kscarbel2

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Paul, Ted and Timmy.....need to watch your back. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46269876

Scania Group Press Release / November 19, 2018 Finnish forester’s dedication to continuous improvement sees it using Scania Suomi’s driver training coaches. Finnish forestry transporter Puukuljetus Vesala’s drivers are well known in the province of Ostrobothnia for their excellent fuel-saving efforts behind the wheel. Despite those good reputations, the company decided to use Scania Suomi’s driver training coaches. “I wanted to see if we could save fuel,” explains Managing Director Jarkko Vesala. “Our drivers’ fuel consumption performances varied and we wanted to identify individual strengths and weaknesses. The training allowed each driver to identify which aspects of their driving habits they needed to improve.” You never stop learning Of course, Vesala was aware that professional drivers might be sceptical about the need for further training. “One might think that after 20 years of driving a driver knows just about everything. I am no exception myself; I used to think that way. However, over the years the vehicle technology has developed enormously, and I need to know more to get the full benefit of all these new features.” After consulting with his drivers, Vesala found that most welcomed the chance for some coaching. So they and the company’s entire fleet of five four-axle timber trucks arrived at Scania in Kokkola to take Scania Driver Training. First they drove their trucks, then they studied driving theory and then they went on a test drive, making use of their newly-acquired skills. How to achieve a lasting improvement However, the training did not end there. Over the next year, each driver received a bi-monthly report outlining their driving habits, along with suggestions for improvements. Each driver was assigned a personal trainer who discussed the results with them. “Everyone can drive well for one day, but a good driver performs at a consistently high level, month after month. That’s why a full year’s training is important to achieve a lasting improvement,” says Vesala. All five of Puukuljetus Vesala’s trucks are made by Scania. That means they are similarly equipped to enable drivers to easily switch from one truck to another. Jarkko Vesala is the third-generation owner of the family business. With more than a quarter of a century of experience, he was loading timber trucks when some of his colleagues were riding mopeds. Did driver training help him? “Absolutely. The biggest surprise was how much of the time we spent idling. Before training, idling was at between 15 and 18 percent and now it’s down to between five and seven percent. Today, it feels bad if someone leaves the ignition on at a petrol station. That’s equal to a very expensive cup of coffee!” Making a safe and sustainable difference Before training, the company lacked guidelines for driving speeds. Since the training these have been set at 80–82 km/h. Previously, speed was unnecessarily high when driving without loads. The company’s drivers are also planning ahead more often now, and according to the Scania Fleet Management system hard braking has significantly declined. “When driving a 76 metric tonne (167,551 pound) tractor and trailer combination, which is permitted in Finland, it’s important to know when to start coasting. Anticipation also increases safety,” says Vesala. Overall, the training scheme has evened out the drivers’ fuel-saving performance, which Vesala appreciates. “Traditionally, continuing education isn’t common in the transport industry, but those that invest in coaching tend to be more successful, with greater employee commitment as well.” .

Aaron Marsh, Fleet Owner / November 19, 2018 After a six-month trial using renewable diesel in heavy trucks this past summer, the New York City Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is planning a long-term purchasing contract for much more of the fuel as the city moves to phase out petroleum-based diesel in its fleet vehicles. Renewable diesel—often confused with biodiesel—is made from organic waste materials such as animal fats and vegetable oils, similar to biodiesel. But renewable diesel is refined differently and delivers the chemical equivalent of traditional crude oil-based diesel, so it can be used in blends or as a complete replacement fuel in any diesel engine without modifications. While biodiesel contains oxygen and can potentially have contaminants and problems when used in cold temperatures, renewable diesel avoids those issues and burns much cleaner than regular diesel. DCAS estimated it can reduce CO2 emissions from diesel engines by 65% using renewable diesel and noted its fleet burns up to 17 million gallons of diesel a year that could be switched out for the more sustainable fuel. DCAS has long used biodiesel in blends of 5-20% at all NYC agencies and for all diesel-powered equipment. DCAS Deputy Commissioner and NYC Chief Fleet Officer Keith Kerman has told Fleet Owner on several occasions there have been no cold-weather problems with biodiesel even at 20% blends used during the winter. NYC's move to expand renewable diesel comes in the wake of California's deadliest wildfires in history, which have rekindled the climate change debate; on one side of that argument, some do not believe mankind has any effect on Earth's climate. New York City fleet officials have a different view. "The climate crisis is real and it's urgent," said Lisette Camilo, Commissioner of DCAS. "Renewable diesel is 99% petroleum-free and helps keep fossil fuels in the ground and emissions out of our air." "Every time we choose to reinforce our reliance on fossil fuels for transportation, we choose to pollute our air and accelerate the current climate crisis," contended Mark Chambers, director of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's Office of Sustainability. DCAS used a million gallons of renewable diesel as it tested out the fuel. It powered garbage trucks, Parks Dept. equipment, Dept. of Correction buses, police emergency service vehicles, and other heavy and specialized fleet units, according to the city. NYC's fleet includes 13,000 diesel trucks and off-road equipment, many of which will be transitioning to renewable diesel going forward. NYC now operates 1,700 on-road electric vehicles and nearly 6,000 hybrid, solar-powered, and natural gas-powered fleet units. All told among its light-duty vehicles purchased this year, DCAS recently announced it had achieved staggering average fuel economy of 100 mpg, more than twice the light-duty fleet's average three years ago. Phasing out petroleum-based diesel is part of Mayor de Blasio's "80 x 50" initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New York City by at least 80% by 2050. The mayor's NYC Clean Fleet initiative announced in 2015 calls for the city to cut municipal vehicle emissions in half by 2025 and 80% by 2035.

If I was the driver and the train started rolling, I would have pulled myself onto the nearest car and headed forward back to the engine double-time.

