Remember the days when you had to actually be in an office to have a meeting? Today, between conference calls, email chains, and video chat apps, we can meet with clients and vendors all over the world without ever leaving our desks. Well, that is as long as everyone is actually paying attention… I won’t lie – I love the freedom and flexibility of being able to get work done while I’m on the go. But like any new technology, the benefits also present new challenges. If you’ve ever tried to join a conference
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Albert Einstein once said “Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you have to keep moving.” Those of us in the transportation industry know that maxim well. Today, April 18th, marks the anniversary of Einstein’s death (in 1955), so I thought it fitting to honor his work, which plays a big part in how we keep freight moving each and every day. You see, Albert Einstein’s most famous work, the theory of relativity, is what makes GPS possible. It is impossible to overstate the effects GPS tracking and navigating have had on
Read more →Spring has officially sprung, and for those of us with teenagers, that means milestone events like prom season and graduation. All of which require parties, and all of which – so I’m told – are much more fun when you can drive. My oldest son, Denver, wasn’t in a hurry to get his driver’s license. While some parents would be frustrated at having to drive their 18-year-old around, I was happy to do so. The time and gasoline it took to drive Denver from point A to point B was a mild sacrifice for
Read more →Did you get pranked on April Fools’ Day? Or are you one to prank others? In my travels across the internet one day, I stumbled on this video with this caption: “Trucker gets pranked with heavy load. Only in Russia.” I couldn’t find any information on this mystery video (what really happened?), but it got me to thinking….Although I can find the fun in a good, harmless prank, I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would think a joke involving a heavy moving vehicle would be a good idea. I don’t
Read more →We’ve established before that I’m a cat person (and a dog person, too). Like most people with pets, Sir Sir, our twenty pound behemoth of a cat, is the center of our lives. He gets fed on schedule, gets treats and toys from the store, and gets all the belly rubs he can handle. It’s a pretty cushy life. Honestly, I don’t know how Sir Sir, would handle it if I told him to get a job. Not like this hardworking trucking cat, Percy. Percy is the traveling companion of Paul Robertson, a truck
Read more →Imagine you had a warehouse employee who could run at a speed of 5 miles per hour and effortlessly lift up to 700 pounds at a time. How would that impact the efficiency and productivity of your warehouse? Now imagine that you had an entire group of warehouse workers with these capabilities…. That’s the case at Amazon. The online retailing giant acquired Kiva, makers of warehousing robots, in 2012. Two years later, Amazon started using the orange robots in its warehouses. And it became very clear just how efficient inventory management could be with
Read more →It’s the Monday after Daylight Savings Time. Our clocks “sprung forward” (if you’ve actually gone to the trouble of changing your alarm clock, your car clock, your microwave clock, your answering machine clock, your oven clock, your coffee maker clock – you get the point..). And, we’re operating on even less sleep than usual. What’s up with that? Why does it take so long to recover from losing that one little hour? Heck, I’ve known people who’ve recovered from infectious diseases faster than I do from Daylight Savings Time! And why does it have
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Ever heard of the penny test? Place a penny with Lincoln’s profile upside-down in the tread. If the tread covers the top of Lincoln’s head, you have at least 1/16 of an inch of tread, the minimum safe tread depth. If you see Lincoln’s entire profile, you’d better get new tires, pronto. And, this year, getting new tires is going to cost you a pretty penny! Oil, natural rubber, and the other raw materials used to make tires have all skyrocketed. As a result, earlier this year, tire manufacturers announced price hikes of 5-8%.
Read more →While waiting for a phone conference to start the other day, one of our vendors shared an ordeal she faced over the weekend. It was her three-year-old’s birthday and he received a little electric train that zipped around a small circular train track. As our vendor lay on the floor setting up the track for her son, he proceeded to run the electric train over her head, firmly entangling all six train wheels in her hair. Other party-goers worked on de-tangling the train for nearly half an hour, when her husband hit on the
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Admittedly, it wasn’t our finest parenting moment. With reluctance, we gave our eight-year-old daughter a hamster for her birthday. Our trepidation stemmed from the fact that Chloe hasn’t exactly had the best luck with pets. Every time, she names them, grows attached to them, and then, her new little friends kick the bucket. We worried that if the streak continued, Chloe would be devastated. Sure enough, shortly after bringing home a little chestnut brown fur-ball from the pet store, our newest family member (whom Chloe had named Coco) kicked the bucket. My wife and
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