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It's almost show time!
The 2007 Expedite Expo is almost upon us and this event on July 27-28 is shaping up to be the best one yet. With over 100 exhibitors occupying the over 50,000 square feet of the Roberts Convention Centre display floor, attendees will discover something of interest for everyone!
The Expo's General Manager, Lawrence McCord says, "The show has taken on a life of its own. Every year, it grows and finds an ever-expanding audience. We're very proud of what it has become - an important industry gathering, a job fair, an educational venue and an event that the expedited trucking community can call its own."
"We work very hard to bring to that community a world-class show that they can be proud of as well. To tell the truth, I'm very excited and I can't wait for Expo opening day!"
John Mueller of the Toledo, Ohio-based Premium Transportation Logistics (PTL) is a busy man!
His duties as PTL's Safety Director are enough fill his day, but he serves as the Director of Recruiting as well.
He explains, "With a smaller company like ours, the workload has to be divided between my two partners and myself. One of the partners handles Operations, another takes care of Sales and Marketing and then there's my job."
It's a simple fact-you react to things. Some things don't affect your disposition; some things do. Your mood affects what you do, think, feel and say. That is, it affects how you drive. Even if you possess great reserve and self-control, your mood affects your conscious and subconscious activity whether you want it to or not.
As a driver, you know that traffic consists of physical, social and psychological components. It's an interactive field of varying forces that influence your behavior and your state of mind. In other words, traffic can bring out the best and the worst in you.
The upcoming Expedite Expo in Wilmington, Ohio will feature good-looking trucks, recruiters, seminars and of course, entertainment.
Following in the Expo tradition of presenting family-oriented entertainment, this year's event will offer trucking music by Joey Holiday, downhome bluegrass from the Radio Ramblers featuring Joe Mullins and a special guest artist new to the Expo - Jennifer Anderson.
Supporting the release of her first CD, "Destination Unknown", Jennifer will take the Speedco Entertainment Stage on Saturday, July 28 to present her homestyle, edgy and energetic music to the Expo attendees in a free concert.
The Expedite Expo will be Jennifer's first performance at a trucking event and she says, "I'm really looking forward to playing at the Expo! Not many people know this about me but
I'm a former professional driver myself, so I can relate to what the hard-working men and women of the trucking industry have to deal with. It will be an honor to perform for them!"
If your driving history goes back to the days when you were advised to "pump your brakes" in an emergency stop on slick pavement, then the first time you used a vehicle equipped with an anti-lock braking system (ABS), it probably came as a shock to discover the brakes seemingly had a mind of their own. It required a bit of adjustment on your part to simply apply steady pressure to the pedal and let the system do its thing.
As you probably know, ABS is now required on all on-road vehicles with air brakes and all hydraulic-braked trucks over 10,000 pounds.
It was shortly after the 2006 Expedite Expo that Lawrence McCord, General Manager of Expediters Online.com began work on a concept he had been nurturing for months. Inspired by the work of the Chrome Shop Mafia of TV's "Trick My Truck", McCord presented his concept of a customized expediter truck to a select group of sponsors that included Speedco Tire and Lube Services, Alumi-Bunk Corporation and Indiana Truck Sales. The Chrome Shop Mafia was commissioned to construct the vehicle and today we have the result: the wildest expediter truck ever - the Speedco Supertruck!
Yes, you can win this tricked out, fully customized expediter truck in the Speedco Supertruck Driveaway Sweepstakes! This Class 8 Mack Vision has undergone the full Chrome Shop Mafia treatment
and is ready for a lucky winner to take possession and put it to work!
Roadside inspections are part of life for professional drivers. The main purpose of roadside inspections is to give the commercial motor vehicle and its driver an on-the-spot safety check. If you've never undergone a D.O.T. inspection, relax. It's not the end of the world.
If you know your truck and you're sure it's ready for inspection, it will make the stop little more than a slight delay. With some two million inspections performed annually, you can figure that most survive and you will, too.
The most important thing a driver can do to be ready for inspections say drivers who know, is to have a clean truck.
The goal is to simply not get noticed and it's unlikely that a relatively clean vehicle with shiny chrome will attract the same kind of safety-related scrutiny that a filthy, grime-covered truck will.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the average big truck engine consumes 0.8 gallons of fuel an hour to idle - more if it's running accessories like air conditioning.
Spread over a working year, your annual idling cost can total into thousands of dollars, and that's just for the price of fuel. The wear and tear on the idling engine has its cost as well.
Ray Lawrence of Espar of Michigan says that auxiliary power units and generators - referred to as APUs and gen sets - are a cost-effective alternative to idling. Mounted on the truck, these efficient truck-mounted diesel engines burn less than a quart of fuel per hour.
The dedicated run.
The term conjures up a variety of images to the expedited owner-operator/driver: stability, consistency of revenue, a schedule that allows a driver to know where he/she will be next week.
For the expedited driver, who typically never knows where he might be tomorrow or how much revenue he might generate in the next month, the dedicated run represents steady employment with a guaranteed income. That is, at least for the life of the customer's contract with the driver's carrier.
For many expediters, the dedicated run would seem to be the pinnacle of the expedited freight business; he won't be awakened at 3:00 am to take a "hot" 50-mile run, he won't sit for days on end waiting for a run that never appears and he won't have to miss events back home because he's on a lucrative 1,000-mile run that's (usually) going in the wrong direction.
"The Expediter Experience was a smash hit! It was THE place for expediters to convene, to catch up with one another and to see all of the new expediter trucks on display. New trucks were sold, owner-operators were signed with carriers and the Expediter Workshops were a success. It was a great time!"
So says Micki McIntyre, Coordinator of the Expediter Experience held at the 36th Mid America Trucking Show in Louisville. The expedited freight-specific section of the trucking show encompassed over 10,000 square feet of exhibits that featured expedited carriers, truck dealers and more.
McIntyre continues, "There are many people who visit the Expediters Online web site but who had never had the opportunity to see a Workshop or meet us on the road. The show allows us to get to know them - to find out what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong."
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