Seth Clevenger, Transport Topics / November 19, 2018 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The perpetual drive toward improved fuel economy and tighter emission controls for diesel engines will push the trucking industry toward increasingly efficient, low-viscosity engine oils, technology experts at Shell Lubricants said. While engine oil might not be the first place fleets look to cut fuel costs, Shell made its case that many heavy-duty operations are leaving significant savings on the table. In the United States, even transitioning from a standard 15W-40 oil to a 10W-30 grade can unlock greater fuel economy, the company said. “There is still so much to gain by convincing customers to move to lower viscosity lubricants,” said Jason Brown, global technology manager for diesel engine oils at Shell. To validate its argument that lubricant selection can have an important effect on fuel efficiency, Shell conducted extensive testing of eight of its engine oils in 18 different diesel engines across three major markets — the United States, Germany and China. The company revealed the results of this global fuel-economy program here Nov. 16 at the Shell Rimula Ultimate Stopover event for global customers and trade press. In the United States, Shell tested various engine oils in six different trucks meeting 2010 emission standards that were equipped with diesel engines from Cummins, Detroit, Paccar, Navistar, Mack and Ford. The fuel-economy field trials, conducted at a test site in Texas, were designed to mirror real-world highway and urban driving conditions, Brown said. After 24 days of testing, including two tests on each truck-oil combination, Shell’s 10W-30 CK-4 engine oil demonstrated a 2.3% average fuel-economy benefit compared with its standard 15W-40 oil and a 1.4% gain compared with a 10W-40 grade. Meanwhile, Shell’s 10W-30 FA-4 oil showed a 2.6% fuel-efficiency improvement compared with the 15W-40 and a gain of more than 1.7% from the 10W-40. A prototype 0W-20 oil showed even stronger fuel-economy benefits: a gain of more than 3.7% versus the 15W-40 and a nearly 2.9% gain from the 10W-40. Although that 0W-20 grade won’t be viable until manufacturers begin designing their engines for such a low-viscosity oil, it does illustrate that significant opportunities remain to enhance the efficiency of lubricant, Brown said. However, the push to boost fuel efficiency must be tempered by the need to maintain engine protection in a range of applications and operating conditions, from heavy mining to high altitudes and extreme heat. “Designing ultra-thin, low-viscosity engine oils does open the world to you in fuel economy, but you have to balance that with the needs of the engine,” Brown said. “Thinner oils are definitely going to have to work harder and last longer. That’s the opportunity.” Shell said its fuel-efficiency tests in the United States and around the globe have given it more specific data to share with fleet customers and will allow the company to collaborate more closely with engine makers on future development. “If you really want to deliver fuel economy with true integrity and accuracy, you need to run it where the customers are, in their equipment,” Brown said. “You can’t just choose one engine and decide that’s applicable to the entire world.” Shell executives also reflected on the North American market’s recent transition to the American Petroleum Institute’s CK-4 and FA-4 engine oil categories, which became industry standards in December 2016. Chris Guerrero, global brand director for Shell Diesel Engine Oils, cited a “huge level of adoption” for CK-4, which replaced the CJ-4 category. “Largely, it is a CK-4 market in North America,” he said. However, adoption has been much slower for FA-4, which is designed specifically for newer engines and has limited backward compatibility. One barrier has been fleets’ preference to minimize complexity in their maintenance shops by carrying one engine oil instead of two, Guerrero said. Nonetheless, the longer term trend is moving toward higher efficiency, he said, and Shell’s work on FA-4 also will prepare the company for changes in other parts of the world. Shell markets its engine oils under the Shell Rotella brand in North America, while Shell Rimula is the company’s primary brand in much of the rest of the world. While 15W-40 remains the dominant engine oil viscosity in the North American market, there is a growing acceptance of lighter grades, said Dan Arcy, Shell’s global OEM technical manager and industry trade association liaison. Truck manufacturers are now factory-filling their vehicles with 10W-30 oils, he said. Looking further into the future, the industry may very well move to 0W-20 lubricants in heavy-duty diesels. “I think it will happen,” Arcy said. “How well and how fast that’ll be accepted is yet to be determined.”

"No stock available", and "No longer available" (NLA), are two different meanings. Does the Mack (brand) remanufacturing center in Middletown, Pennsylvania still offer the 4103-5000338059X ? Ask your Mack brand dealer to call its district parts representative (DPR) for assistance. Let us know the result.

So Renault Trucks owner, The Volvo Group, through its US arm Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA), refuses to provide water pumps for Mack MS200P and MS250P/T trucks, rebadged Renault Midlums, when the "group" through its Renault network in Europe still offers these service parts???

How does a train engineer live down getting out of a locomotive without engaging the brakes?

