The tractor in question is a CNG-powered Cascadia 113 with a Cummins ISX12G natural gas engine under the hood. The truck will run across the country, making stops at Freightliner dealerships en route to showcase the truck and give interested customers the chance to sit behind the wheel, go for a drive and see for themselves how viable a fuel compressed natural gas is for heavy-duty truck applications.

The tour is the brainchild of Gregory Treinen, product marketing manager for Freightliner, who says a major goal is to demonstrate just how far the CNG infrastructure has come in the U.S. over the past couple of years. “We’re making this trip using only public refueling facilities,” Treinen explains. “There is a lot of talk out there today about how the LNG infrastructure is lagging as natural gas comes on line as a trucking fuel. And people tend to overlook the fact that the CNG infrastructure has already made great strides to the point that we can easily take this Cascadia coast-to-coast with no fear of being unable to find fueling options.”

A new website, freightlinergreen.com, will allow people to track the drive in real time across the country, get updates and blog entries from the drivers as well as a trip cost calculator, which will track the cost of the trip comparing real-world CNG prices versus real-world diesel prices, as well as a full listing of all dealership stops on the route.

The Freightliner LA to DC CNG tour will culminate in the nation’s capital on March 24th.

Clark, who retired as a four-star general, began his career as a West Point graduate and junior officer in a combat command in Vietnam and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming commander of NATO forces in Europe. In 2008, Clark ran for U.S. president on the Democratic ticket, and today he is a businessman heavily invested in alternative energy markets, including shale, natural gas, wind, tidal and biofuels.

As keynote speaker at the opening session of the Alternative Clean Transportation Exposition in Long Beach, Calif., Clark said the knowledge-based economic boom of the 1990s seemed to be the fitting conclusion to the “American Century,” as the Internet and the rise of personal computers fed an ever-growing economy that was the envy of the world. But as American wealth grew, the country as a whole invested in real estate instead of manufacturing, research and development.

At the same time, Americans discovered to their dismay that a knowledge-based economy was difficult to contain within national borders. “As it turns out, knowledge moves very quickly overseas,” Clark said. “We discovered that people in Eastern Europe and Asia can write programming code and create software just as good as anyone in America can.”

Today, with the American economy flat and slowly regathering momentum, Clark said that while the United States has no real superpower rivals at the moment, the Chinese are gaining steam and telling the world that America was the economy of the last century – while the future belongs to Beijing.

To counter this, Clark said the United States needs a growth policy – an idea that seems alien to many Americans. “We’ve always grown naturally,” he said. “But for most countries around the world, an economic growth plan is absolutely vital to create and sustain prosperity.”

Brazil is an example of this, he said. The Brazilian government realized that as long as the country was sending billions of dollars overseas to purchase oil, it never would be able to invest adequately to grow its own economy and spur growth. So Brazil decided to shift energy production within its own borders with an aggressive ethanol fuel program. “It worked,” Clark said. “Not overnight. But today, Brazil is one of the premier up-and-coming economies in the world.”

The United States today is in a similar position, Clark said. “We send over $300 billion overseas to purchase oil every year,” he said. “That’s about $1,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. That’s money that we can keep at home to create up to 8.5 million jobs – and taxes to cut our deficit and invest in sustained economic growth.”

Currently, Clark said, that $300 billion a year gets the United States about 9.5 million barrels of oil a day, and he thinks Americans need to pull together across the board – “Everything from ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ to improved fuel economy standards, to wind, solar and tidal power” to steadily chip away at those 9.5 million barrels of oil.

Clark challenged fleet managers attending the conference to ask themselves what they could do to help their country and grow the economy by looking into and investing in alternative fuel technologies where possible. “We all have to work together on this,” he stressed. “The beauty of this is we can develop these alternative fuel technologies without government programs.”

Clark said Wall Street is sitting on $2 billion that could be invested in such technologies. “Overseas investors would love to invest in the United States – because in spite of all our current problems, we still have the strongest and safest economy in the world,” he said. “We just have to step up and give them a vision and goals they can feel confident putting their money in.”

Click here for a downloadable PDF of their presentation, “Here’s The Keys, Call If You Need Anything, See You In 12 Hours.”

