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TeamsterGrrrl

Pedigreed Bulldog
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Everything posted by TeamsterGrrrl

  1. I'm not dumb and know well how to cheat with paper logs, and have heard more than a few truckers even brag about doing so. The trucker in question is not my friend, he just stopped by while I was working an event and asked that I pass his message along to our congressman.
  2. Agreed. The regulators seem to assume that independent truckers have the bargaining power to force the big shippers and receivers to clean up their act and load/unload them in a timely manner. These shippers and receivers are giant multinational companies and the truckers are solo or small fleet operators- It they demand detention pay, the multinational company will just find another powerless trucker to abuse.
  3. As in the U.S., the environmentalists make the assumption that if diesels are banned, buyers will switch to their favored electrics. Reality is that banning diesels will see customers buying gas fueled cars, not electrics. The switch from diesel to gas will make meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals impossible.
  4. Talked to a trucker today that asked that I communicate to our congressman his opposition to the ELD rule. He's exempt with a 1999 tractor, but is worried that the carrier he is leased to will require ELDs. He runs regional, but is having problems with receivers that make him wait for hours to unload, burning up his on-duty time to the point he often runs out of hours before he can make it home. My congressman is a swing vote on delaying the implementation and I'll be seeing him and another swing vote on Thursday. I'll convey the message and my recommendation. While I hate to see the government enabling cheating on logs by delaying ELD implementation, I think we really need to give drivers some protection against shipper/receiver delays and assure adequate overnight truck parking before we implement ELDs.
  5. Was reading some of the papers presented at the International Forum for Road Transport Technology's last conference, and interest and acceptance of larger trucks is grower everywhere... but the U.S.. Seems that while the rest of the world is boosting truck productivity, the U.S. is trapped in a rut of 80,000 weight limits and 53 foot trailers that are dwarfed by our international competitors.
  6. A sad reminder that a better truck, the Mack MH, was withdrawn from the market...
  7. The biggest fleet of USPS MRs were the 96s, 300 HP with an Allison 740. The purchases after that were increasingly CH and later CX conventionals, culminating in a big '06 purchase that is still in service.
  8. Wide ratio transmissions like the 5 speed were (usually) only available with the Maxidyne engines. The Mack Maxidyne 6 came in 237, 285, 250, 275, 300, 335, and 370 HP denominations. IIRC the 335 and 370 were only available from 2001 to 2006. What is advertised as a "350" with a wide ratio 5 or 6 speed is usually a 300 or lesser engine.
  9. Given that Senator McCain has been a federal employee for most of the last half century, he's maxed out his Civil Service pension and would earn about the same amount retired as he does serving in the Senate. so don't complain... Senator McCain and many of his fellow senators and congressmen are pretty much working for free!
  10. Those old information rich parts numbers often got replaced by stupid meaningless numbers because early computer database systems couldn't handle 10 or so digits and maybe some letters too. Continental Baking's numbering system told you what type of truck or trailer it was, what year, what region it was delivered to, etc.- All a mechanic needed was the truck number and he knew what parts and tools were needed to do the job. Then they got "computerized" and a meaningless number was assigned to each truck.
  11. Probably to keep the religious right wingers in congress happy so they don't impeach him. But that would be expecting Trump to behave in a logical manner... Trump is more like a child very temporarily fascinated by often meaningless stuff. Remember, this is the guy who saw a Mack truck in the White House driveway, climbed in, and honked the horn...
  12. Take note- We have historic agreement between the righties and the lefties here on BMT- Airbags were a bad idea! Airbags were forced on us because Nader, Claybrook, and "safety" nazis wanted to protect people too dumb to wear seatbelts from their own stupidity. So we seatbelt users have to pay for airbags we'll never need. Worse yet, the airbags are actually causing injuries and death all by themselves, and are especially harmful to short and disabled drivers! And while felony arrest warrants are out for VW employees whose TDIs harmed no one, Joan Claybrook and Ralph Nader are still on the loose, oblivious to all the people their beloved airbags have killed!
  13. Another non issue... Transgender people aren't even one percent of the population. The real issue is out of control military spending- We're 5% of the world's population but we make 50% of the world's military spending.
  14. IIRC, the first diesel big truck emission standards were around 1984 and pretty much made turbochargers mandatory. The standards were ratcheted up every 3 years or so, and we started noting some drivability compromises and drop in fuel economy with the 2001 and 2004 standards. but the 2007 and 2010 standards were much more noticeable with major price increases and a drop in fuel economy with the engines that tried to slide by without DEF aftertreatment.
  15. No such thing as a "pre-emissions" Series 60- there were already emissions standards when it was introduced back in the late '80s.
  16. I just stated the facts. If folks want to go live in some fantasy of the 1950s or earlier, they may do so at their own risk... Just don't expect me and most of the country to always play along.
  17. For about $30 a month in union dues I got a couple hundred a month in higher wages which I invested in IRAs and 401Ks that are now worth several hundred thousand dollars. Instead of taking about $200 a month in taxable higher wages we put that into our pension plan which pays us a couple thousand a month. We also got a lot of other benefits by negotiating together as a union like two paid breaks a day and overtime pay. No brainwashing needed... That's a heck of a deal!
  18. The same bigots that hate trans kids hate women like us who work with machinery too... If we women can play with trucks, he can wear a dress!
  19. BTW, what was the real torque capacity of the Maxitorque transmissions? I've heard 2250 pound foot, but I've always suspected it could handle more.
  20. Maybe 41chevy sobered up and deleted them himself...
  21. Before Volvo took over, Mack understood that a lot of their customers did seasonal work like construction and thus didn't wear out a truck in a decade or less. In the off season when they weren't busy these same customers rebuilt their trucks, so a useful life of 30 years was expected of a Mack. Volvo comes from a whole different culture where a truck is expected to be retired in 10 years or less to keep the economy juiced and get the old trucks that don't have the latest safety and emissions equipment off the road. Volvo doesn't get it, and when a Mack customer finds a part for their decade old truck is overpriced or not even available, they cease to be a Mack customer...
  22. mDrive is Volvo's trojan horse- No parts are available, and the only option is a rebuilt one from Volvo for $15k. That's about what a tractor is worth by the time the mDrive wears out, which will result in a lot of Mack and Volvo tractors being scrapped prematurely. Volvo assumes we'll replace those scrapped Mack and Volvo tractors with more of the same, forgetting that they have competition.
  23. You might better focus your ire on the starter of that thread...
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