GM on pickup mpg: 'Don't look at the label' Michael Wayland, Automotive News / November 19, 2018 PHOENIX — When you make big investments in a pickup to improve fuel economy — think Ford's aluminum-body F-150 or the mild-hybrid system on Ram's 1500 — you expect significant results. So how does General Motors explain shifting to a four-cylinder turbo for its redesigned full-size pickups and getting little gain in combined EPA fuel economy ratings over the previous generation's V-6? As a work in progress. "I don't think we're done with the fuel economy piece yet," said Tim Herrick, executive chief engineer of GM's full-size trucks, during a Silverado media drive here. "We learn more and more every day." Squeezing fuel economy gains out of pickups is never easy. Ford's 2015 aluminum F-150 with a then-new 2.7-liter V-6 initially gained up to 4 mpg combined, while Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' 2019 Ram 1500 with eTorque gained up to 2 mpg overall. Those gains don't sound big, given the billions of dollars invested, but in percentage terms, they are huge, and their environmental impact — as measured by federal regulators — is magnified by the trucks' enormous sales volumes. Small improvement The EPA rated GM's 2.7-liter engine at 20 mpg city/23 highway/21 combined. While the city rating is up 13 percent, the combined rating is just 1 mpg more than for the 4.3-liter V-6 that the four-cylinder replaces as the standard volume engine. The 4x4 models get 1 mpg less. That puts GM's four-cylinder in line with comparable truck engines from Ford (3.3-liter V-6) and FCA (3.6-liter V-6 with a light hybrid system) that are rated at 22 mpg combined. Ford's 2.7-liter V-6 is rated at 22 combined mpg. Those engines, however, offer up to 25 or 26 mpg on the highway. "If you're delivering on everything, and you're getting the same fuel economy, the question is, 'Why?' " said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit. GM officials argue the EPA ratings don't tell the whole story. As with diesel engines, they say, fuel economy will be better in the real world than its predecessor and will at least match comparable V-6 models from competitors. "Don't look at the label," said Herrick. "We're as good or better than them in every step." EPA testing methods as well as a larger design footprint also may have played a role in the lower-than-expected ratings, which GM may look to address soon. GM said the four-cylinder engine still delivers in other ways. It's rated at 310 hp and 348 pound-feet of torque, vs. 285 hp and 305 pound-feet of torque for the 4.3-liter V-6. It's paired with an eight-speed transmission and will be standard on the new Silverado RST and popular Silverado LT trims. "Whatever they've done to create this engine now, they'll be able to improve it going forward," said Brinley, adding that automakers routinely improve fuel efficiency on new engines. GM said the new engine package goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than 7 seconds and weighs 380 pounds less than the previous model. GM also made changes to reduce turbo lag. "We wanted it to exceed our customers' expectations, all while delivering requirements that the government has set," said Kevin Luchansky, engine architect and assistant chief engineer of the 2.7-liter turbo. "The fact that it doesn't have two more cylinders on it doesn't hurt our customers at all." Racing fuel Getting the engine from lines on paper to production in four years didn't come without challenges. An early iteration of the engine would hit GM's desired targets only if it ran on racing fuel, Luchansky said. "You can't sell a pickup truck and need it to run on race gas," he said. "So we had a lot of work to do." Some of that work included contracting a third party — a common practice — to help with combustion development to deliver low-end torque comparable to a diesel. The focus on low-end torque was crucial, Luchansky said, because it provides better acceleration where drivers spend most of their time and helps with fuel economy in those settings. Chevrolet expects about 10 percent of Silverado sales to be the 2.7-liter engine, said Sandor Piszar, Chevrolet truck marketing director. Brinley said that despite the EPA's fuel economy numbers, if the four-cylinder trucks indeed perform better in real-world driving, that's "more important" to consumers than a number on the sticker. .

Ford aims to simplify – again Michael Martinez, Automotive News / November 19, 2018 Returning to a strategy that has worked before Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Hackett is channeling his inner Henry Ford to maximize profits on the next-generation Explorer: You can get any side-mirror color you'd like, as long as it's black. The automaker is slashing the number of different mirrors, from 139 today to 25 on the 2020 model, by including blind-spot monitoring on every vehicle and using only gloss-black mirror caps instead of matching them to the exterior paint. It's a small change but a telling example of how a rejuvenated Ford let itself fall out of shape after skirting bankruptcy — and the sort of bloat Hackett sees as a threat to Ford's "fitness." Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of global operations, last week described Hackett's strategy as a "more fundamental redesign than any time I've been at the company." At the same time, such streamlining is by no means a new concept for Ford, which made similar cost-cutting pronouncements under Alan Mulally a decade ago. Mulally vowed to cut the number of ways vehicles could be configured by more than half on 2009 models to help turn inventory faster. The Lincoln LS sedan, available in 50,000 varieties, was replaced by the MKS, with just 300. But within a few years, Ford had reverted to old habits amid a product blitz and a desire to generate extra revenue from more optional equipment. Bottom line takes a hit "It's an age-old problem that never seems to get solved," said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Autotrader. "It appears they took their eyes off the ball when things got good." Ford launched a record 23 new or updated vehicles in 2014, including a redesigned F-150 and Mustang. Hinrichs said the added complexity that more options created didn't fatten Ford's profits as much as anticipated. Now those decisions are coming back to hurt the automaker's bottom line as the lineup has aged. "We're not assuming we're going to get revenue for all that complexity and just go back to being simple about that configuration set," Hinrichs said last week at the Barclays Global Automotive Conference in New York. "There's a lot of learnings, as there always are, and now we're taking those learnings from North America and bringing them to the rest of the world." Under Hackett's direction, Ford is using "yield management" techniques to closely monitor individual vehicle lines and adjust prices and inventory to certain markets to make more money. It's part of his global restructuring, which is expected to cost Ford $11 billion over the next three to five years. The automaker has focused those techniques on its North American business, where a small team of executives gathers every Wednesday to study each nameplate and decide how to maximize its profits. The meetings prompted Ford to stop making a version of the Expedition with a smaller touch screen because it wasn't selling as quickly as the SUV with a larger screen. 'Part by part' The automaker also has cut the orderable configurations of its Fusion sedan to about 30 instead of 2,000. Hinrichs said that has reduced the time it takes to deliver Fusions to 30 days from more than 80. Similarly, Hinrichs said Ford is reducing the number of orderable combinations on the next-generation Escape to about 25 from around 1,000 now. "We're going part by part and product by product to attack all this complexity in the business," Hinrichs said. The moves have yet to convince Wall Street. Ford shares have fallen 22 percent this year, and investors at the Barclays conference questioned why these fairly straightforward moves weren't made years ago. Hinrichs said it's all "part of manufacturing and auto 101" before admitting to mistakes made in the 2012-14 time frame. "But like any business, there's an opportunity to see over time where you haven't stayed as fit or competitive as you've wanted to be, and you re-evaluate," he said. "You have to evolve to that next level."

Yes. .

That looks like a 316GC1184BX (different from a 316GC184NX).

Mack remanufactured part number..........4103-5000338059X

Is it not a 316GC184NX? (Mack remanufactured part number)

Global truck design is converging.

