Safety

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The growing importance of fleets being able to regulate the speed of individual trucks through remote, over-the-air engine updates should be taken into account as the federal government considers a mandate requiring heavy-duty vehicles to utilize speed limiters, the president of Daimler Trucks North America said.

You can’t work in the trucking industry for long without realizing the interconnectedness of the trucking world — goods with communities, roads with ports, airports and railways, regulations across international and provincial borders and municipal boundaries, you name it. Another connection may not be immediately apparent: Canada’s National Trucking Week and “Jake” brakes.

After 10 years of deliberation, two agencies of the Department of Transportation have finally published a proposal that would limit the maximum speed of the largest commercial vehicles to a rate yet to be determined.

Driver turnover fell 4 percentage points year-over-year for larger truckload fleets to 83% in the second quarter, dropping to the lowest level since 2011 amid a sluggish freight market, American Trucking Associations reported last week.

Fatalities in crashes involving large trucks rose 4.1% from 2014 to 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported Aug. 29.

Operators of corporate-owned truck fleets are facing pressure to keep up with a growing number of regulations while also dealing with legal and business issues that go well beyond the traditional realm of equipment maintenance and driver management.

Approximately 10% of ocean cargo may cite an inaccurate weight, according to Loadstar. In 2015, an estimated 16.3 million out of 200.5 million TEUs, or industry- standard 20-foot-equivalent container units, of cargo were shipped without an accurate measurement, which speaks to an industrywide problem.