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Giuliani: Defeating ISIS Is an Early Focus for Trump The Wall Street Journal / November 14, 2016 Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump would likely focus much of his initial foreign-policy strategy on destroying ISIS, setting aside more vexing problems in the Middle East and elsewhere. Mr. Giuliani is one of the leading candidates to become Mr. Trump’s first secretary of state. On Monday, Mr. Giuliani suggested several times that he would be interested in the post. “ISIS, short-term I believe, is the greatest danger and not because ISIS is in Iraq and in Syria, but because ISIS did something al Qaeda never did—ISIS was able to spread itself around the world,” he said. In the Middle East, Mr. Giuliani painted a picture of a collection of countries that are at odds with each other and on the brink of spilling into a broader regional war. He said Iran had exerted its control over Iraq and Syria. On Iraq, Mr. Trump has said the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 was one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in U.S. history, but Mr. Giuliani had a different take. “I think the way we exited Iraq was the worst decision made in American history,” he said, saying it allowed ISIS to flourish in the vacuum that was created.

UD South Africa - http://www.udtrucks.com/en-za/home . .

Is the U.S. heavy truck sales slump over? Calculated Risk / November 14, 2016 The following graph shows heavy truck sales since 1967 using data from the BEA. The dashed line is the October 2016 seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR). Heavy truck sales really collapsed during the recession, falling to a low of 181 thousand in April and May 2009, on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis (SAAR). Then sales increased more than 2 1/2 times, and hit 479 thousand SAAR in June 2015. Heavy truck sales have since declined again - probably mostly due to the weakness in the oil sector - and were at 374 thousand SAAR in October. Even with the recent oil related decline, heavy truck sales are at about the average (and median) of the last 20 years. Sales have been at about the same level for four consecutive months. It is possible the oil related slump in heavy truck sales is over. .

This year’s Cold Comfort saw the launch of the Epoke ‘Beast’, with four machines on order for Lincolnshire County Council already. Transport Network / June 10, 2016 The Epoke Sirius Ast 10m3 pre-wet spreader is fitted with the Epoke’s Epomaster X1 control system and mounted to a 32-tonne Mercedes Arocs 4143 8x6 chassis. The machine also comes with Eposat automated spreading and EpoNav route guidance and is fitted with a Scarab - Riko SPV320 fully hydraulic ‘V’ plough with Kupper plough edges and controlled by the Scarab Smart Can plough control system. The Beast features a stainless steel unloaded auger system meaning the salt in the hopper is metered by the Epoke dosing mechanism into the auger rather than being pushed through a variable aperture via a conveyor belt. Chair of the National Winter Service Research Group (NWSRG), and principal maintenance engineer at Lincolnshire County Council, David Davies, told Transport Network said the new augur system should ensure accurate spreading while reducing the amount of salt spillage, which can corrode the vehicle, extending the operating life and reducing overall whole life costs. His authority takes all its vehicles on a 10-year lease agreement with full maintenance. With the Beasts' order, the authority hopes to save £4,000 per annum through the new lease and Mr Davies said it should also make savings on some of the routes due to extra salt capacity of the 32-tonne vehicles. Mr Davies said: ‘The issue for us is we wanted to replace four 6x6 machines, which were Volvo 26 tonne vehicles. We needed big pushers that can handle the Lincolnshire Wolds environment. The problem is with the Euro 6 standards 6x6 Euro 6 vehicles can’t carry the same weight we require. ‘The Beast is an 8x6 Mercedes 32-tonne chassis and is only about one foot longer. So it is a similar size but we can upgrade to a 10m3 body for the salt storage.’ He added Lincolnshire’s order is equipped with multi-angle blades, giving the option of V blades or straight blade, which can be very useful tackling the extra snow in the Wolds. .

