "It's a tricky product," says Steve Downing, Gentex CFO, as he inspects the company's 2-year-old assembly line that makes one of the industry's most advanced rearview mirrors. "Any scratches or smudges, or even the shipping, can damage these mirrors. Cleanliness is key." In one corner of the Zeeland complex, a white-gowned worker loads glass pieces onto an assembly line that produces the "full-display mirror" for Cadillac — a rearview mirror with built-in video displays. Despite her production training, there is a trash can next to her workstation filled with glass shards, lingering evidence of a once-high reject rate that bedeviled Gentex when it launched production here in 2015. Having put all of its eggs into one U.S. basket, Gentex heavily invested in automation to perform as much of the product line's delicate work as possible. "In a perfect world, we would want to automate the whole thing," Downing said. "But the cost is a gamble. The question is, do you have the confidence to put your money where your mouth is? CFOs kill a lot of these deals. I've got to trust that there's a payback." A new landscape Gentex earmarks a significant chunk of its revenue — generally 6 to 8 percent of sales — for its capital budget, which covers the cost of automation. The company designs its own tooling and produces its own chemicals and coatings on-site. To date, Gentex has not eliminated any of the 4,000 Zeeland workers it has had since emerging from the 2008 recession. More products are being made now in Zeeland, including garage door openers, backup cameras and sensors for self-dimming headlights. As the company adds automation, workers are reassigned to other tasks. But the landscape of the factory is clearly changing. A typical production line is staffed by just five or six workers who feed mirror components from racks, monitor equipment and conduct backup visual inspections. Only a decade ago, 20 to 30 gowned workers would assemble mirrors along a long production line in a clean room, according to Downing. Finicky It's a finicky process to assemble the glass, frame, coatings, chemicals and light sensors that comprise these mirrors, which cost five to 10 times more than a conventional auto-dimming mirror. That's why Gentex consolidated production in one location. Defects in the highly engineered mirrors are costly, so it made sense to put the work under the watchful eyes of several hundred Michigan engineers. The company's Michigan wages average $14.50 an hour, which it supplements with a quarterly profit-sharing bonus of 13 to 18 percent of wages. By contrast, suppliers in Mexico typically pay just $2.61 an hour, according to a Center for Automotive Research report published last year. But Gentex shut down production of its HomeLink garage door openers in Mexico after it purchased that operation from Johnson Controls Inc. in 2013. The Mexican plant had aging equipment, and Gentex concluded it would be impossible to boost output without hiring more workers. Instead, the company installed new production equipment in Zeeland. Now, 40 U.S. workers are needed on a line that once required 100. The business unit is 20 percent more productive, Downing says. The Gentex factory in China also fell victim to a cost-benefit analysis. At the insistence of several customers — including SAIC Motor and Beijing Automotive — Gentex set up a plant in Shanghai to handle final assembly of self-dimming mirrors. Gentex shipped glass and circuit boards to China, where workers would unpack the components, assemble them and repack them for shipment to customers. But that, too, was inefficient. Gentex argued it could ship the finished products cheaply from Zeeland, but China's state-owned automakers insisted on local production. During the global recession, Gentex finally got permission to shut down its Shanghai factory. "Desperation is a beautiful thing," Downing quipped. "It allowed us to force our Chinese customers to tell us the truth. We asked them: 'Do you care more about localization or low prices?'" Gentex was able to negotiate discounts of 30 to 40 percent on goods shipped from the U.S. to China, since shipping companies were eager to fill half-empty cargo containers. That made it profitable to ship mirrors from Zeeland, even though they were subject to China's import tariff. Job killers Gentex has an advantage over other suppliers that might feel the pressure to repatriate manufacturing work, according to Jay Baron, president of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. Highly engineered products and new technologies come with a higher price tag to customers and yield bigger margins. But for more mundane parts with high labor content, locales such as Mexico and China will retain a competitive advantage, Baron says. "Things like cut-and-sew seat covers and wire harnesses are relatively low-tech," Baron said. "Those products don't change a lot, and they are labor intensive." Baron and others believe such labor-intensive products will simply never return to U.S. factories. Moreover, analysts believe U.S. auto-sector employment will continue to decline as factories become more efficient. According to a 2015 study by Michael Hicks, economics professor at BallStateUniversity in Muncie, Ind., automation is by far the leading cause of manufacturing job losses. Manufacturers of vehicles and transportation equipment increased their productivity per worker by 64 percent during the study's 10-year period, Hicks found. But the sector saw the elimination of 716,500 jobs during the period — and productivity gains directly accounted for nearly 86 percent of the losses. "Employment in manufacturing has stagnated for some time, primarily due to growth in productivity," the report concluded. More business Despite its devotion to automation, Gentex has not laid off U.S. workers because sales have kept growing. Last year, Gentex revenues totaled $1.68 billion, up from $1.01 billion in 2012. The full-display mirror adopted by Cadillac is in test production for four other customers. But it is far from certain how that will translate into more jobs. Recent advances in robotics are making automation more common among suppliers, a development that will likely make the companies need fewer workers — even as the Trump administration campaigns for manufacturing jobs growth. Robot-makers such as Fanuc and ABB Robotics are introducing "collaborative" robots that can operate side by side with human workers on an assembly line, rather than being segregated in more expensive automation areas, in safety cages or behind plexiglass shields. Gentex itself is testing ABB's collaborative robot — dubbed YuMi — in its Zeeland plant. If other companies emulate Gentex's "build-it-here" strategy, there may be more robots to come — but not necessarily more American jobs. .

For some time now, all the Mack dealers have had in their possession a teaser video showing the new Mack model. They cut off the roof to make it stand up, more competitive for long haul. You can ask your local salesman to show it to you. It looks as if the same stylist responsible for the US market CAT vocational trucks was hired by Volvo to create the styling cues for the new model.

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