When you inquired with Watt's Mack (provider of the BMT website) or at your Mack brand distributor's parts department, with your model and serial number, what did they say?

As Freight on Trucks Becomes More Valuable, Thieves Get Creative in Their Attempts to Steal It Gary Frantz, Transport Topics / November 15, 2018 Virtually every commercial big-rig truck rolling down the highway these days is carrying goods that can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more than a million. For cargo thieves, those are inviting targets that are easy to attack, and in many cases the products can quickly be turned into cash on the black market. It’s an ever-evolving threat to motor carriers. Keeping cargo safe means defending against not only traditional methods but recognizing and overcoming emerging new tactics and techniques increasingly employed by the bad guys. These can include social engineering, “spoofing” technologies, identity theft, fictitious pickups using bogus shipping documents in which thieves impersonate legitimate drivers and companies, and criminals doing covert, organized site surveillance and intelligence gathering to plan a heist. “There are some things about cargo theft that haven’t changed that much over the years,” said Scott Cornell, who as crime and theft specialist at Travelers Insurance leads the company's transportation business and helped create its cargo theft investigation unit in 2005. Yet there have been significant changes, he said, including targeted commodities, technology-enabled cargo theft and criminals organizing into more sophisticated and dangerous groups. It’s enough to keep fleet safety and security managers up at night. However, the most effective defense against cargo theft is an educated, alert and aware driver. And that’s where fleets continue to spend time, effort and money to support drivers, keep them safe and their loads out of harm’s way. According to Sensitech’s second-quarter 2018 U.S. and Canada cargo theft analysis, 157 cargo thefts were reported in the period, slightly down from 2017. The average cargo value per theft event was $186,779 for a total of $29.3 million in losses. The thefts involved 342 stolen vehicles, including 120 semi-tractors and 155 semi-trailers. The most targeted goods: food, building supplies, household goods such as appliances, and electronics, including computers and televisions. Major over-the-road fleets engage drivers in formal training and education programs for safety, cargo security and theft prevention. Every driver with CFI undergoes orientation that stresses personal safety as well as cargo and equipment security, said Jeff Messer, security and safety analyst at the Joplin, Mo.-based truckload carrier, which has 2,000 drivers. The company communicates regular updates to drivers on cargo theft trends, prevention techniques, “hot spots” for theft to steer clear of or be extra vigilant about when dropping or picking up a load, as well as law enforcement bulletins and other safety-and-loss-prevention intelligence. Messer’s prevention tips for drivers: Always be aware and attentive to your surroundings. Be well rested. Use the restroom before departing. Have snacks already in the truck. Preplan your first stop. Do a thorough walk-around inspection of the truck — before and after any stop — and be fueled up prior to picking up a load. In a situation where a driver encounters a theft in progress, Messer says to call 911, then call the company security hotline. “A good witness is better than an endangered driver,” he said. CFI, similar to other carriers and security experts, recommends that upon departure, drivers travel without stopping for a minimum of 200 miles. A thief may trail a truck for an hour or so, but seldom will a thief go beyond that because most personal vehicles will need to stop and refuel. The company’s trucks also are equipped with GPS and devices that can be activated to render the truck inoperable. While the highest incidence of cargo theft tends to occur on the full-truckload side of the business, less-than-truckload carriers are not immune. In the LTL arena, the threat is mostly internal, where an employee may be approached by an outside perpetrator and encouraged to collude with the thief in a scheme involving a customer or goods at the trucking terminal. The key to prevention is regular, constant communication with all employees, ensuring they are aware of proper security and threat prevention procedures and protocols, said Geoff Stephany, director of cargo claims and security for Thomasville, N.C.-based Old Dominion Freight Line. “If you see something suspicious, know who to call and what to do,” Stephany said. The fleet preaches “see something, say something,” he said, noting the company’s top deterrent is informed and educated employees. ODFL ranks No. 11 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America. Meanwhile, there are two common types of cargo theft, Travelers’ Cornell said. A “straight” theft is one in which the cargo is stolen from the location where it sits. These usually are crimes of opportunity, in which a thief is looking for whatever can be stolen easily and sold quickly. Crimes such as these usually occur at a truck stop, a drop lot or other area where cargo is left unattended. The most common: a store parking lot or unsecured empty lot where a trailer is parked for the weekend, awaiting a Monday delivery. Countermeasures include not leaving trailers unattended or unmarried to the tractor, especially in remote or unsecured areas, and using high-security rear door locks and air cuff locks, Cornell said. Also, if the trailer can’t be moved to a secured area, or to the consignee’s secured warehouse and lot, consider installing landing gear locks as well. The other category, Cornell said, is “strategic” cargo theft. This method continues to evolve rapidly and is one in which the perpetrator is using deception or unconventional methods to trick the shipper, broker or carrier into giving up the load. One of these emerging techniques involves “social engineering.” In this case, the thief scours the internet for specific products, companies and warehouse locations while looking at public load boards for specific loads that match the products they want to steal. Thieves may even post false loads to load boards and solicit bids to get the information on the carrier they need to steal an identity, according to Cornell. Cargo thieves often look for loads late in the afternoon or on a Friday, figuring that the traffic manager is under pressure to get the load off the dock and will be less diligent in checking the bona fides of the driver. In this case, the perpetrator is impersonating the legitimate carrier. The thief shows up at the shipper an hour or more before the scheduled pickup, saying he’s early and wants to get on the road. The thief then will present forged paperwork, and in some cases may have the truck logoed and painted in the livery of the true carrier to appear legitimate. The shipper, not knowing it’s a fictitious carrier, lets the shipment go. Double-brokering scams, identity theft, deception schemes and organized crews doing targeted surveillance, as well as hybrids and combinations of these, are examples of strategic cargo theft tactics being used by sophisticated perpetrators. Cornell suggests the following practices for shippers to protect against “strategic” cargo theft: • Research carrier information though legitimate sources including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, third-party vetting companies and industry associations. • Work only with legitimate and licensed brokers that have strong controls in place for vetting carriers, ensuring their legitimacy and protecting cargo security. • Always check for positive driver and truck information at the pickup point. Verify the driver, truck and pickup confirmation numbers. If any suspicions arise, call the carrier or broker to verify and confirm the veracity of the driver. If the driver tries to give you a number, saying, “Here, call my dispatcher,” don’t use that number. Use the confirmed number and contact you already have for that carrier or broker. Nick Erdmann, business development manager for Transport Security Inc., has found that most thefts are planned. “Most thieves know what is coming out of a certain area, what’s being shipped,” he said. His company provides high-security trailer and container locks, truck locks and covert GPS tracking technologies. Often, a thief will scout a warehouse or trucking company terminal, watching and recording when trucks arrive and depart, and when cargoes would be most vulnerable. Sometimes thieves will even test a site’s security measures, purposely setting off a perimeter alarm and then seeing who reacts and how long it takes for law enforcement to arrive. That information is used to plan the heist. Another tactic: marking a trailer with a Sharpie pen or spray paint, essentially tagging the trailer, or attaching a portable GPS tracking device, hidden on the trailer. The thief then follows the trailer, and when parked, either breaks into it or steals the entire trailer. Erdmann’s advice to drivers: “Don’t talk about your loads to anyone, at a truck stop or on the CB. Report any suspicious activity.” As for ODFL’s drivers, Stephany coaches on the fundamentals. Never leave a truck’s cab unlocked — even when moving. Always lock the trailer after every stop. “If your gut tells you something is not right,” Stephany said, “it’s probably accurate.”