Transport Engineer / November 14, 2016 Essential Fleet Services has taken delivery of four 8x6 Mercedes-Benz Arocs gritters – the UK’s first – for its contract with Lincolnshire County Council. The vehicles are Arocs 4143 AKs with ClassicSpace M-Cabs, 428bhp six-cylinder engines and PowerShift 12-speed automated transmissions. Their Danish-built Epoke gritting bodies were fitted and supplied, along with demountable Riko V snowploughs complete with Küper blades, by UK agent Scarab, of Tonbridge, Kent. Key to the order, won by dealer Intercounty Truck & Van, was the availability of a factory-fitted front drive axle, as well as the proven reliability of previous Mercedes-Benz vehicles and dealer back-up. The council’s fleet of 47 gritters, leased through Essential Fleet Services, are mainly 6x4 Mercedes Axors. The four new 8x6 Arocs have replaced 6x6 vehicles by another manufacturer – two are based at its Willingham Hall depot near Market Rasen, and one each at Horncastle and Manby. The 32-tonne Mercedes-Benz chassis offers a gritter body with carrying capacity of 10 cubic metres. The vehicle can travel further and stay out for longer than its 26-tonne predecessor before it has to reload. As with previous gritters, the council’s new trucks are equipped with sprayers that pre-wet the dry salt with a brine and water solution just before it reaches the spinner, so it clings better to the surface and is not blown away. This allows the salt to melt snow and ice more quickly. David Davies, the council’s principal maintenance engineer and fleet manager, says: “Three-drive axles are essential for operation in the Lincolnshire Wolds, which are very susceptible to bad weather coming off the North Sea. The fact that our new Arocs were available direct from the factory as a complete, winterised package makes a big difference – Mercedes-Benz have met all our expectations.” The Arocs are the subject of 10-year agreements with Lincoln-based Essential Fleet Services, which supports 42 local authorities from its nationwide service centres. It owns a fleet of more than 1,000 trucks, some 300 of which are Mercedes-Benz rigids, among them a number of Econic refuse vehicles. Essential’s national fleet engineer John Dimbleby agrees that the availability ex-factory of the 8x6 Arocs chassis was crucial: “The online build is very reassuring in terms of anticipated reliability and warranty cover, because once you start dealing with ‘add ons’ you’re just introducing another element that can go wrong,” he says. “Gritting chassis don’t cover high mileages but although they’re washed down after every run, they do spend time standing in wet, salty atmospheres that can play havoc, for example, with their electronics. Mercedes-Benz trucks are without doubt the most reliable on our fleet,” he adds. .

Engineering News / November 14, 2016 South Africa’s new truck market is under pressure, with a 10% drop in sales likely in 2016, says UD Trucks Southern Africa (UDTSA) marketing director Rory Schulz. This means the new truck market should end the year around the 25,000 mark. The decline in the market reflects the bad fortunes of the South African economy, with almost zero economic growth expected in 2016. Schulz says new medium and extra-heavy truck sales are “down dramatically”. Appetite in the mining and construction sectors especially has dipped sharply. The heavy truck market is, however, “very stable”. Sales in this bread-and-butter segment reflect the need for food and other basic goods to still reach the shelf. But it’s not all bad news, says Schulz. The economic growth experienced in 2016 is as low as witnessed in 2009, when the truck market could only notch up around 19,000 units for the year. “We have already surpassed 19,000 units this year, so the truck market has done reasonably well,” says Schulz. He is hopeful that the market has bottomed out, with growth of between 1.5% and 3% possible next year, largely in the second half of the year. “This will bring us closer to 30,000 units again.” South Africa’s new truck market stood at 22,593 units for the first ten months of 2016. Another yearly decline in the market will follow on a 3.2% drop seen in 2015 over 2014. Volvo Group Reshuffles A reshuffle in the boardroom at truckmaker Volvo seems to have handed Japanese-based UD Trucks [formerly Nissan Diesel] back some of the autonomy lost when it was acquired by the Swedish group. Volvo – which includes Volvo, Renault and UD Trucks – last year named Martin Lundstedt as its new chief executive. “We are now a brand-focused organisation,” says UD Trucks Southern Africa acting VP Gert Swanepoel. Pressed on what this means, Volvo Group Trucks Asia and Joint Ventures sales president Jacques Michel says Lundstedt had determined that the Volvo truck group will no longer be a multi-brand organization, but that it would rather focus on its individual brands. “So, the organization is shifting. It is a big change compared with what we have heard before. It is good change for the UD brand.” UD Trucks is now focused only on UD Trucks, “managing its own future”. South Africa is UD Trucks’ biggest market outside Japan. Swanepoel is hopeful UDTSA is now in a position “to bring its business back to the old levels” seen before the acquisition. Schulz says UDTSA will continue truck assembly at its Rosslyn plant, near Pretoria. Kenya “is a priority for us in the next few years”, also in terms of assembly, urged on by the East African country’s duty structure, he adds. Looking ahead, he says UDTSA will focus on the heavy and extra-heavy truck segments in the short to medium term. “In the long term we want to focus on all segments.” UDTSA has lost substantial ground in the medium truck segment in recent years. Overall UD sales in South Africa have dropped from 2,992 units in 2012, to 2,559 units in 2015. As part of its short-term plans, UD Trucks will launch three new additions to its Quester heavy truck range. This includes a rigid 4 x 2, a rigid 6 x 2 and a 6 x 4 dedicated compactor chassis with Allison transmission fitted as standard. These new models will all be available from December. “Our strategy to promote Quester in the rigid segments, such as construction and waste, as well as the municipal business, has certainly proved successful since the product range was launched in South Africa in 2015,” says Swanepoel. “We are expanding this strategy to offer our customers what they need and adapting to market needs.” The Quester range was recently launched in Ethiopia, and will be introduced in several markets within the southern and eastern Africa region within the next year. UDTSA is responsible for 18 markets outside South Africa. .

