kscarbel2

When it comes to secretly developed capabilities, they both possess them. That’s the unknown quantity.

This Bloomberg article is also accurate, but from a different angle. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-06/soleimani-killing-leaves-trump-s-middle-east-strategy-in-tatters?srnd=markets-vp

I’m very concerned about the expected upcoming reprisals. Chevron is bugging out of Iraq, unable to ensure the safety of its expats and families. The other US companies will follow.

This article, written by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, touches on many aspects of the big picture relatively unknown to many. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.amp.html

The Atlantic / December 6, 2019 For some kids, the weekly trash pickup is a must-see spectacle. Parents, children, waste-management professionals, and experts on childhood all offer theories as to why. For Ryan Rucker, a dad in Vacaville, California, the weekly summons comes on Wednesday mornings, usually around seven. For Rosanne Sweeting on Grand Bahama island, in the Bahamas, it’s twice a week—Mondays and Thursdays, anytime from 6 to 8:30 a.m.—and for Whitney Schlander in Scottsdale, Arizona, it’s every Tuesday morning at half-past seven. At these times, the quiet of the morning is broken by the beep beep beeping of an approaching garbage truck—and broken further when their kids start hollering, begging to be escorted outside to wave or just watch in awe as the truck collects and majestically hauls away the household trash. Rucker’s daughter Raegan, 3, takes her stuffed animals outside with her to watch the pickup. Cassidy Sweeting, 4, enlists her mom’s help to deliver granola bars and water bottles to the three trash collectors. Finn Schlander, 3, invited the neighborhood garbage-truck driver to his birthday party. (Ultimately, he was unable to attend, but the party had garbage-truck decorations nonetheless.) For decades, children have been fascinated by the garbage-collection vehicles that visit their home (as a kid, Finn’s dad wanted to grow up to be a garbage-truck driver himself, according to Finn’s mom), and their widespread fascination has been commemorated in a surprising variety of ways. The nationwide waste-disposal company Waste Management, for example, sells a branded WM garbage-truck toy on its online shop, and a representative for Waste Management told me that the company frequently receives requests from customers for things such as costumes and party kits for kids. Some city governments and waste-disposal companies have released safety guidelines for parents whose kids are especially curious about their garbage trucks. (“Wave from your window or doorway, keeping at least 20 feet of safe distance. Our drivers will wave back if they see you!”) Meanwhile, the children’s-web-series host Blippi, who has some 6.5 million YouTube subscribers, wrote a life-ruiningly catchy song about garbage trucks (“Some are blue, some are brown, and some are green / And wouldn’t you know it, there are some that can pick up recycling!”) that has been listened to a staggering 31.8 million times as of this writing. I, too, had a more-than-passing interest in the garbage truck as a kid; with palpable residual excitement, I can remember peeking through the window shutters of my parents’ front room to watch the vaguely menacing robotic arm jut out, snatch our garbage can, and dangle the can upside down over its back while the trash tumbled out. Why generations of kids have been so transfixed by the trash pickup, though, remains something of a mystery. So I asked parents, kids, child-development experts, waste-management professionals, and even the creator of a kids’ show about an anthropomorphized garbage truck for their insights. Together, we made our way—more aptly, lurched and rumbled our way—toward a unifying theory of why kids are so wild about garbage trucks. The garbage truck I remember watching out our window as a child—big lumbering hulk, single hungry grabber claw—is known in the waste-management industry as an “automated side loader.” (When I excitedly mentioned to Whitney Schlander that the automated side loader was introduced 50 years ago on the streets of Scottsdale, I discovered this was old news to her and Finn: “We went to the trash-transfer facility last year. Of course,” she said with a laugh. “They have the original one.”) Other varieties in the United States have automated forks on their front to pick up larger trash receptacles such as Dumpsters, while still others depend on human workers to manually pick up, empty, and replace the garbage cans. When I asked Sheila Williams Ridge, who teaches early-childhood education at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, for any insights she could give me on why kids love garbage trucks so much, she thought of her own daughter, now 21. When her daughter was little, Williams Ridge remembered, the weekly arrival of the garbage truck was both dazzling and, in a way, reassuring. “Humans have always thrived with routine,” she told me. “But children, their memories aren’t long enough. Sometimes, when we’re getting our 3-year-olds dressed for winter, they’re like, ‘I can’t do it!’ And we’re like, ‘You’ve put on snow pants before. You’ve put on boots.’ But for them, it’s so long ago. They don’t remember snow from when they’re 2; it’s new again for them.” So having something happen every week at the same time—and especially something that “seems a little bit magical”—can boost kids’ sense of familiarity with the world, not to mention give them something to look forward to. Plus, what the truck is actually doing when it arrives has an air of the forbidden. Despite the fact that kids are frequently discouraged from making messes at home or at school (or perhaps because of that fact), “children love dumping things. They just do,” Williams Ridge said. “So the fact that a truck is coming to do this on purpose, and everyone is happy about it? It’s like, ‘Yes! This is my dream! I just want to dump stuff out, and you let this person do it!’” (The same goes for being noisy: “I think that’s the other thing with a lot of big trucks, and with police cars, fire trucks, snowplows,” she added. “They’re loud, and no one’s complaining about it.”) Next I turned to Guy Toubes, the creator of the animated Amazon children’s series The Stinky & Dirty Show, whose eponymous protagonists are a backhoe loader (Dirty) and a garbage truck (Stinky). I reasoned that he surely must have some insights into what makes garbage trucks so fascinating. He did. For starters, “kids think smelly stuff is really funny,” Toubes told me. There’s a sort of naughty appeal to talking about gross stuff and calling things “stinky,” he said, and in the run-up to the premiere of The Stinky & Dirty Show, he saw it in action: Two little girls in a focus group cracked up every time a character on the show said the name “Stinky.” “They just kept saying the word over and over again,” he remembered, “every time.” Toubes also noted that the particular movement patterns of vehicles such as garbage trucks and backhoes—and snowplows, fire trucks, street sweepers, and the like—are entirely unique. Even if a child is familiar with how buses and cars move through space, the movements of a garbage truck’s grabber arm or a backhoe’s inward-curling shovel appendage can be mesmerizing because they’re so unusual. Add that to the fact that children frequently conceive of a vehicle as an enormous living creature—“It has lights and those look like eyes, so suddenly it’s got a face,” Toubes pointed out—and it’s almost no wonder that some kids look at garbage trucks like gigantic zoo animals visiting their home. That said, Toubes and I immediately agreed that garbage trucks can also be pretty mesmerizing to adults because what they do is so visually unusual. Toubes is himself the father of a onetime garbage-truck aficionado: “My second son was sort of obsessed, and when we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said a garbage truck,” he told me. “We were like, ‘You want to drive a garbage truck?’ And he was like, ‘No, I want to be the truck.’” And when his son ran to the picture window to watch the garbage pickup, “I’d go to the window and watch along with him,” Toubes remembered. “Like, Actually, that is interesting.” At this point, I’d heard the experts’ theories. But I would be remiss not to consult the two foremost authorities—kids and garbage-truck drivers. So first I went to Rene Vesi, a Waste Management truck driver based near Portland, Oregon. Vesi’s friendship with a boy with autism was the subject of a local-news segment earlier this year. I asked Vesi whether that was common, whether he was accustomed to having young friends and admirers. Garbage-truck enthusiasts are common enough that he considers “making kids happy” to be part of the job, he said, but he’d never take their enthusiasm for granted. “We have kids on almost every route. Moms hold babies at the door, toddlers wait at the window and sometimes a whole family will come out to watch and wave,” Vesi wrote to me in an email. “It makes you feel like a rock star.” As for why those kids are so excited, Vesi largely agreed with Toubes. “They love the lights and all the moving parts,” he wrote. “For a toddler, it probably feels like a Transformer has come to visit.” When I asked an actual child, however, why she loved garbage trucks so much, her answer surprised me. Was it the recurring excitement? The anticipation? The dumping? The gross-out factor, or perhaps the anthropomorphic factor? The fact that, as Toubes and I—and for that matter, pretty much every adult in this story—agreed, garbage trucks are objectively awesome, no matter how old you are? No, Raegan Rucker told me. Her favorite part of the whole greeting-the-garbage-truck ritual is when a friendly, familiar face shows up at her house. She loves “walking outside with socks on,” pointing at the truck as it approaches, and “drinking milk outside,” she told me—sometimes with her stuffed animals alongside her, sometimes on the swing her parents installed out front pretty much expressly for the purpose of garbage-truck watching. But most of all, she loves waiting for the truck driver to stop and say hi. .

