Joshua Giesbrecht, known as “Trucker Josh” to followers of his YouTube channel “My Trucking Life,” is the newest inductee into the Howes Hall of Fame: “Howes officially inducted Giesbrecht into the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, March 20, at the 2024 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville.” During the show, Giesbrecht was a guest at the Howes products booth, where he engaged with fellow drivers and told stories about his career, both as a truck driver and a viral vlogger. Read more…
With amassing student debt, Americans are looking for lucrative alternatives to a four-year college degree and trucking is proving to be a light at the end of the tunnel for many. A 24-year-old social media star, who goes by “Alex the Trucking Guy” on TikTok, has built an enormous following extolling his life on the road as a trucker. Since the start of the pandemic, Alex has garnered over a million and a half followers across all of social media, allowing viewers to ride along with him as he documents the job of a truck driver traveling cross-country. Read more…
Supermarket Morrisons is planning to restructure its supply chain and logistics operations, with warehouse manager roles at all seven distribution sites set to be truncated with a five-over-seven working week reinstated from last April. Documents seen by The Grocer show how Morrisons plans “to consolidate the number of warehouse manager roles at each site to a single operations manager role. It will also remove team manager roles in its ambient supply chain, reduce roles in its chilled chamber and reduce the number of managers and coordinators working within canteen teams.” Read more…
Deaf truck driver Richard Boehrer, one of the Truckload Carriers Association’s (TCA) five 2023 Drivers of the Year, had always dreamed of someday becoming a truck driver. His path was not without pushback, as “even Boehrer’s uncle, who was a professional driver, couldn’t offer encouragement to the aspiring driver.” He went on to tell his nephew that it would be “impossible” with his impairment to ever drive a big rig, especially with past regulations requiring that all drivers be able to hear. Read more…
Dramatist David Proctor’s new one-person play, “Grabbing the Hammer Lane: a Trucker narrative,” is Proctor’s newest stage drama about a truck driver’s life on the road. The Orlando Performer, a website devoted to theater in Central Florida, exults: “Patrons of this show should be prepared to feel a wide range of emotions. In the beginning, there is gentle humor and subtle light jokes scattered throughout. [Later], emotions soar between anger and sadness. It is genuinely moving. This show deals with addiction, forgiveness and loss and has a moral of ‘Tell the ones you are close to, that you love them.’” Read more…
A third-party logistics firm headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee announced they are planning to shutter its facility on the west side of Indianapolis. In a WARN notice recently filed with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, “Kenco Logistic Services LLC said the closure will result in the layoffs of 110 employees.” The company gave no reason for the closure, but “the affected workers have been notified of the move, and the layoffs are scheduled to occur on March 19.” Read more…
After a half-a-billion-dollar loss quarter for Ford, the company is questioning whether transitioning to electric vehicles was the right move, and whether drastic measures such as offshoring will need to be taken in regard to truck jobs in the future. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently made “what some might consider threatening comments about the future of his company’s U.S.-based, United Auto Workers-represented manufacturing workforce.” Read more…
The latest report fromDat Freight and Analytics, which controls the DAT One online freight marketplace and DAT iQ data analytics service, states “January spot freight volumes were pushed to all-time highs due to a winter-related bump in demand for truckload capacity.” Ken Adamo, DAT chief of analytics, goes on say: “winter weather increased the need for trucks at a time when shippers were moving holiday returns and springtime retail goods through supply chains, and for-hire carriers were rejecting a higher percentage of contracted loads.” Read more…
The day-to-day operation of trades workers was on full display for those interested in potentially entering that workforce by Truckucation, as the organization hosted its monthly “Trucking and Trades” event to help promote jobs in the trucking industry and various other trades. These kinds of events have become a must with the trucking industry’s recent decline in the number of truck drivers entering the field. Read more…
Forward Air completed its acquisition of Omni Logistics recently after the expedited surface transportation provider and global freight forwarder reached a newly agreed upon merger agreement. Plans for the merger were announced last August, but were put on a hold by a series of fights between activist investors, shareholders and the companies themselves. The deal will now allow the two companies to integrate their international and North American operations, adding more high-value freight into Forward’s less-than-truckload (LTL) network. Read more…