Europe's top truckmakers could face 100 billion euro cartel damages claim Reuters / November 14, 2016 Litigation management company Bentham Europe plans to fund a potential 100 billion euro ($110 billion) damages claim against Europe's biggest truck makers after they admitted to operating a 14-year price cartel. Bentham said on Monday it intends to back a group action on behalf of truck buyers who fell victim to the cartel involving Volvo, Daimler, Paccar's DAF, CNH Industrial's Iveco and Volkswagen's MAN. Four truck makers were fined a record 2.9 billion euros by EU regulators in July for price fixing and passing on to customers the costs of complying with stricter emission rules. Volkswagen's MAN escaped a fine after it blew the whistle, but all five conceded that they had operated a cartel between 1997 and 2011 apart from VW stablemate Scania, which remains under investigation. Bentham Europe, owned by funds managed by U.S. investment firm Elliott Management, estimates that 10 million trucks were sold across the EU in the period and that each one was overpriced by about 10,500 euros. Bentham, which is also funding shareholder lawsuits against British supermarket chain Tesco and VW, said that it is too soon to announce which law firm would bring its proposed claim or in which European jurisdiction it would be filed. Third-party litigation funding has become increasingly mainstream in the UK over the past seven years. Funders offer to pay for lawsuits in exchange for a share of any payout and returns can be sizeable, but it is a high-risk business and payments for successful claims can take years to materialize. Critics say that litigation funding operators can bully smaller companies by threatening class actions. But Bentham Europe, whose competitors include the likes of Burford Capital and United States-based Gerchen Keller Capital, says it only takes on sizeable claims where it scents proper misconduct. "Bentham is determined to bring the opportunity to recover the overcharges to the attention of as many truck purchasers as it can and enable these victims of the cartel collectively to seek redress," said Bentham Europe's Chief Investment Officer Jeremy Marshall. "Claims against the truck cartel are expected to be one of the largest-ever compensation claims resulting from a cartel ruling."

Dagens Industri / November 14, 2016 Five of Europe's largest truck manufacturers, including Volvo, are threatened in a lawsuit by its customers through a class action. It has previously been disclosed to the companies for 14 years colluded in a price cartel, something Volvo's CEO Martin Lundstedt acknowledged for DI in July this year. Litigation management company Bentham Europe has published truck buyers' plans to file a 100 billion euro ($110 billion) damages claim, corresponding to approximately SEK 1 billion (Swedish Krona). Last summer, the European Commission fined four of the manufacturers, Volvo, Daimler, Paccar and CNH Industrial [Iveco], of 2.9 billion euros. Germany’s MAN, controlled by VW Group, avoided EU fines for helping to expose the cartel. The cartel operated from 1997 to 2011. Bentham Europe estimates that 10 million trucks were sold across the EU in the period and that each one was overpriced by about 10,500 euros. Scania’s claims* that it did not participate in the cartel are still being investigated by the European Commission. * http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/46111-truckmakers-get-record-324-billion-eu-fine-for-cartel/#comment-339708 .