For #January the 2020 #Autocar calendar features McPherson Area Solid Waste Utility & their burly #ACX. McPherson Area Solid Waste Utility has been faithfully serving the residents of Kansas' McPherson County since 1991. #AlwaysUp #MASWU #uptime #itsallabouttheuptime .

I have to admit, attracted by the nostalgia and traditional appearance, the black Scrambler looks pretty good.

Sounds great guys. I wasn't familiar with them. After reading that Auto News article, I thought to share.

The 2020 #Autocar calendar cover features Harrison Industries of #Ventura, CA. EJ Harrison & Sons is a multi-generational family business that has faithfully served SoCal since 1932 & we are proud to call them friends & customers. #AlwaysUp #uptime #ROI #itsallabouttheuptime .

Vintage Parts Inc. https://www.vpartsinc.com/ https://www.autonews.com/fixed-ops-journal/wisconsin-warehouse-complex-lifeline-dealerships

Financial Times / January 2, 2020 CNH, the truck and tractor maker backed by Italy’s Agnelli family, hopes that a split of the business into two companies will drive consolidation across its two sectors, the chief executive said. Hubertus Mühlhäuser said the business would be open to deals once it had spun out truckmaker Iveco and its other road-going brands into a new entity in early 2021. “One of the reasons why we create two pure plays, one an off-highway, one an on-highway, is of course to be able to actively contribute to industry consolidation,” he said. “Whether we’re going to be the consolidator or consolidatee remains to be seen. “We have not yet seen a coming together of larger Asian players at large scale with the European or American players . . . I think that’s something to come in the coming years.” The truck markets and the agricultural equipment sectors are facing upheaval, with the need for investments into electric propulsion and autonomy coupled with tough trading conditions as haulage firms and farmers delay orders because of the global trade war. Yet the two businesses have very limited spending overlap. “We looked at that from the synergies and the synergies were not there,” said Mr Mühlhäuser. CNH will spin out Iveco, Iveco Bus and the Heuliez Bus units, as well as its power train business, in an “on highway” division, which has combined revenues of about $13bn. It will keep the tractor, agricultural and construction equipment arm, which has revenues of about $16bn, with the aim of raising the values of the two companies by ending CNH’s status as a mini-conglomerate. The split, which will take place in 2021, is part of a strategy intended to more than double profit margins to 10 per cent by 2024. The move, announced at an investor day in September, follows a tradition set by CNH’s previous owner Fiat Chrysler, which is also backed by the Agnelli family through their Exor holding company. FCA, which was formed by the merger of Fiat and Chrysler, spun out CNH in 2011, and subsequently also listed Ferrari, and sold component business Magneti Marelli. Shorn of non-core businesses, FCA is attempting to merge with France’s PSA to create the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, allowing the two auto groups to pool investments into self-driving technology and electric driving. Analysts expect CNH’s remaining tractor arm to have a higher value once divided from the truck division, because agricultural equipment businesses such as John Deere tend to attract higher valuation multiples than truckmakers. Elliott, the activist hedge fund, has built up a lower than 3 per cent stake in CNH, acquiring the shares before the announcement. Mr Mühlhäuser said they were “very supportive” of the company’s strategy. CNH opted to spin the company out rather than listing the new truck business in an initial public offering, in part because of the experience Volkswagen faced with its own truck division Traton, which houses the Man and Scania brands. The Traton listing was delayed once, and finally launched at a lower value in June. Separating the two CNH companies will allow each side to focus on its challenges, from countering slowing farmer orders because of the trade war, to the need for electric investment into haulage vehicles. Iveco is preparing to launch a hydrogen-powered truck and a battery electric vehicle, having invested in start-up Nikola to help it with both technologies. Its off-highway division will focus on the agricultural market, which is under pressure as farmers delay replacing older fleet.

Ghosn is a brilliant individual. Without him, Japan Inc. would no longer have Nissan and Mitsubishi today. Their gratitude was short lived.