When you called the parts department at your Mack brand distributor to purchase a reman unit, what did they say?

Renault Trucks Press Release / November 14, 2018 Renault Trucks is expanding its range of used trucks and bringing out a new model from the "Used Trucks Factory" incorporated into the Bourg-en-Bresse manufacturing site. The T P-Road is the result of converting Renault Trucks T Tractors into Rigids to meet customer demand. Renault Trucks is bringing out a customized used rigid - the T P-Road - to meet the specific requirements of customers looking for high-quality, certified, used rigids. This new model (a Renault Trucks T X-Road worksite supply truck) is the latest addition to the manufacturer's existing "Used Trucks Factory" range of customized used vehicles. In the Used Trucks Factory workshop at the Bourg-en-Bresse manufacturing site, rigorously-selected, recent, used tractors are first checked against a more than 200-point checklist before being converted in accordance with the truck builder's manufacturing standards. Prior to any conversion, Renault Trucks design office and quality engineers carry out a specific study of each conversion project. The industrial manufacturing process and quality control meet the same demanding standards as those applied when manufacturing a new vehicle. To carry out the conversion, the cab, drive chain and suspension are first removed so that the existing rails can be replaced by new rails with a customized wheelbase. This guarantees the vehicle's robustness and suitability for any type of body and purpose. The T P-Road undergoes the same strict quality control and systematic road test as new vehicles before delivery to Renault Trucks dealerships. The T P-Road is currently available in the 4x2 frame version, with a choice of three different wheelbase lengths (5600, 6000 and 6500 mm) as required. Vehicles can also be customized for driving schools and removal companies. The T P-Road is guaranteed for one year or 120,000 km. This manufacturer's guarantee (Selection Label) covers all drive chain components (engine, gearbox and bridges). .

DAF Trucks Press Release / November 14, 2018 .