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UAW reaches deals with Navistar, Clark County engineer’s office Springfield News-Sun / November 14, 2016 The United Auto Workers Local 402 has ratified a deal for more than 100 workers at Springfield’s Navistar facility, and reached an agreement with employees in the Clark County Engineer’s Office. The two most recent agreements would mean all four of the UAW’s bargaining units are currently under contract, said Jason Barlow, president of the UAW Local 402. The units include Navistar’s Springfield production facility, Navistar’s Truck Specialty Center Bargaining Unit, the Clark County Engineer’s office and Akzo Nobel Paint in Springfield. The UAW Local 402 represents more than 1,100 Navistar workers at its Springfield plant. Hourly workers in the county engineer’s office were scheduled to vote on ratify a proposed three-year contract Monday evening, and no further details were immediately available. That deal, which covers about 25 workers, included changes in overtime pay, clothing allowances and other benefits, as well as raises each year of the deal, Barlow said. Members of Navistar’s Truck Specialty Center Bargaining Unit also recently ratified a four-year contract with Navistar, covering workers at the company’s Springfield facility, Barlow said. The unit represents 131 UAW mechanics who perform truck modifications and pre-delivery inspection service on two shifts. “This year was kind of a perfect storm,” Barlow said of the recent contracts. The union and company reached a deal in October just as the previous contract was set to expire. The new agreement includes wage increases each year of the contract, a new training program for workers, offers a $2,000 signing bonus and strengthens the 401K retirement program for workers, Barlow said. The contract also includes some changes in work rules sought by the company, he said. “In all reality, this was not a concessionary agreement,” Barlow said. Overall, Navistar employs more than 1,500 workers at its Springfield plant, and thousands of retirees also live in the area. The company recently struck a new deal with Volkswagen in which the German firm pledged to buy a roughly 17 percent stake in Navistar and invest as much as $256 million in the manufacturer. Employment has been steadily growing locally after the truckmaker previously announced two separate deals to build GM vehicles in Springfield. The company is having a non-production week this week, Barlow said, in part due to light demand in the heavy truck market. Navistar’s competitors have laid workers off, he said, while Navistar has instead decided to implement down time for workers. “We’re one of the only heavy truck groups in the U.S. that doesn’t have people on long-term layoff,” Barlow said. The union leader is optimistic work at the facility will increase and he said the company is preparing to begin production as part of the joint agreement with GM in January or early February. “That will bring some additional job security to Springfield,” Barlow said. .

Fleet Owner / November 14, 2016 December 1 is fast approaching. If you’re a fleet owner and that day does not resonate with you, you could be in trouble. On December 1, 2016 major changes to the overtime rule will be going into effect. The U.S. Department of Labor is changing the overtime exemption regulations and that change has the potential to impact 4.2 million employees who are currently classified as exempt. And I am betting some of them work for you. By way of review, an exempt employee is one that is not eligible to receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40. Conversely, non-exempt employees have to be paid time and a half for any hours they work over 40 in a week. The big change is in the dollar threshold of the wage for an exempt employee. Prior to December 1 it is $23,600. After that date it jumps to $47,476. In other words full-time salaried employees who earned $455 a week were not eligible for overtime protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Next month that weekly amount is $913. The mostly likely place where fleets will see this play out is with their administrative and professional staff and people like dispatchers, clerks, etc. If you have not started to take steps to address this change, you already are behind the curve. It is going to become even more critical to accurately track hours worked by employee. You may need to put a new process in place to keep a very close eye on hours worked if you want to control overtime expenses and at the same time, ensure that your business does not suffer. You have several options for dealing with this change: Cap hours worked per week at 40 Pay the additional overtime for your employees who have been impacted by the change Raise salaries so they are higher than the threshold Move employees from salaried to hourly There is no one right solution. Each fleet will have to do some calculations to figure out which option makes the most sense in its operation. One thing you can’t do is ignore the change because that could land you in big trouble. And if you think this is going away, think again. The plan is to update the salary threshold every three years. More information about the ruling is available at https://www.dol.gov/WHD/overtime/final2016/

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Trump team seeks top-secret security clearances for Trump's children CBS / November 14, 2016 President-elect Donald Trump is potentially seeking top secret security clearances for his children. The Trump team has asked the White House to explore the possibility of getting his children the top secret security clearances. Logistically, the children would need to be designated by the current White House as national security advisers to their father to receive top secret clearances. However, once Mr. Trump becomes president, he would be able to put in the request himself. His children would need to fill out the security questionnaire (SF-86) and go through the requisite background checks. While nepotism rules prevent the president-elect from hiring his kids to work in the White House, they do not need to be government officials to receive top secret security clearances. The issue raises another layer of questions about the unique role his children are playing and conflicts of interest with their running his network of businesses. Mr. Trump’s children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., as well as son-in-law Jared Kushner, were named to the president-elect’s transition team late last week. Though they were an integral part of his campaign team, Mr. Trump’s children have all stated that they will not hold formal roles in the government. “No,” Ivanka told CBS News’ Lesley Stahl when asked during a “60 Minutes” interview if she would join the administration. “I’m going to be a daughter. But I’ve-- I’ve said throughout the campaign that I am very passionate about certain issues. And that I want to fight for them.” .

