California Dump Truck Owners Association (CDTOA) - California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

Here I am, only about a week or two into the new year and already my resolutions are quickly falling by the wayside.

In last month’s article, I shared my perspective about “putting the fun back in funerals.” I certainly became more aware of my own mortality over all this green solutions to cremation for us baby boomers. But honestly, you can count me out on the body donation to science thing, since I discovered that after they are done cutting you to pieces, they still end up burning what’s left—with no real environmental benefits. I’ll pass!

Sticking with the theme of baby boomers and their effects on the environment, I read up on the importance of exercise programs for us. I discovered that walking seemed to be the best, at least for me—brisk walking, of course. You really need to get the higher heart rate up in order to lose the pounds and strengthen that heart muscle. The downside, of course, is the increased CO2 you will exhale when you exercise, the gas that’s blamed for killing our planet!

Oh, yes, Christmas is here, my very favorite time of the year. While this joyous season is not as exciting to me as when I was a child anxiously waiting for Santa, it is still a time when I cherish the joys of being surrounded by family, friends, and feeling a general optimism about the future.

I have much to be thankful for, and being a part of CDTOA (we are changing the name to the California Construction Trucking Association) has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. While I can sometimes allow myself to be momentarily jealous of my high school friends who went to work immediately for the government and are now retired (under 60) on sizable monthly pensions and life long health insurance benefits, but I wouldn’t trade careers with them for anything.

Again staying with the 60’s music theme for my articles, to be exact, a 1964 Beach Boys hit with the same name seemed to fit my schedule over the last month. From the Capitol steps in Sacramento to our recent Annual Board Meeting in San Diego, I have certainly seen a good deal of the state.

On October 8th, I was invited to speak on the Capitol steps at the invitation of the Coalition of Energy Users. Other speakers included Assemblyman Dan Logue, John Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Warren Duffy from CFACTSoCAL and our own CDTOA member CoreyWardlaw. Corey happened to also bring his beautiful (and clean burning) 1993 Peterbilt truck portion of his transfer and displayed a big banner on the side which read, “Governor Brown: Repeal The Truck & Bus Rule.”

The theme of this rally was to encourage Sacramento to “cut the governmental red tape and over regulation” and let us get back to work. In anticipation of this rally, permits were taken out, porta-potties brought in and there were plenty of trash receptacles available, not that anyone had to worry about this crowd, they were clean, courteous and well-behaved.

Less than two blocks away was the “Occupy Sacramento” crowd who were camped out at Cesar Chavez Park, ironically directly across the street from the EPA Building. Sure enough, the occupy folks decided to take a walk through Sacramento, shouting all the way. I am not sure what cause they were chanting about, but the noise level was quite high and we could hear them coming. 

With CARB regulatory reporting and compliance dates fast approaching, many are for the first time actually taking this all seriously. Yes, the rules are almost here, and everyone is trying to understand what it will take to remain in business.

Within the last 2 months, work has suddenly picked up, and in some areas there are not enough trucks to be found. After several years of little or no work, this latest surge has given those that are left a slight glimmer of hope that perhaps they do have a future. Now it’s time to start raising rates to afford Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs), retrofitting, or buying newer equipment. Most have chosen the retrofit option because the cost of a “new” truck at $125-$135,000 each is no longer an option. Consequently, I don’t believe for a minute that this sudden demand for trucks will continue very long because our state is in too much trouble financially. Few seem to really understand this, but I guess we’ll take anything we can get at this point.

Perhaps I have chosen the wrong song title for this month’s article. Maybe “Troubled Bridges Over our Waters” or even “Cry Me a River” would better apply. However, since I pride myself on my “oldies-but-goodies” memory bank, we will go with the original S&G hit song from 1970.

An issue that has recently grabbed my attention is the huge increase in bridge tolls in the SF/Oakland Bay Area, which took effect on July 1, 2011.

A few years ago, I attended several meetings held to discuss these proposed increases, and of course I spoke out about our (CDTOA members’) opposition to these increases. It worked at least for a while, but now we have to pay the bridge toll piper!

