°®¶¹´«Ã½

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — At the end of the first quarter, there are signs of optimism in the economy but also caution about the sustainability of the momentum, according to economic analysts and trucking executives at the 2017 Truckload Carriers Association conference.

The sight of two gleaming tractor-trailers parked on the South Lawn of the White House signaled that last Thursday was no ordinary day for the trucking industry.

Truck tonnage dropped 2.8% in February year-over-year, reversing January’s positive momentum, but American Trucking Associations’ chief economist maintains that freight activity remained strong considering February 2016 was a record-setting month.

Last week, we cheered the apparent demise of a federal regulatory provision regarding hours of service. Now we’d like to salute a positive development: a recent discussion on truck safety before a Senate subcommittee.

The electronic logging device mandate for tracking hours of service has brought a lot of attention to truck telematics, and many experts are providing advice on how to prepare for that transition. But one aspect of telematics that few are addressing is how underutilized most existing systems are. In my estimate, only three in 10 fleets are utilizing their telematics system to the max.

In 2008, I wrote an article where I described a future scenario in which a driver in a truck is leading a convoy of several driverless trucks. In 2011, I began predicting that we would have autonomous cars on the market and on the roadways by 2020. These predictions seem to be turning out better than my 2007 prediction that Apple would not get much market share in the cellphone business.

Trucking Industry Likely To Solve Parking Problem

As reported in Transport Topics in early December 2016, (12-12, pp. 4, 43) American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear told a roundtable of lawmakers at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., that the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, represents the future of secure transportation.

Conference halls from coast to coast were teeming with talk of transportation last week, with no shortage of prognostications from industry leaders about what the future holds.