How America is preparing for a third world war Katrina Manson, The Financial Times / November 16, 2018 Robot-soldiers, stealth jets and drone armies: the future of war Couscous might not be the most obvious harbinger of World War III. But in the corner of a spartan army warehouse on the coast of Maryland, I find myself eyeballing a pallet of 48 boxes of the foodstuff more usually associated with peacenik vegans. Jason Pusey, a mechanical engineer, thinks these dry particles, when shot through with air, will fluff up enough to approximate the conditions of water without electrocuting him in the process. That will help him in his quest to develop the perfect set of gaits for his military robot. “I’m trying to develop the fundamental technologies, transitioning between walking to trotting to galloping to maybe bounding or to jumping,” he says. “What if I want to run through water? When a lifeguard runs out into the water, he high-steps.” The autonomous military vehicles of the future — whether tanks, robots or drones — may have legs rather than tracks or wheels. Besides humans on the beach, Pusey avidly watches nature documentaries to help translate the speed of a cheetah, the energetic burst of a greyhound or the dexterity of a jumping lemur to one single, extraordinarily capable robot. “Our legs are very intelligent things,” he tells me. I am in the depths of Aberdeen Proving Ground, which is home to a sprawling high-security army research base dedicated to reshaping the military 50 years into the future. “Making today’s army and the next army obsolete,” goes its tagline. Created as a bomb-testing site in the first world war, it became a hub for biochemical weapons in the 1990s. Today it hosts the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the sole US location for emerging tactical offensive warfare in cyber and electronics. This is ground zero for the weaponry of World War III, a war that — if it happens — many believe will be fought by robots. At research centres such as this one, the US military machine is developing futuristic weapons to rival even the most adventurous inventions of sci-fi writers. The advance of artificial intelligence brings with it the prospect of robot-soldiers battling alongside humans — and one day eclipsing them altogether. Other weapons under development in the US include hypersonics — missiles that travel at five times the speed of sound. Then there are electronic weapons such as the railgun, which will fire bullets with an electromagnetic force that far exceeds conventional firepower, and directed energy weapons such as lasers that travel at the speed of light and could one day zap missiles, drones, aircraft and satellites silently from a distance. “You [could] kill multiple inbound missiles with a single laser,” says Trey Obering, former head of the Missile Defense Agency, who as a boy watched films about aliens with lasers for eyes. “The speed of warfare would be blinding.” The war of the future will look completely different to conventional ideas of battle. Jammers could block satellites that militaries depend on for intelligence and navigation. Cyber warfare could target electricity grids, water networks, financial systems, hospitals and the families of military commanders. As attacks on infrastructure become more likely, scientists hope that quantum computing will offer the best chance of defence; in the nearer term, quantum navigation could relieve militaries of reliance on GPS satellites and space. More than 20,000 people are based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground’s 72,000-acre complex. It is an incongruous spot for warfare, with children’s playgrounds, leisure boats and tree-lined boulevards beside the Chesapeake Bay. But with names such as Tank Street , Radar Road and Combat Drive, it is also unmistakably the martial face of research. One team is testing precisely how a bullet bursts through material. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game: each time the enemy makes a better bullet, we have to make better protection,” says physicist Michael Zellner. Another is immersed in developing a mechanical frame to give soldiers a “third arm” — the world’s only known exoskeleton research project aimed at the upper body. Zachary Wingard, the mechanical engineer who co-conceived the contraption, tells me the aim is to offset the recoil and weight of tomorrow’s higher-performance weapons. Meanwhile, in a bomb cave never before entered by journalists, scientists are testing the next generation of explosive materials. Reminiscent of an air-raid shelter, the cave has thick metal walls pitted with the marks of repeated attacks as researchers painstakingly record and assess data on potential compounds. Back in Pusey’s warehouse, a baby robot known as the Minitaur scuttles across the floor, bending its mechanised knees with a determined stamp that evokes insect, dog and horror movie all at once. The Minitaur’s offspring may one day scout out dangerous combat zones, deploy bombs or fire weapons. Researchers here are working to deliver an autonomous system that relies on artificial intelligence so that dextrous and capable robots can execute orders based on commands from soldiers in the field. “When we really have legged, intelligent machines operating on the battlefield, that will be a serious step . . . You can use your imagination as to what a pack of these things can do to an enemy tank,” says Alexander Kott, chief scientist at ARL. Kott, who has studied artificial intelligence for more than 30 years, says we are watching a new generation of intelligence unfold. “Robots probably will fight robots, absolutely, there’s no question about it.” Couscous, it turns out, is playing a role in a rapidly accelerating technological arms race that will change the way wars are fought for ever. And it is a prospect that is bringing China and the US head to head. Predictions of a third world war have been around since the conclusion of the second. In today’s imaginings, the chief enemy is China, and the US is on the back foot. Peter Singer’s 2015 novel Ghost Fleet, co-written with August Cole, envisages a war in which China strikes early, disabling sophisticated US communications in space and forcing America to rely on a near-defunct fleet of ships, while China relies on a “central nerve cell” of hackers. Defence officials seized on the book’s central message. The authors have briefed military chiefs, the White House and special operations. Singer has seen many of his predictions come true. “August and I often have a ‘Ghost Fleet’ moment of the day — when something in the real world happens from the novel,” he says. “They’re coming pretty fast and furious now from the technological aspect.” Over whisky at a bar near the Pentagon, a senior national security official tells me that the US has wasted years on wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. “We’ve been occupied by fighting low-tech conflict against people who lob rockets out the back of trucks, and all along China has got savvy and crept up on us. That’s now our focus.” Defence officials say China deliberately studied the US approach to conflict as far back as the Gulf war in the 1990s. They say Beijing determined that while it could never match American air power, it could boost its own missile capabilities and invest in technologies of the future that specifically target American vulnerabilities. An edgy US defence establishment is now responding. Today, China has top billing in the Trump administration’s national security and defence strategies. Increasingly, the US is realising it is no longer the world’s only superpower — a humiliating climbdown that military planners have been slow to embrace. Many believe the days of great power competition — and the prospect of full-blown war between technologically advanced and nuclear-armed states — are back. “[China] is building the most capable and well-funded military in the world, after our own,” says the US national security strategy, issued in December. The document accuses China of spreading “features of its authoritarian system” and rejects Beijing’s protestations that it has sought only a “peaceful rise”. US defence secretary Jim Mattis warned at the launch of the national defence strategy in January that the US was losing its military edge “in every domain of warfare”, citing air, land, sea, space and cyberspace. That was in part aimed at an ultimately successful push for Congress to vote through more military spending, which at $700bn this year eclipses China’s growing defence budget by more than three to one. But Donald Trump has also plunged his administration into an explicit and all-consuming rivalry with China. He is determined to ensure that the country of 1.4 billion people with a $14tn economy can never “be bigger than us” — pushing back on trade, intellectual property, industrial espionage and soft power as well as US reliance on Chinese chips and chemicals for its defence-industrial base. The US is also worried that China is more effective at co-opting commercial know-how for military purposes as part of its “military-civil fusion” and for its extensive new scientific endeavours. “Twenty years ago [the state of Chinese research was] a joke,” Kevin McNesby, an army research chemist, tells me. “But all their students have been training with our professors . . . They’re no joke now.” By 2035, some in the US assess that it may be unable to stop Beijing if it launches military operations off the Chinese mainland. China has already developed a barrage of precision-guided missiles of a range and sophistication the US has never fought before. An incoming hypersonic missile could destroy a ship or give American missile defences at home only six minutes to respond to an attack, say experts. The US has no way to defend against them yet. Worse, a hypersonic missile could theoretically carry a nuclear warhead. “The US has never had to fight against an adversary that has been able to throw as deep and as dense as the US,” says Bob Work, former deputy defence secretary. He argues that the use of guided munitions in any future war will be so “widespread and profound” that it will make “a lot of sense to be the one to shoot first”. The prospect of a pre-emptive attack represents a huge shift for the US war-fighting machine, which he says maintains clear superiority today only with its submarine fleet. Even then China’s fleet may overtake America’s by 2030. The US, for its part, has never shied away from wielding its military might. Some worry that it is America’s focus on weapons development and fear of China’s rise that could goad the world towards war rather than Beijing’s ambition. The US already has troops in 177 countries. It drops more than 20,000 bombs a year on the Middle East and has 14,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, its longest-running conflict. Rather than accommodate China’s rise, Washington still largely believes in domination. The US remains far and away the most powerfully equipped fighting force in the world, and public martial spirit is strong. It is the only country to have detonated a nuclear bomb in wartime. “We’ve been in an arms race for 10 years,” Dr Frank Hoffman tells me over lunch at the National Defense University in Washington DC. A retired marine officer and military strategist, he researches the future of war and helps train the next generation of generals. “There are a lot of reasons why the next 20 years are going to be a lot more unstable than the last 20 were on balance. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have a war, but the likelihood is far higher than it has been in the past.” While strategists do not expect China or the US to launch a direct attack on each other, they fear that a battle for regional hegemony — over Taiwan or the South China Sea — could trigger a wider conflict. The US is selling arms to Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that China regards as a rogue province and a potential flashpoint between the two countries. James Fanell, a retired US navy captain and China hawk, told Congress he believes China is actively thinking about invading Taiwan by 2030 as part of a bid for regional and global supremacy. China has taken an increasingly assertive line in public. In October last year, President Xi Jinping called for China to embrace a “ new era” and move “closer to centre stage”. He wants to build a world-class military by 2049, the centenary of Communist party rule. Last month, clad in camouflage, he told military commanders to prepare “for fighting a war”, part of his bid to build a combat mindset. China has boosted military spending, expanded air and maritime training and increased Chinese participation in UN peacekeeping operations, exposing its soldiers to combat for the first time since the 1970s. Last year it established its first overseas military base, in Djibouti. (The Chinese Ministry of National Defence did not respond to the FT’s request to comment on its military ambitions.) Pentagon officials say in private how alarmed they are at Xi’s overhaul of the constitution in March, when he scrapped term limits, giving the president, they say, a mantle of power approaching that of “emperor”. China has developed its own stealth fighter jets and put missiles and bombers on a string of disputed artificial islands in the South China Sea, despite a promise from Xi to Barack Obama in 2015 that China did not intend to “pursue militarisation”. Those reinforcements make it harder for US military bases in the Pacific, from Guam to Japan to Hawaii, to be confident they could mount a successful attack on the Chinese mainland so far away from home. While America has 11 aircraft carriers to China’s two, US defence officials worry that China could use its militarised island bases as vast floating aircraft carriers, and would quickly seize the upper hand in any fight off the Chinese mainland. Perhaps most importantly for America’s military planners, China has vowed to draw equal with the US in artificial intelligence within two years, overtake it by 2025 and become the dominant world force by 2030. This is no small ambition. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world,” predicted Russian president Vladimir Putin last year. For Jim Mattis, the question is what such technological advances will do to the very nature of war. He wonders whether, one day, AI, machine learning and robots might remove that most human of qualities from battle — fear. Mattis has studied the early 19th-century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who argues that the best victories come from wars fought deep inside enemy territory, and that surprise in combat is often elusive. Like Clausewitz, Mattis sees uncertainty and fear as essential ingredients of war. But he has spent long enough contemplating the coming shift in warfare to know he cannot yet comprehend it. “I’m not there yet in my own thinking about it,” he tells me, in his first one-on-one interview with a national newspaper since he took office. We are aboard his “doomsday” plane — so advanced it doubles as a flying nuclear bunker, so old-school it has defunct ashtrays and the 1980s upholstery to match. A retired four-star marine general who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mattis takes a thoughtful yet unforgiving approach to warfare. Known for his pithy bons mots — “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet” — he still revels in a call sign his colleagues once gave him: Colonel Has An Outstanding Solution, aka “Chaos”. Nowadays he is often hailed as a warrior monk. The day we speak, in early September, he is on a 22-hour flight to India to sign new military cooperation agreements that will bed down a US hope of Delhi becoming a high-tech military counterweight to Beijing. But he does not think the US is headed for war with China. “I’m not one of those who think there is automatically a conflict in the future,” he tells me, referring to former Pentagon official Graham Allison’s notion of a Thucydides trap — in which a rising power displaces an incumbent through war. Earlier in the year, Mattis attended a banquet, topped with a late-night serenade, among military dignitaries in Beijing. “They throw me a party like you won’t believe,” he recalls. Amid the niceties, however, China declared it would not yield “even one inch” of the South China Sea. Mattis had earlier accused China of “intimidation and coercion”, days after he abruptly cancelled Beijing’s participation in large-scale naval exercises in the Pacific. A senior security official told me that Mattis privately warned his counterparts they would be at a disadvantage against an adversary so experienced as the US, playing on Chinese fears of combat inadequacy. Things deteriorated fast. In October, Mattis cancelled a second trip to Beijing amid rising military tensions after a US destroyer narrowly avoided collision with a Chinese warship in the South China Sea. Last week the two sides tried again — defence minister General Wei Fenghe, who last month trotted out standard warnings of Chinese military action “at all costs” to preserve Taiwan, flew to Washington to meet Mattis. “It just seems to me there is an anti-domination tension for both of us,” Mattis says. But he points to China’s aggressive authoritarian streak, framing the tension as a face-off between two systems with vastly different values. “[As] they come of age and they find you can’t just go in and take over other people’s harbours, collateral and stuff, there’s going to be a discipline.” Ultimately, he says, it is critical for the two countries to “look at what kind of relationship we can develop” and — without saying explicitly that he expects China and the US to trade places — points to the fact that, when the US finally overtook the UK as global power in the early part of the 20th century, the pair managed to avoid a military showdown because they largely shared the same values. However, none of this has stopped Mattis from preparing the US for war. He tells me of extensive efforts to determine which futuristic technologies show “the most promise or could be the biggest game-changer . . . We have truly got a rocket scientist to do the further-out stuff,” he says with pride. Mattis means Michael Griffin, chief technical officer at the Pentagon. The former head of Nasa is tasked with bringing the US war machine into the next age. He is rushing to deliver the military hardware of the future, and wants to avoid “a man-on-man fight” with China. “That’s not the kind of fight we wish to have, and we probably can’t win that fight,” says Griffin. Instead, he is charged with delivering breakthroughs in mind-boggling new technologies — not only artificial intelligence but also hypersonics, quantum science, lasers, nuclear weapons and electronic warfare. Outpacing China will require speeding up development cycles. At the moment, says Griffin, it takes the US on average 16 years to deliver an idea to operational capability, versus fewer than seven for China. “This is not behaviour of which we should be proud,” Griffin tells me when we meet at the Pentagon. “The Chinese have tested several dozen hypersonic attack vehicles over the last 10 years, and most have been successful. There’s no doubt in our mind that such a capability . . . is designed to, and will, keep our carriers out of the fight.” But all that is about to change. “We have no choice but to respond in kind,” he says. “We will be weaponising from a position of catch-up. But we will catch up, OK?” In an anonymous colossus of reflective glass in Arlington, Virginia, scientists at a US government agency are working on the next breakthrough for military technologies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), part of the Department of Defense’s innovation arm, was brought to life in a hurry after the Russians came up with Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, in 1957. Dedicated to preventing and initiating strategic surprise, this “genius factory” went on to invent the precursor to the internet. “They’re focused on what is the best and most innovative thing that can be done with the physics and technology that we have,” says Griffin. Some at Darpa work on quantum science in a bid to secure the cryptography breakthroughs of the future; others worry over new types of command and control. Jean-Charles Ledé, an engineer, is entrenched in autonomous flying systems. US-based ground controllers of drones already drop bombs and collect intelligence in Afghanistan, Somalia and beyond. But swarms of drones, coordinated via artificial intelligence at lightning-fast speeds, could offer the prospect of mass attacks of hundreds of combat robots that can make targeting decisions as a team on the fly. Together they could theoretically overwhelm much larger fighter jets or even aircraft carriers. In his otherwise nondescript office, Ledé is flanked by a mini-parachute and a broken propeller. “We don’t have a monopoly [on drone-swarm technology], other people will eventually get it,” he tells me. “What then? How am I going to protect myself against people who might try to use it against me?” His idea is that drones carrying nets could effectively “catch” rival drones. (Beyond the homeland, where preventing civilian casualties is paramount, lasers might be a more appropriate means of attack.) The broken propeller serves as a reminder of quite how many failures it takes to succeed. Ledé and his team have spent years trying to develop a fast-flying autonomous reconnaissance drone that can find its way around a building without a human operator, a map or any connection to navigation systems such as GPS, which he says has now become a “major vulnerability” because of how easy it is to jam. The availability of drones on the commercial market means he can afford to go through many cheap parts. “[We] basically don’t leave the test until all the airplanes are broken. If it works, then I say ‘Go faster; find out when it doesn’t work!’ ” The aim is for the drone to learn its environment and transmit a map back to base without human or navigational help. “The project itself was about developing the algorithms,” he says. His team’s research, a world first, is another step on the ladder to the sort of machine learning that can underpin wars of the future. It will soon transfer to the US Army Research Lab for further testing. In August, US satellites came under attack. Senior airmen at a base in Colorado speedily repositioned them, without moving them so far that they had to abandon their function. This time around, the attack was a simulation, played out from behind computer screens. Such exercises are common across the military, but these were the first focused on space.