Click here for a downloadble PDF of the “Implement Sustainable Snow and Ice Control” presentation.

For a PDF of Cregar’s presentation, click here.

The company says a shortage of castor beans in 2002-03, the chief component in natural Nylon 11 (Polyamide 11), led to more prominence in air coils made of synthetic Nylon 12 (Polyamide 12).

Given the uptick in solar panel production of late, 12 has been in high demand, leading to more frequent use of materials including Nylon 6/6, polyurethane and Hytrel, which the company views generally as inferior for various reasons, though they all have their advantages as well.

Check out the March and April editions of their newsletter in the archive available here for the full discussion. They offered these considerations in determining quality (more detailed in the April newsletter) as well:

**When “clapping” the coils together, a dense, low-pitched sound indicates better quality than a higher pitch.
**Air coils utilizing type B layering with a tighter “diamond pattern” braid offer better reinforcement and less kinking.
**Air coils with three- to four-piece compression fittings and/or barbed fittings offer easier connection and added protection.

On May 8, conferees from both chambers will have start meetings to begin the compromise process between House and Senate proposals for a multi-year surface transportation funding bill.

Both the House and Senate bills propose to increase Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act funding from $122 million to $1 billion annually. The Federal Highway Administration administers the program to distribute TIFIA loans to major surface transportation projects.

Last month, administration officials said national demand for program assistance has been “overwhelming.” Since its creation in 1998, $9.1billion in TIFIA loans have been made to 26 projects.

While TIFIA has enjoyed bipartisan support, it has its critics.

The Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association has said TIFIA is increasingly used to support public-private toll roads.  U.S. Public Interest Research Groups criticized House and Senate bills for the funding hike and including language it said will eliminate criteria to ensure the most deserving projects are selected.

The federation of state PIRGs had particularly harsh words for the House bill, which would eliminate a provision ensuring tax payers get paid back first when private projects face bankruptcy.

“…Coupled with new provisions in the House bill to add tolls on federal highways, the likely result would be a spate of publicly subsidized private toll roads and few TIFIA funds directed to anything else,” PIRG stated Jan. 31.

Sixteen of the program’s 21 current credit agreements for projects listed the primary revenue to repay the loan as user charges, such as tolls, according to TIFIA portfolio FHWA issued last month.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said the program lacked appropriate vetting and cited California’s South Bay Expressway toll road as a TIFIA failure.

In 2003, SBX became the first private road developer to receive a program loan, but filed for bankruptcy in 2010. The move was necessary because of economic downturn and financial claims by the contractor against the project, TIFIA said.

In December 2011, the San Diego Association of Governments bought the lease to operate the toll road. The association said it would lower tolls, an action possible because it has goals different than the previous facility operators which had been private, for-profit entities.

The 2003 program loan was $140 million. Under the bankruptcy plan, TIFIA’s secured claim is $99 million, $93 million of which is debt or the new loan amount. The rest is equity, FHWA said.

“A four-month trend is certainly significant, and it is causing many in the industry to question their assumptions of growth for 2012,” says Eric Starks, FTR president. “Now that we are through the typical ordering season, we expect orders to remain in the sub-20K level through the summer months. If the truck OEMs don’t scale back their build plans for the second half of the year, then we are likely to see a more significant payback once we get into 2013.”

Although these machines may be working on pathways, parking lots and street patches, many of them offer highway-class paver features.

“We were the first in the commercial paving industry to introduce an electrically-heated screed,” says Brian Hall, territory manager with LeeBoy. “This gives our users a more environmentally-friendly solution at a cost savings over the life of the machine. Wide, slow-moving conveyor flights extend the time between replacements of those components, including the augers, which do not need to run when paving at narrow widths.

Segmented augers reduce the need to change augers if they are only partially worn.”

For the full article in the digital edition, click here.

Though one who carries on an abnormally dangerous activity does so with the utmost care, they are liable for any injury or damage resulting from the activity to anyone whose person or property they should recognize as likely to be harmed by a mishap. Generally, an activity is deemed abnormally dangerous if it involves a risk of serious harm to others that cannot be eliminated by the exercise of the utmost care, and includes activities such as blasting, the testing of rockets, and the keeping of wild or vicious animals.