Nissan’s shock turns to dread as Ghosn readies media blitz Bloomberg / December 2, 2019 TOKYO -- News this week that Carlos Ghosn, facing two trials and under heavy surveillance, pulled off a stunning escape from Japan left Nissan Motor Co. executives with jaws agape reaching for their messaging apps. Just as astonished was CEO Makoto Uchida, who heard about his former boss’s getaway from media reports, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ghosn’s vanishing act throws up a distraction just when the new CEO needs to be laser focused. With profits at decade lows and its stock tanking, Nissan is rife with internal divisions over the ouster of its former leader and the way forward. Now Ghosn is free to talk, armed with potentially damaging details about current Nissan executives. “There must be many people at Nissan and Renault who think this could really be dangerous for them if Ghosn speaks,” said Koji Endo, a senior analyst at SBI Securities in Tokyo. Uchida, who became CEO last month, has a long list of challenges. A top deputy abruptly quit, some 12,500 jobs are on the chopping block, and he needs to refresh an aging lineup of models like the Skyline sedan and GT-R sports car to reinvigorate sales. Then there’s the matter of fixing the rocky relationship with French partner Renault SA as autonomous vehicles and electrification threaten to disrupt the industry. Ghosn has said the charges of financial impropriety brought against him are false, trumped up by Nissan executives, Japanese prosecutors and government officials who opposed his plans to more deeply integrate the two carmakers. On Thursday, he issued a second statement about his escape to deny reports that his wife was involved in the plot. “I alone organized my departure,” the 65-year-old said. “My family had no role whatsoever.” Ironically, it was in a previous crisis two decades ago that Nissan, on the verge of bankruptcy, was rescued by Renault, which took a stake in the Japanese carmaker and sent in Ghosn to turn it around. Ghosn later added Mitsubishi Motors Corp. to the pact, forming the world’s biggest carmaking alliance. Ghosn was arrested in November 2018 at Haneda airport, kicking off a legal saga that would result in him being released on bail, re-arrested and bailed out again. He was facing trial for financial crimes when on Dec. 31, as Japan entered a week-long holiday, Ghosn revealed that he had fled to Lebanon to escape what he described as a “rigged Japanese justice system.” Hollywood thriller It’s still a mystery how Ghosn, one of the most recognizable foreigners in Japan, snuck out of the country despite being under round-the-clock surveillance -- an escape befitting a Hollywood thriller. Theories abound, but it appears that Ghosn flew to Lebanon on a private jet operated by a subsidiary of Turkey’s MNG Holding, according to a senior Turkish official with direct knowledge of the matter. That’s after the former automotive executive apparently flew to Istanbul on another MNG aircraft on Monday morning, before being transferred between the two airplanes inside a box, the official said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Meanwhile, prosecutors on Thursday began a search of Ghosn’s residence near Tokyo’s Roppongi district, a three-story building with four surveillance cameras around the entrance, local media reported. By early evening, prosecutors remained inside the house, while a gaggle of reporters trained their cameras on the front door. Though Ghosn hasn’t been involved in running either company since his arrest more than a year ago, his shadow still looms large. That’s why when the news first broke Tuesday about his escape, it didn’t take long for the shock to ripple through the upper echelons of the two automotive giants he long led. Aside from Uchida, top Nissan managers scrambled to find out details by messaging each other, the person said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. In France, executives were stupefied and some initially questioned whether France was behind the extraction of one of its citizens in any way, according to another person familiar with the matter. France later denied having any involvement. Representatives for Nissan and Renault declined to comment. Settling scores Ghosn, who has said he’ll “finally communicate freely with the media” next week, is a man on a mission to clear his name and has scores to settle. He could create a stir by identifying Nissan executives whom he claims turned on him to advance their own interests. In April, Ghosn’s camp released a pre-recorded video that edited out the identities of those people. Some of Ghosn’s targets aren’t hard to guess. Ghosn’s successor -- protege-turned-accuser Hiroto Saikawa -- blamed his former mentor for many of Nissan’s woes before being ousted himself last year in a scandal involving excess compensation. Then there’s Hari Nada, the former head of the CEO’s office, who became a key whistleblower against Ghosn. In his video, Ghosn also blasted Nissan’s management for the company’s poor performance, saying it lost sight of the need to move the alliance with Renault forward. “I’m worried because obviously the performance of Nissan is declining, but also I’m worried because I don’t think there is any vision for the alliance being built,” Ghosn said in the video. As for Uchida, he’s vowed to try to heal some of the wounds with its French partner, while restoring growth in profit and sales at Nissan. Ghosn on the loose looks likely to complicate those tasks.

https://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/40915-the-iran-deal-whos-kidding-who/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-341274

Not for long. Volvo expects all customers to obediently subscribe to their I-Shift AMT (rebadged as M-Drive on Mack brand models).