Nikola claims US$12 billion in hydrogen truck pre-orders Truck News / November 15, 2018 PHOENIX, Arizona – Hydrogen truck maker Nikola says it has raised another US$210 million and now boasts US$12 billion in pre-orders. About $380 million of those were for the recently announced Nikola Tre European cabover. “Once the Nikola Tre arrives in Europe, diesel will finally be on its way out,” said CEO Trevor Milton. “Now that we are funded and oversubscribed, we are kicking it into high gear and preparing for Nikola World 2019. At Nikola World, you will see the USA Nikola Two prototype in action and be able to step foot in our European Nikola Tre. We also have a few surprises for the show from our powersports division and other new product announcements.” The company says it will have hydrogen coverage in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia by 2028.

Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / November 15, 2018 The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has adopted a new emissions tracking program that would help regulators identify vehicles with excess smog-related and greenhouse gas emissions. As part of new amendments to the On-Board Diagnostic Regulations that were recently approved by CARB, Real Emissions Assessment Logging (REAL) would require an On-Board Diagnostic system to collect and store emissions data from NOx on medium- and heavy-duty diesel trucks while in-use. The REAL amendment would also require OBD systems to collect and store fuel consumption data that would be used to track CO2 emission on all heavy-duty vehicles in use. Currently OBD systems notify drivers when emissions components of malfunctioning, but by having access to a log of a vehicle’s emissions output in everyday use, CARB believes it would be able to spot widespread issues more easily. Currently, the only way to get a snapshot of a vehicle’s emissions performance, CARB has to either bring it into a laboratory of testing or equip a handful of vehicles with Portable Emissions Measurement Systems equipment. “REAL will provide the ability to monitor all vehicles for emissions performance, and allow us to spot trouble faster. Had this program been available sooner, we would likely have recognized widespread, serious problems with manufacturers such as Volkswagen and Cummins much earlier,” said Richard Corey, CARB executive officer. “California’s vehicle fleet is getting cleaner every year but we still have a lot of work to do to reach our air quality and climate change goals. The REAL program is yet another way to utilize the OBD system and help ensure that engines and vehicles maintain low emissions throughout their full lives.” Storage of similar emissions data is already required for light-duty and medium-duty vehicles starting in model year 2019. The REAL data can be retrieved from a vehicle by plugging in a scan tool or data reader into the vehicle. No new technology will be required for the REAL program since it will take advantage of existing sensors to track the necessary data. Older vehicles will not be a part of the REAL program and will not require any new equipment, according to CARB.

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