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Less than 24 hours after a major child sex-trafficking ring was busted in Colorado, truckers are taking action.

A non-profit group called Truckers Against Trafficking is mobilizing drivers and educating them about the telltale signs of human trafficking.“Traffickers are recruiting kids out of our schools and out of shopping centers,” said the group’s national director, Kendis Paris.

Paris said truckers are uniquely qualified to help law enforcement combat the problem.“Truckers are the eyes and ears of the nation’s highways, so they see things that the general public usually doesn’t,” she said.

Paris said the FBI conducted a series of stings between 2004 and 2009 and rescued children as young as 13 who were being forced into prostitution at truck stops.

She said the group is trying to get as many truckers, truck stops and trucking companies to fight against trafficking.

Johnson’s Corner, a well known truck stop on Interstate 25 just south of Loveland is taking part in the program.Retail Operations Manager Dwight Gaiter recalls the first time he and other employees watched a training video.

“We didn’t even get it finished before the tears started,” he said, “because of the tremendous impact on youth.”Gaiter said employees have been taught to watch for telltale signs like “children who look unhappy or fidgety around an older adult and children who are afraid to look you in the eye.”When asked if they’ve seen a victim of human trafficking,

Gaiter said, “Not since we’ve been taught what to look for.”But he said, in retrospect, some wonder about children they’d seen before they learned about the program.Many truckers seem receptive to taking part in the program.“I don’t like to see kids get hurt,” said Dianne Koehn.Koehn said she and her husband always keep their eyes open when they’re on the road.

She said they’d like to learn more about the telltale signs of human trafficking.Paris said Truckers Against Trafficking has been successful.She said a truck stop employee in Washington noticed two minors with an older adult and approached the children.“She spoke with them,” Paris said.

“They said, ‘Oh, he’s our uncle.’ She got law enforcement involved. It turns out they were runaways from Idaho with $5 between them.”Paris, citing another example of success, said a trucker picked up a hitchhiker and learned that she’d escaped from her captors.

“He asked some questions and learned that she was a victim of human trafficking, so he gave her the national human trafficking hotline number,” Paris said. “She’s now in a safe home.”Paris has also enlisted the help of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association to spread the word.Association spokesman Stan Linnertz said, “We are committed as an industry to put the squash on this puppy.

”Linnertz said many truck drivers have kids of their own and are more than willing to be on the lookout for children who are being trafficked for sex or other purposes.

Source: The Denver Channel

When asked during World LNG Fuels 2012 what single factor could do the most to spur use of natural gas by the trucking industry, one participant had this to say: “Give us 20,000 CNG (compressed natural gas)/LNG (liquefied natural gas) filling stations overnight across the United States.”

What that is not likely to happen, progress is being made at a very rapid rate, according to other participants in the two-day conference presented January 25-26 in Houston TX by Zeus Intelligence. Most importantly exploration and production companies are bringing so much natural gas to the marketplace that the per-gallon-equivalent price is well below that of diesel and should stay that way for many years.

”Incredible amounts of natural gas are being discovered in the gas shale plays, and this is a big game changer,” said Art Gelber, president of Gelber & Associates. “Today, natural gas is to diesel what the (Apple) iPod was to the (Sony) Walkman.

”We’re seeing a huge price spread between natural gas and diesel, and the spread should get wider over the next 18 months. Low natural gas prices should be with us for a very long time.”

On the trucking side, the key factors to make natural gas a favored transport fuel are steadily coming together. “We have the natural gas, and we are building what we call the ‘Natural Gas Highway,’” said Andrew Littlefair, chief executive officer of Clean Energy Fuels. “We have natural gas engines for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and more products are coming to the marketplace. It’s all coming together.”

Clean Energy envisions a nationwide fueling system with LNG fueling stations every 250 to 300 miles. The system will run coast-to-coast and border-to-border. “We have about 100 sites under development right now, and we expect that several hundred stations a year will have to be built over the next three to four years.”

Michael Gallagher, senior advisor and former president of Westport Innovations, said a big milestone for the trucking industry would be a natural-gas-fueled engine that performs as well as a diesel-fueled engine. “We’re getting closer, and we can see a point where natural-gas-fueled trucks could account for 30% to 40% of new truck sales,” he said. “We could get there within 40 years.”

Bulk Transporter will publish a detailed report on World LNG Fuels 2012 in an upcoming issue.

Source: Bulk Transporter

John Forrester, a Caldwell independent trucker, calls it “threading the needle.”

As he is driving his refrigerated truck down a rural section of Idaho’s freeways doing the maximum 65 miles per hour for trucks, one car passes him and stays in the passing lane slightly ahead of him. A second car, eager to go 75, decides to pass, comes up close to the first car, then darts back into the right lane immediately in front of his truck.

“It gets pretty hairy,” Forrester said.