Speaking on Trump, President Obama said: “Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up. Reality has a way of asserting itself." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- President Obama, alluding to why Hillary Clinton lost the election. "I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them. And one of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grassroots level, something that's been a running thread through my career." "I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa, it was because I spent 87 days going to every small town, and fair, and fish fry, and VFW hall. And there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. There are some counties that maybe I won that people didn't expect — because people had a chance to see you and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for." Listen in at 2:00

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Trump says he will on day one deport from the U.S., or incarcerate in the U.S., two to three illegal immigrants who are "criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers." But how many illegal immigrants have committed crimes in the U.S., other than immigration violations? In 2013, there were 1.9 million removable criminal aliens (criminal immigrants, both legal and illegal). This number includes people lawfully in the U.S. (legal immigrants) who face deportation after being convicted of serious crimes. However, only 820,000 (43 percent) of the 1.9 million removable criminal aliens are illegal aliens (illegal immigrants) with criminal convictions. .

http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/34169-mack-cabs/

My old friend, my posts here focus on Trump because.......this is the "Trump" thread (note the title). We have another thread on Hillary Clinton........http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/40814-people-should-and-do-trust-me-hillary-clinton/?page=1 Am I required to post "anti Obama stuff". I've said before, I didn't vote for him.....I'm neutral on him. I am not demonizing anyone. All of us here on BMT love our country, and born from that love we take the time to have a healthy exchange of thoughts here. Speaking from a global view and also including the U.S. home front, we are now living in dangerous times. I started the Trump and Hillary threads, and now some new Trump-related threads given he is president-elect, so that everyone can exchange thoughts on key issues. We live in a closed news environment knowing only a very small fraction of what our government is actually doing both at home and abroad. Much of the news is “fed” to achieve a desired reaction. Though I may fail you at times, I attempt to post news that is worthy of your time. I abbreviate it to conserve your time. For example, many articles have several paragraphs at the end recapping what you already know from the day before. I try to post worthy news, and only the late breaking news. I don't post articles where the media needed to fill space....I don't want to waste your time. Often, only one sentence is new news, the rest rehashed from yesterday. I note overseas media because they absolutely present us with a different view which can broaden our horizons, and they often report on what the mainstream U.S. media avoids for sensitivity reasons. I also want to add that I make a concerted effort to support all the news posts with videos when available, so that you can see/hear for yourself. In summary, I make a sincere, dedicated attempt at presenting the most meaningful news, ridden of "fluff". In our controlled, closed news environment, you have to guess what's really going on. We are not given enough facts to "connect the dots". And many news items are "injected" in to steer the masses one way or the other, whether its to vote for a presidential candidate or go out and purchase the latest iphone (When they tell you its time to go buy stocks, it's actually not).

