highwaySTAR Magazine: the definitive Canadian trucking lifestyle magazine including trucking careers, family life, and job-related stories.

Careers

Life and Family

Doing Your Job





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Alliance Brand Parts

Lifestyle Survey

Here we come, prying into your personal lives again. This time, we're curious to know how you're doing financially and where you plan to be in the future. Staying in trucking, ready to retire, bailing for greener pastures, or putting up until something better comes your way? We hope you won't mind sharing this bit of information with us, and we'll put it to good use. Promise.

There's room at the end for personal comments if you'd care to add any, and be assured, we'll keep all the personal information safe and we don't share it with anyone.

Click here to take the survey.

Cabotage Rules
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) describes what Canadian drivers can and cannot do while operating in the United States.

Click to download PDF


Cargo Securement Driver's Handbook

The U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has produced a driver's handbook to assist in understanding and compliance with the North American Cargo Securement Standard.

Download your copy here.

A Trucker's World
Truck World 2008 boasts the best attendance ever.
Life and Family

Governed By Numbers
With the tabling of Bill 41 in Ontario, the speed limiter debate is really starting to heat up.
Doing Your Job

No Room for Error
The oil companies appear to be the culprits this time around, but they're just trying to maintain their (substantial) profit margins. Are you doing the same?
Careers

The Other Log:

MAY
2-3 -- Quebec Trucking Association Annual Convention.
Hotel Hilton -- Lac Lemay, Gatineau, Que. Call 514/932-0377, or see www.carrefour-acq.org.

9-11 -- U.S. Truck Rally & Rodeo NAST / Truck-Lite Trophy Show. Bloomington, Ill. Call 815-366-0087, or see www.nastshowtrucks.org.

22 -- Transportation Health and Safety Association of Ontario Annual Conference. Double Tree International Plaza, Toronto. Call 800-263-5016, or see www.thsao.on.ca.

23-24 – Winnipeg Truck Show. Winnipeg Convention Centre, Winnipeg. Call 416-614-2200, or see www.winnipegtruckshow.ca.

26-29 -- Canadian Fleet Maintenance Seminar. Double Tree International Plaza, Toronto. Call 519-886-6265, or see www.cfmsonline.com.

30-31 – Great Lakes Truck Show. NAST / Truck-Lite Trophy Show. Tecumseh, Mich. Call 734-755-6582, or see www.nastshowtrucks.org.

Full 2008 Events Listing

highwaySTAR Careers: Careers for Drivers

[May. 4/08]
At our big truck show last month, Truck World, we held a VIP breakfast event. Anyone could buy a ticket, but since most of you were on the road that Thursday, I'd bet there wasn't a driver in the room. Too bad, really, because the key-note speaker, Celadon Chairman and CEO, Steve Russell, delivered some really interesting perspective on the state of the industry.

Did you know, for example that between the Fall of 2001 and the Spring of 2008, the price of diesel has risen by $56,000 over 120,000 miles a year? To compensate, Celadon is passing on a fuel surcharge of 59 cents a mile to its customers. That's a small consolation. Russell told the audience that rates have dropped more than a nickel a mile in the past year. Freight volumes are down, he says, revenues are down, and costs are going through the roof.

In the past three months, Russell said that he's seen 400 small fleets fail. In a typical quarter, about 100 small fleets fail. "It's brutal," he says. "I've never seen anything like this in 38 years in trucking."

In his own fleet, average miles are down by about 100 a month, and that's costing his drivers money too. Even if you're not paying for the fuel, in these tight times, it behooves us all to do what we can to save a little dough.

So how can it be that this time of the year, with some gorgeous spring weather in this country, that trucks are still idling in truckstops at night? It's too warm for heat, and too cool for AC. What are you doing that requires the engine running at night this time of the year?
Jim Park
Truck and Trailer



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