Threading the needle and other risky interactions between cars and trucks could be eased if Idaho allowed trucks to match cars’ 75 mph limit, according to Forrester and other backers of a bill to raise the limit.

The Senate Transportation Committee will hold a hearing Thursday on the bill from its chairman, Sen. Jim Hammond, R-Coeur d’Alene. A single limit would keep traffic moving at the same speed and reduce some of the need for passing, Hammond said.

His proposal, Senate Bill 1229, is backed by the Idaho State Police, which says it would make for safer highways.

Idaho has 609 miles of interstate highways, and 521 have speed limits of 75 mph for cars and 65 for trucks.

If it passes the Senate, Hammond’s bill is likely to be welcomed in the House Transportation Committee, where Chairman Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, also supports uniform speeds. “To me, the more we close the gap the better we are,” Palmer said.

But some truckers aren’t convinced.

“It’s the worst thing you could do,” said Dave Suitter, who runs Dave Suitter Trucking with eight trucks that go across 13 Western states out of Jerome.

Trucks should not be going that fast on Idaho interstates, particularly in winter, Suitter said. He said truck tires are barely rated for going 75, and going that fast consumes a lot of diesel fuel. “To be in business in this day and age, you have to be as efficient as possible,” he said.

Diesel in Idaho averages $3.89 a gallon, but that could rise to $5 a gallon later this year, when fuel prices are expected to soar, said Dave Carlson, governmental affairs director for AAA Idaho, the auto club.

The Idaho Trucking Association, which represents 225 trucking businesses, isn’t taking a position on the bill. Most companies have devices that prevent drivers from exceeding 65 mph for fuel efficiency, said Kathy Fowers, the association’s president and CEO.

Even if the bill passes, “they are not going to increase that to 75,” Fowers said. “I would have a few members that would like to see it raised. The majority don’t care.”

Ten states have 75 mph speed limits on rural interstates for both cars and trucks. Six are in the West. One of them, Utah, says the uniform speed creates an expectation in drivers’ minds about the speed of other vehicles. “You’re not getting surprises,” said Robert Hull, traffic and safety director for the Utah Department of Transportation.

Differentiated speeds often leave drivers to gauge the speed of other vehicles, which they may do poorly, he said. That can lead to a fast-moving car coming up behind a slower-moving truck and ramming it.

National studies of truck speeds shed little light on whether raising the limits makes roads safer, according to a summary from the Idaho Transportation Department. Some studies suggest uniform speeds reduce problems between cars and trucks. Others say it doesn’t.

Data gathered by the Idaho State Police from states that have uniform limits show that states have not experienced increases in fatality rates or serious crashes involving commercial vehicles, said Lt. Jim Eavenson.

The lack of conclusive studies is an indication that the truck-speed issue is complex, Carlson said. AAA Idaho, whose members opposed an increase in 2006, will ask lawmakers to take a more in-depth look before passing a law.

“If we don’t do this right, it flies in the face of sanity or logic,” he said.

Source: Idaho Statesman

WASHINGTON —  Trucking rules in a bill that goes before a House transportation committee this week are “poison-pill” provisions that put the lives of American families at risk, U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, said Wednesday.

The provisions targeted by Mr. McGovern would overturn a federal law banning controversial triple tractor-trailers; allow states to increase the weight of trucks on the road by 20 percent, to 97,000 pounds from 80,000 pounds; and increase the length of double trailers.

The provisions are part of a five-year, $260 billion transportation bill crafted by House Republicans to finance the maintenance and reconstruction of the nation’s roads and mass transit systems.

The American Automobile Association and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, representing more than 1 million truck drivers, have come out against the trucking provisions in the American Energy Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and sponsor of the bill, was unavailable for comment. But in unveiling the bill Tuesday, Mica told reporters that he planned to allow amendments when the legislation is considered, adding, “The bill isn’t final.”

At a Wednesday news conference attended by highway safety, labor and law enforcement groups, Mr. McGovern said the bill in its present form is not a good-faith effort and he called it a “campaign document.”

He vowed that if the legislation makes it out of the transportation committee in its current form, he would use his position on the House Rules Committee, which governs the procedures for House floor debate, to allow an amendment that would strip these provisions from the bill.

The Coalition for Transportation Productivity, whose membership includes manufacturing, food product firms and major retail outlets that depend on truck transportation, is behind the proposed increases in truck size and weight. Among the coalition’s members are such household names as Hershey, Home Depot and Coca-Cola.

Opponents noted that while traffic fatalities declined overall in 2010, truck crash fatalities increased by 9 percent. These statistics indicate that, in crashes involving large trucks, 97 percent of the fatalities involve the occupants of automobiles, according to Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways.

House Republicans say the bill allows states to set their own limits on truck sizes and weight.

Mr. McGovern and highway safety advocates warned this would prompt a “race to the bottom” in which one state does away with restrictions and, in the name of interstate commerce, other states are forced to follow suit.

Source: News Telegram