Dodge Truck Owners Accuse Chrysler of VW-Like Cheating Bloomberg/Reuters / November 14, 2016 Allegations of cheating pollution standards have reached U.S. automakers as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was sued by consumers who said engines in some Ram pickup trucks were rigged to hide that emissions were as much as 14 times higher than permitted by law. FCA is the first U.S. carmaker to be sued by consumers. Similar claims were made against German carmakers. Volkswagen AG admitted that it installed devices designed to fool emission testing in 11 million cars worldwide in a scandal that may cost it 18.2 billion euros ($19.5 billion). Claims of rigging vehicles have also been made against Mercedes, which has denied the allegations. Fiat Chrysler and its diesel technology partner Cummins Inc. hid from consumers that pollutants that were supposed to have been broken down inside the diesel engines instead had a tendency to escape, almost doubling the emissions and reducing the vehicle’s fuel efficiency, according to the lawsuit. The companies are accused of fraud, false advertising and racketeering in the complaint, filed today in U.S. District Court in Detroit on behalf of the owners of almost 500,000 Ram 2500/3500 model trucks. Ram became its own brand under the FCA umbrella in 2009. Before that, Ram trucks were sold under the Dodge brand. The lawsuit against FCA -- created in 2014 through the merger of Chrysler and Fiat -- further calls into question the credibility of clean-diesel technology. Excessive emissions from the vehicles exposed the general public to noxious levels of smog, according to the consumer complaint. The claims involving Ram pickups from 2007 and 2012 predate the first known sales of emissions-cheating vehicles by Volkswagen by two years. FCA said it is reviewing the complaint. "Based on the information available to it, FCA US does not believe that the claims brought against it are meritorious," FCA said in a statement to Reuters. "FCA US will contest the lawsuit vigorously." Cummins refused to comment. “The sheer level of fraud and concealment between Chrysler and Cummins is unconscionable, and we believe we have uncovered a deeply entrenched scheme," Steve Berman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Chrysler and Cummins spent years lying through their teeth and making empty promises to deliver the cleanest trucks on the market -- lip service to deceptively dominate what they saw as a profitable market.” Regulatory shift The alleged fraud was prompted by a regulatory shift in 2001, according to the filing. Companies saw an opportunity for growth after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced stringent new emissions standards for heavy-duty diesel engines effective 2010. Chrysler and Cummins bet they could leapfrog the industry and produce a vehicle to meet those standards three years ahead of schedule, according to the complaint. Cummins increased its r&d budget by 60 percent from 2002 to 2007 to $321 million, about a quarter of which was dedicated to meeting the new standards. The outcome, though, was a flawed engine with limited capacity for trapping excess emissions, according to the complaint. Diesel engines, while more fuel-efficient, produce greater volumes of nitrogen oxide pollutants, or NOx. Cummins’s engines had limited capacity to store or dispose of the NOx. Instead of NOx being broken down in a process called regeneration, the pollutant had a tendency to escape from the vehicle, sometimes nearly doubling emissions and reducing the vehicle’s fuel efficiency as much as 4 percent, according to the complaint. The process concealed the true emissions output and wore down the car’s catalytic converter, which could cost as much as $5,000 to replace. Reimbursement sought The companies failed to disclose the engines’ shortcomings, which would have prompted drivers to reconsider FCA's marketing and ultimately the value of the vehicles, according to the complaint. The suit seeks reimbursement and damages for truck owners. Rushing to the market to beat competitors was only part of the reason for the fraudulent design, according to the complaint. Cummins also sought to “bank emissions credits to spend on other, dirtier engines,” according to the complaint. VW resolved a major chunk of its dispute in the U.S. in October when a San Francisco federal judge approved a $14.7 billion settlement with drivers intended to get 480,000 cars with polluting 2.0-liter diesel engines off the road by June 2019. The company is still trying to reach a settlement covering about 80,000 VW and Audi models with 3.0-liter diesel engines. This month, the company was accused in a lawsuit of installing defeat devices on more than 100,000 vehicles with 3.0-liter gasoline engines. The German carmaker’s technology partner Robert Bosch GmbH is also accused in the lawsuits of playing a key role in the development of VW’s emission-cheating technology. FCA vs. Cummins The class action suit comes as Fiat Chrysler and Cummins are fighting over the costs of an emissions recall involving a different, newer population of trucks. Cummins spokesman Jon Mills said the lawsuit "has no merit. We are obviously disappointed in the effort to tarnish our image and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves." Reuters reported on Oct. 10 that FCA and Cummins have been fighting over the $200 million estimated cost for a recall of 130,000 newer 2500 Ram pickup trucks equipped with Cummins diesel engines that could exceed U.S. pollution limits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board have demanded a recall of 2013-2015 model year Ram 2500 pickup trucks with 6.7L Cummins diesel engines because moisture can lead to the deactivation of the selective catalyst reduction system, causing excess nitrogen oxide emissions, Cummins said. Fiat Chrysler has sued Cummins to recover the $60 million it has spent to date repairing 42,000 trucks at its own expense, a company lawyer said in court documents. Settlement talks are ongoing. Cummins counter-sued, saying FCA would not cooperate in the recall "for one reason -- money" and said the automaker was "holding both Cummins and its own customers hostage." When the emissions system fails, the warning light goes on and if the vehicle isn't fixed soon the vehicles go into "limp mode" that allow them to only be driven very slowly.

Whoa......who said it was okay for the Clinton Foundation to accept millions of dollars from Middle Eastern countries??? I myself never said that. Though you and I are not first-hand witnesses to such, we're told it happened and inclined to believe it. Good luck getting more than a handful of truth from the news, however I do believe the Wikileaks revelations. I myself have commented numerous times on the disgusting barbaric punishments of Shariah (Islamic) Law. It's no wonder many feel that life under Shariah (Islamic) Law is incompatible with Western culture and values.

Throughout his campaign, he made hundreds of vague promises without any details on how he'd accomplish them. He is overflowing with rhetoric, but lacking in substance (he's a politician by definition, though not by profession).

Commercial Motor TV - sponsored by DAF Trucks / November 11, 2016 .