Could there have been a worse time to do something like this? Don’t these folks know we are in the middle of the worst recession in over 75 years? You have to wonder, has our current government ever seen a fee or tax they didn’t like or need to feed the beast?

Who can’t recall that old RnR musical from 1963 with the same name where the rock singer travels to a small Ohio town to make his “farewell” television performance and kiss his biggest fan before he is drafted and sent to war? The metaphor here is about propaganda, and the losers and winners that will come out of the environmental war movement—and of course the real losers of the wind power scam: birds and us taxpayers.

I wrote in last month’s magazine about a recent day at the Capitol and hearing about a bill in a legislative committee that would require Meteorological Evaluation Towers, which are used for determining the best locations for commercial wind turbines, to be marked and clearly lit because of the danger to crop-dusters and other low-flying aircraft.

Now that summer has finally arrived in Northern California I have found the perfect place to spend a hot afternoon. My new “chill” place is the State Capitol in Sacramento. Evidently our state legislators, who constantly remind us (through taxes and high energy costs) to conserve energy within our homes and offices, do not practice the same standards and discipline for themselves. And why should they? They don’t have to pay the bill, we taxpayers do. However, now that I have found this great new retreat (since I cannot afford to cool my own home to this jacket-needing temperature) I do not want to discourage this hypocritical practice.

Some of you may remember that around April of 2010, I wrote about the County Health Rankings for our California Counties (also see: www.countyhealthrankings.org). Frankly, after reading that report, I was shocked to see that our unhealthiest county in California was Del Norte, it ranked 56 out of 56, dead last. What really grabbed my attention about all of this was the fact that Del Norte County showed no unhealthy pollution days in that year, not one. Yet the good folks of this far northwest county (which borders Oregon and the Pacific Ocean) were supposedly so unhealthy that they were dropping like flies.

April is an anniversary month for me. Five years ago I attended my first CARB meeting at the beautiful green CalEPA/CARB Building in Sacramento and learned of the On and Off Road Diesel Engine Rules, the dangers of Particulate Matter (PM), and the fact that I had unknowingly been (when I drove my diesel powered dump truck for 15 years) causing asthma and killing our children for all those years. Back then, I believed most things like this I was told, and frankly in early 2006 things were good for most of us, so why would anyone question such environmental rapture? Back then there was plenty of work, rates were high, credit was not an issue and many of us had small homes that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars above what we had originally paid for them.

I'm going to veer away from my recent moaning and groaning concerning CARB and junk science and instead concentrate on another huge problem now all too common in our industry: slow pay or no pay from contractors and truck brokers.

During the past month, I have received numerous calls from members from all over the state concerning "no pay" from contractors and brokers, all of whom are supposed to have $15,000 bonds.

Having taken a few dozen calls now, my first question to a caller is, "Did you file a 20-day Preliminary Notice ("pre-lien")?" In law, a pre-lien is a notice to the general contractor, property owner and lender that if you are not paid as agreed, you may have a claim against the property in the form of a mechanic's lien. When I ask this question, the most common answers are:

Not to Be Outdone by the UC School System, CARB, and EPA – The European Public Health Science Community Has to Add Some of its Own Deception, Too!

Okay, I am going to admit it here for all to read: I may be in over my head, but I will take my best shot at trying to explain the most recent study about how particulate matter from vehicles is a “major” cause of hearth attacks.

I recently read about a public health study published on February 24th in the British medical journal The Lancet. The study’s official name was “Public Health Importance of Triggers of Myocardial Infarction: A Comparative Risk Assessment.” The study results were picked up by a few mostly liberal media outlets, including the Huffington Post and, of course, public health news outlets like Healthday News, which titled their story, “Coffee, Sex, Smog Can All Trigger Heart Attack.”

The old adage, “The more things change the more they stay the same,” has never been truer—at least to me these days! As we get older, “change” for many may not be easy to take, but generally speaking, I believe it is a good thing most of time. Although I have to say as I get older, I find myself more and more wishing we could go back to when times where less divisive and a little more simple.