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Browse stories from the iTrucker archive.

News · Feb 24, 2020

Illinois trucking company lays off drivers, shuts off Wisconsin terminal

Story by: Clarissa Hawes at FreightWavesAlmost 70 employees, including 61 truck drivers, got just three days’ notice that Black Horse Carriers Inc. was permanently shuttering its terminal in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday. The closure is in response to a customer’s decision to “discontinue business” with the carrier at its Pewaukee location, Nancy Brooks, director of human resources for the company, stated in its notice to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development on Friday. According to

News · Feb 24, 2020

Mass layoffs reported after autonomous trucks startup Starsky Robotics fails to find investors

Story by: Clarissa Hawes at FreightWaves Autonomous trucking startup Starsky Robotics has laid off the majority of its engineers and office personnel after its fundraising efforts and attempts to find a buyer failed, a former executive says. A skeleton crew remains at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco as Starsky co-founders Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, chief executive officer, and Kartik Tiwari, chief technology officer, continue to seek a buyer for the four-year startup. Since 2017, Starsky

News · Feb 22, 2020

Veteran driver switched his diesel truck for the electric one and he likes it

Story by: Alan Adler at FreightWaves Over two decades and 2 million miles, Karl Williams has driven practically every diesel-powered truck brand on the road. Now behind the wheel of an electric truck, he relishes keeping his place in stop-and-go traffic and misses neither the engine clatter nor the smell of diesel fuel. “I never imagined I would be driving an electric truck,” the 57-year-old Williams told FreightWaves during a recent drive in a Freightliner eCascadia along California State Route

News · Feb 11, 2020

Tennessee trucking company closes after nearly 70 years

Story by: Clarissa Hawes and FreightWaves Family-owned Howard Baer Inc. of Nashville, Tennessee, ceased operations Jan. 31, citing government regulations, the ongoing struggle to find qualified drivers and soaring insurance costs as the main reasons behind the company’s decision to close after 69 years. Owner Greg Baer told FreightWaves he made the decision to retire and wind down operations after his son decided he didn’t want to take over the family business Greg’s dad started back in 1951. Th

News · Feb 10, 2020

Waiting on the Tesla Electric Semi Truck

Story by: Linda Baker, Staff Writer at FreightWaves Tesla (TSLA) plans to put “limited volumes” of its heavy-duty truck on the road in 2020, CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s earnings call last week, but faster production requires a massive ramping up in battery power. “That’s part of the reason why we have not, for example, really accelerated production of the Semi,” Musk said. “[It] means making fewer Model 3 or Model Y cars. It uses a lot of cells.” Walmart (WMT), UPS (UPS) and Anheuser

News · Feb 6, 2020

Major winter storm developing in the Rockies

Story by: Nick Austin, Director of Weather Analytics and Senior Meteorologist at FreightWaves Another winter storm is about to slam the Rockies mountains of the Western U.S. just a few days after dumping record snowfall in Utah. On Monday, Salt Lake City received a daily record 8.6 inches of snowfall, breaking the old record of 7 inches set in 1936. The average daily snowfall for the date is four-tenths of an inch. Many high elevations of the Wasatch and Rockies were slammed with 12 inches or mo

News · Feb 6, 2020

Federally funded autonomous electric shuttles show up in Ohio

Story by: Vishnu Rajamanickam at FreigtWaves Linden LEAP, an autonomous electric shuttle funded by the federal government, is taking to the streets of Columbus, Ohio, providing residents in the South Linden neighborhood of the city access to the rest of Columbus. Data collected during this project will be analyzed to make services incrementally better, helping further expand autonomous vehicle services across the country. For the next year, residents can ride the shuttle for free, with the initi

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News · Feb 5, 2020

WEX identifies cause of fuel card problems: Too much data

Story by: Brian Straight at FreightWaves In a statement to customers this afternoon, WEX (NYSE: WEX) said issues with its fuel cards, including its EFS and FleetOne cards, were due to an unknown data limit issue within its IBM Informix system. The company sent the following message to its customers this afternoon: “Last night we experienced an issue with our IBM Informix database where a ‘chunk’ of our tables and data exceeded the maximum Terabyte allowable by IBM. This was an unknown limit by E

News · Feb 5, 2020

EFS fuel cards suffer outage, drivers unable to pay for fuel

Story by: Brian Straight at FreightWaves A systems failure with EFS fuel cards has led to truck drivers unable to fuel their vehicles in various locations, according to multiple reports. Social media users first identified the problem early Wednesday morning, and since then media reports indicate that WEX, the parent company of EFS, has confirmed the issue. One social media poster indicated the cards began having problems late Tuesday night. Others have said their cards are now working and compa

News · Feb 5, 2020

Cold Carriers is shutting down despite Chapter 11 reorganization efforts

Story by: Clarissa Hawes at FreightWaves Despite its efforts to reorganize, Cold Carriers Logistics and its entities will cease operations on Feb. 21 after failing to secure a new buyer, according to a source familiar with the bankruptcy case. Private equity firm KJM Capital Transportation Fund LLC, which owns Cold Carriers Logistics and six other affiliates, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late September 2019, a move that impacted around 340 truck drivers. The wind-down was agreed

News · Feb 4, 2020

Under-21 driver proposals get pushback at U.S. Senate hearing

Story by: John Gallagher, Washington Correspondent at FreightWaves Republican lawmakers would like to see the next highway bill reauthorization include a provision allowing under-21 truck drivers to haul freight across state lines, but safety advocates and small-business truckers are urging Congress to resist that effort. The Drive Safe Act, which was strongly opposed by safety groups and independent owner-operators when it was initially proposed in 2018, was reintroduced in separate bills in th

News · Feb 3, 2020

The impact of coronavirus on China supply chains

Story by: Vishnu Rajamanickam / FreightWaves As China struggles to contain the Wuhan-centered coronavirus outbreak, the resulting shutdown of factories and logistics hubs in the country is slowly constricting the global supply chain pipeline. The Wuhan coronavirus belongs to the same family of coronaviruses as SARS and MERS. Though not as deadly as those previous outbreaks, the Wuhan coronavirus virus is far easier to contract, leading to an exponential rise in cases reported every week. With ov