“Assumption of the risk” is a different legal doctrine that applies to bar or limit a plaintiff’s recovery. Though most cases in which the doctrine of assumption of risk exists involve recreational sports, the doctrine has been applied to dangerous activities in other situations involving an inherent risk of injury to voluntary participants. In Montana, these two doctrines intersected in a recent blasting case.

In Patterson Enterprises, Inc. v. Johnson (Feb. 24, 2012), the Montana Supreme Court held that a road contractor and its employees assumed the risk for an excavator that was crushed as part of a blasting operation by its blasting subcontractor. In fall 2006, Patterson was hired to construct a road approximately 20 miles west of Missoula. Since the road was to be constructed in mountainous terrain, a significant amount of blasting was required. Patterson hired Archie Johnson Contracting (AJC) to perform all blasting on the project.

On Jan. 2, 2007, Patterson and AJC entered into an agreement for the blasting, requiring AJC to drill and blast various rock outcroppings. Patterson’s superintendent’s job was to work with AJC’s crews to remove blasted material. AJC was in charge of blasting while Patterson was in charge of excavating.

During the project, Patterson used its equipment to clear or build a flat pad for AJC’s drilling equipment. AJC would place its drilling equipment on the pad, drill holes in the rock, and fill the holes with explosives. Before detonating the explosives, AJC would clear the area. The explosions fractured the rock and allowed Patterson to excavate the blasted material. AJC and Patterson repeated this process as they constructed the road.

On February 26, 2007, AJC detonated explosives along 500 yards of rock. This blast created a rock overhang that caused concern. On February 28, 2007, AJC and the project owners met on site to discuss how to deal with the overhang. One idea was for AJC’s crews to come in from above using ropes and drills so they could safely get to the overhang and bring it down. However, since this would take several days, the owners opposed this idea.

On March 1, 2007, when Patterson’s superintendent arrived for work, he moved his excavator near the overhang and began excavating the blasted rock. AJC’s crew arrived sometime later and checked on the progress. AJC’s driller did not advise or warn the overhang was still dangerous because, according to the driller, Patterson’s superintendent knew it was dangerous. When AJC’s driller stopped by the area more than an hour later, he noticed the superintendent was working directly below the overhang so he signaled for him to exit the excavator. Almost immediately after exiting, an entire section of rock above the excavator collapsed and crushed it. The superintendent was not injured. AJC denied liability for the accident.

On September 11, 2007, Patterson filed suit. AJC denied all charges and counterclaimed for breach of contract and money owed. The case proceeded to a jury trial. The jury returned a verdict that AJC’s blasting caused Patterson’s damages regarding the crushed excavator, but Patterson and its employees assumed the risk of harm. The jury allocated fault 51 percent to AJC and 49 percent to Patterson, and awarded damages to Patterson of $50,000. The jury also ruled in favor of AJC’s breach of contract claim and awarded damages to AJC of $19,255.16. Patterson appealed the jury’s verdict regarding assumption of the risk.

The Montana Supreme Court examined the doctrine of assumption of the risk. The court determined that given Patterson’s superintendent’s knowledge of the danger of operating his excavator beneath the rock overhang, he possessed subjective knowledge of the danger the overhang posed. AJC’s personnel expressed concern to the superintendent about the rock overhang that eventually fell on the excavator and told him “it was a very hazardous” condition. Patterson’s superintendent testified that he “also, felt it was very hazardous.” In fact, he testified that placing the excavator “right underneath” the overhang would have been “very dangerous.” As a result, the court upheld the jury’s verdict.

This case illustrates the intersection of the doctrines of abnormally dangerous activities and assumption of the risk. Blasting is an abnormally dangerous activity resulting in strict liability. However, in Patterson, the superintendent’s subjective knowledge of the danger of operating his excavator beneath the rock overhang was enough to apply assumption of the risk. As a result, the blasting subcontractor, AJC, avoided what otherwise could have been a crushing defeat.

Assumption of the risk is a legal doctrine that can be used in a variety of contexts, including blasting and other activities involving an inherent risk of injury to voluntary participants. Its proper application, which varies depending upon the jurisdiction, can result in offsetting, and even negating, plaintiff’s claims.