Something a little different on Overdrive Radio today – the podcast will transport you like so many futuristic teleporting time machines to a Thursday, Aug. 22, panel at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. That panel was all about the notion of a “driverless” truck and where drivers really fit in as such a thing gets closer to real. Find a brief contemporaneous report from the panel, a discussion with Starsky Robotics' Paul Schlegel and Pronto's Ognen Stojanovski, via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/drivers-role-in-driverless-trucks-explored-in-gats-panel/

Something a little different on Overdrive Radio today – the podcast will transport you like so many futuristic teleporting time machines to a Thursday, Aug. 22, panel at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. That panel was all about the notion of a “driverless” truck and where drivers really fit in as such a thing gets closer to real. Find a brief contemporaneous report from the panel, a discussion with Starsky Robotics' Paul Schlegel and Pronto's Ognen Stojanovski, via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/drivers-role-in-driverless-trucks-explored-in-gats-panel/

In this Overdrive Radio podcast edition, run through the performances by competing truckers Jason Henley, "Mississippi Ken" Freeman and the ultimate talent search winner, Taylor Barker, live from the Great American Trucking Show a week ago. Also: A warm-up three-song act by Paul Marhoefer and Tony Justice's homespun emcee-ing of the event, an ongoing anchor among the community of musicians who also happened to haul freight on the open road, or vice versa, as it were. Thirdly: Near the top, a brief talk with Pennsylvania-based owner-operator Mike Landis, also of the United States Transportation Alliance, about his view of the FMCSA's hours of service proposal, including a bit of clarification of how the rule views computation of the split-sleeper options it's proposing.

In this Overdrive Radio podcast edition, run through the performances by competing truckers Jason Henley, "Mississippi Ken" Freeman and the ultimate talent search winner, Taylor Barker, live from the Great American Trucking Show a week ago. Also: A warm-up three-song act by Paul Marhoefer and Tony Justice's homespun emcee-ing of the event, an ongoing anchor among the community of musicians who also happened to haul freight on the open road, or vice versa, as it were. Thirdly: Near the top, a brief talk with Pennsylvania-based owner-operator Mike Landis, also of the United States Transportation Alliance, about his view of the FMCSA's hours of service proposal, including a bit of clarification of how the rule views computation of the split-sleeper options it's proposing.

If you missed the Great American Trucking Show or the FMCSA's webcast last week, you can sit in on the first hour and more of the hours of service listening session held at GATS in Dallas Aug. 23, 2019, via this special presentation of Overdrive Radio. This was the first listening session held by the FMCSA following its introduction of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that offered some changes to truckers aimed at increasing both safety and some measure of flexibility for drivers.

Two significant elements of that were revisions to split-sleeper-berth regs as well as the proposal to allow up to a three-hour pause to the 14-hour duty clock daily with an off-duty mid-period break. Read more about the proposed changes via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/stop-the-clock-proposed-hours-of-service-overhaul-would-allow-drivers-to-pause-14-hour-clock/

If you missed the Great American Trucking Show or the FMCSA's webcast last week, you can sit in on the first hour and more of the hours of service listening session held at GATS in Dallas Aug. 23, 2019, via this special presentation of Overdrive Radio. This was the first listening session held by the FMCSA following its introduction of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that offered some changes to truckers aimed at increasing both safety and some measure of flexibility for drivers.

Two significant elements of that were revisions to split-sleeper-berth regs as well as the proposal to allow up to a three-hour pause to the 14-hour duty clock daily with an off-duty mid-period break. Read more about the proposed changes via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/stop-the-clock-proposed-hours-of-service-overhaul-would-allow-drivers-to-pause-14-hour-clock/

Wednesday night in Dallas, classic country star and gospel singer Leon Everette, with trucker-songwriter Bill Weaver, started us up with a sound-check of sorts that turned into an impromptu extended jam -- you'll hear some of that and more in this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast. (Paul Marhoefer, too.) And though the news has been dominated this week and the previous one by the hours of service, we sit down at GATS for a chat about history, training and more with Jay Thompson of Transportation Business Associates. He grew up in rural Indiana and starting his working career driving big trucks, a route taken by the generations of men in his family as well, all the way back to his grandfather, Walter Thompson. Walter had a chauffer’s license at age 18, in 1917, and given we’re talking today as an industry about the potential for a pilot program for under-21 CDL drivers, we sat down to ferret out a little bit of the history there. As Thompson says, history often repeats itself in various ways …

Wednesday night in Dallas, classic country star and gospel singer Leon Everette, with trucker-songwriter Bill Weaver, started us up with a sound-check of sorts that turned into an impromptu extended jam -- you'll hear some of that and more in this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast. (Paul Marhoefer, too.) And though the news has been dominated this week and the previous one by the hours of service, we sit down at GATS for a chat about history, training and more with Jay Thompson of Transportation Business Associates. He grew up in rural Indiana and starting his working career driving big trucks, a route taken by the generations of men in his family as well, all the way back to his grandfather, Walter Thompson. Walter had a chauffer’s license at age 18, in 1917, and given we’re talking today as an industry about the potential for a pilot program for under-21 CDL drivers, we sat down to ferret out a little bit of the history there. As Thompson says, history often repeats itself in various ways …

Readers weigh in largely favorably on FMCSA's this-week-proposed hours of service changes. Any of these changes have quite an interesting road ahead of them in the next year or however long it takes for the agency to push them through. So-called "safety advocates" are already howling to mainstream news outlets -– stories are being spread far and wide with editorialized headlines like “Trump administration moves to relax rules on how long truckers can drive”… You may have seen that one or some variant on it -- the headline the L.A. Times put on the Associated Press story about the rules. It’s not a terrible story, all things considered, despite the headline. At once, it does lead in part with what feels like the nut the way it’s presented: “highway safety groups have warned that putting the revisions into place would dangerously weaken the regulations.” Well … nothing new there. Though as noted the headline itself is just flat wrong, or at the least misleading, as it pertains to anyone using a logbook. The FMCSA isn’t proposing to change the underlying 11-hour drive time maximum.

Readers weigh in largely favorably on FMCSA's this-week-proposed hours of service changes. Any of these changes have quite an interesting road ahead of them in the next year or however long it takes for the agency to push them through. So-called "safety advocates" are already howling to mainstream news outlets -– stories are being spread far and wide with editorialized headlines like “Trump administration moves to relax rules on how long truckers can drive”… You may have seen that one or some variant on it -- the headline the L.A. Times put on the Associated Press story about the rules. It’s not a terrible story, all things considered, despite the headline. At once, it does lead in part with what feels like the nut the way it’s presented: “highway safety groups have warned that putting the revisions into place would dangerously weaken the regulations.” Well … nothing new there. Though as noted the headline itself is just flat wrong, or at the least misleading, as it pertains to anyone using a logbook. The FMCSA isn’t proposing to change the underlying 11-hour drive time maximum.