Japan's goal was to smear Ghosn in order to prevent the auto executive from further integrating Nissan and France’s Renault, a plan that threatened the Japanese carmaker’s autonomy and was vehemently opposed in the highest echelons of Tokyo officialdom. Ghosn effected an escape from Japan by hiding inside a musical instrument box, which was transferred to the airport and onto a private plane. A paramilitary group came to Ghosn's house disguised as a band for Christmas dinner. They hid Ghosn inside one of their equipment boxes when they left the home at the end of the evening. “I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied, in flagrant disregard of Japan’s legal obligations under international law and treaties it is bound to uphold. I have not fled justice — I have escaped injustice and political persecution. I can now finally communicate freely with the media, and look forward to starting next week." Carlos Ghosn https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-01/ghosn-is-a-free-man-with-tales-to-tell-and-scores-to-settle?srnd=markets-vp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-30/carlos-ghosn-left-japan-arrived-in-beirut-reports-say?srnd=markets-vp https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/31/carlos-ghosn-escaped-japan-hiding-in-a-musical-instrument-case

I was wondering why G&P was trying to look so good recently.......to bump up the sell price. .

Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / December 30, 2019 NFI has acquired G&P Trucking Company, a logistics provider specializing in asset-based transportation, port drayage, and non-asset brokerage solutions, to expand NFI’s coverage of the Southeast. G&P, headquartered in Columbia, S.C., has been providing transportation services for customers across its 14 locations for more than 80 years, including dedicated, regional, long haul, and Mexico border crossing. The addition of G&P’s 370 tractors and 3,000 trailers will increase NFI’s fleet to more than 3,000 tractors, 12,500 trailers, 2,700 company drivers, and 400 owner-operators. “Unifying the talents of both NFI and G&P teams, we are excited to bring even greater value to our customers through our robust suite of solutions,” said Sid Brown, CEO of NFI. Operating at the Ports of Savannah, Norfolk, and Charleston, G&P will expand NFI’s drayage presence in those ports. With the addition of G&P’s 120 owner-operator partnerships, NFI’s drayage fleet will grow to more than 1,500 tractors. NFI said its expansive drayage presence spans major ports, terminals, and logistics hubs across the U.S., offering a full suite of supply chain solutions that includes transloading, consolidation, deconsolidation, and customs exams. The acquisition will also enhance NFI’s brokerage service offerings. “Powered by the same philosophies as G&P, NFI will allow for greater opportunities for our employees, partners, and customers,” said Clifton Parker, president and general manager of G&P. “We look forward to the future and are eager to continue our growth and success with NFI.”

You begin here: https://www.fordtrucksglobal.com/ ......and click on "Choose your country": https://www.fordtrucksglobal.com/select-languages Then for your purposes, click on one of the countries with an English (EN) version of that website.

Scroll to the bottom and click on the model number of your interest. https://www.fordtrucks.com.tr/en

You would think Volvo's all-knowing engineers in Sweden could remedy loose range shift fork set screws or loose rear yoke bolts. The M-Drive AMT of course is simply a rebadged Volvo single countershaft I-Shift AMT (ZF's superior AMTs feature a twin countershaft design) Mack engineers were developing an AMT version of the "world's best" Maxitorque triple countershaft transmissions, but Volvo canned it.

The more I think about this, i.e. Volvo's termination of Mack-designed Maxitorque transmissions, the more disgusted I feel. Note the webpage while you still can.......obviously it isn't long for this world. https://www.macktrucks.com/powertrain-and-suspensions/transmissions/maxitorque-es/

https://www.diesel-international.com/news/john-deere-13-6l/ https://www.oemoffhighway.com/engines/engines/product/20854903/john-deere-power-systems-john-deere-power-systems-136-l-engine