@ CACH Feeder /
@ CACH CHSP
IT’S HIM OR ME! Cry-Baby Aaron
THE
SAFEST MAN ALIVE 2021 MICHAEL PHILLIPS
Rodgers Demanding Packers Fire Team Custodian
WINS NATIONAL TITLE
CACH story on page: 8
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R OLL ROLL WITH SAFET SAF ETY Y SAFETY
FEEDER
NEWS JULY 2021
JULY 2021 DISPLAY UNTIL AUGUST 2021
DRIVE S AFE , DRIVE SMAR T!
YOU AND YOU R
The importance of sitting correctly while driving cannot be overstated. Maintaining a proper s over the vehicle and will minimize the chance of being injured or killed during a collision. Mode sophisticated safety features, which are designed to be effective in collision scenarios where th enough to see over the steering wheel, and is squarely in front of it. If you do not maintain this features may not be able to protect you. 1. POSITION YOURSELF CORRECTLY IN THE SEAT ITSELF. Make sure you sit straight Your buttocks and back are square and completely squeezed into the seat This helps to avoid backaches, possible back injuries and maintains awareness during long drives.
2. ADJUST THE SEAT DISTANCE.
The seat should always be positioned with regard to the pedals. Press the brake pedal fully with your right foot and fully depress the clutch (in a manual transmission car) or brake pedal (in an automatic). The distance should be adjusted so that with fully depressed pedals, your knees remain slightly bent (about 120 degrees).
3. ADJUST THE RAKE OF THE SEAT This should be as parallel as possible to the steering. It is impossible to reach a perfect adjustment but by adjusting the rake of the seat to an upright angle of about 110-95 degrees, we can grip the topmost portion of the wheel without locking the elbow fully and with shoulders back.
4. ADJUST THE STEERING HEIGHT.
The steering height should be adjusted to allow us to grip the wheel properly (at 9 and 3,), with our palms just lower than our shoulders.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AFTER DRIVING
The best way to prevent truck drivers back pain is to simply stop and walk around so often just to stand up. This helps to ease the stress on your body from sitting, an standing up and getting out of the driver’s seat is important for your back health. Tr road. By doing what you can to help prevent back pain, doing our simple back exer to chronic pain.
R SEAT
sitting position will afford you maximum control ern commercial vehicles are engineered with he driver is sat up straight, positioned high position while driving, your vehicle’s safety 6. ADJUST THE SEAT HEIGHT.
5. ADJUST THE STEERING DISTANCE
Where adjustable, adjusted with the steering wheel height while gripping the wheel properly. Our elbows should be bent at about 120 degrees. There should be a minimal clearance of 10″ (and preferably 30cm) bet ween the center of the steering hub and the base of the breastbone (sternum). It should also not be further away that 45cm.
Adjust so that you eyes are placed just above the center of the glass, this should allow us to see for ward clearly, while still having a clear view of the dashboard. After readjusting the height, recheck the feet to make sure the height adjust has not compromised it.
How to: Prevent Truck Drivers Back Pain
SITTING: As a truck driver, it’s something you’re going to be doing all the time, and it could be causing you pain. And you can see the result of truck drivers back pain at any truck stop as drivers climb out of their cabs, hunched over and stiff. IT’S TRUE that sitting for long periods of time isn’t good for your health. Your risk of blood clots, heart attack, and stroke increases. You’re more likely to have back and neck pain. Your hip flexors can tighten, your hamstrings shorten, and pinched nerves are more likely. Our bodies weren’t made to sit for so long, so when we do, the body is being stressed. Truck drivers back pain is unfortunately too common. All this driving sounds like bad news. However, there are some simple things you can do to prevent truck drivers back pain or injury from being in the driver’s seat. From checking your posture to our back exercises for truck drivers, these steps only take a few minutes to perform. TRUCK DRIVING POSTURE: When your posture begins to break down, muscles in your body start being pulled in directions they weren’t meant to be pulled. This results in chronic pain. Be aware of your posture. Make sure your seat is in the correct position so that your back is straight, your arms are relaxed, and your legs lightly touch the seat. You shouldn’t feel any tightness in your body in a relaxed, seated position with good posture. BACK EXERCISES FOR TRUCK DRIVERS: Another way to prevent back pain from lots of driving: light stretching. Do some quick stretches in your cab when you make a stop. You can do anything like a t wist, stretching the arms or wrists, and turning the head from side to side. This will help stretch out your ligaments and prevent long term pain. Get into a habit of stretching every time you stop.
every few hours. If you’re at a truck stop, do a few laps around your truck. If you have the time, make a quick stop every nd helps increase your circulation after a long period of inactivity. Even if the weather is bad or you can’t leave your cab, Truck drivers back pain is very common, so it’s very important to keep these simple tips in mind when you’re out on the rcises for truck drivers, and getting some physical activity outside your truck, you’ll save yourself time off the road due
WHATS THE BEST LANE TO BE IN?
IT PROBABLY CHANGES THROUGHOUT THE DAY DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU ARE AND WHEN YOU ARE THERE SO:
THINK AHEAD:
• The path of least resistance can and will change • Use the lane where you can ‘stay back & see all’ • Watch for get off & get on ramp traffic
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO LANE CONDITIONS, TRY TO STAY AWAY FROM: • Snow and Ice • 4 Wheelers traveling too fast for conditions • Distracted drivers • Shoulder hazards (emergency vehicles)
USE YOUR PROFESSIONAL TRUCKER SKILLS: • If you are sensing impending danger you are probably correct • We have all been in situations and had the foresight to do what it takes to avoid an accident • Trust your Instincts
CHECK THOSE MIRRORS:
• Every 5-8 seconds • A lot of hazards originate behind us • Alert drivers behind us; turn signals, 4 ways & brake lights
DRIVE ALERT & DRIVE SAFE
LANE CHANGING TIPS
TO REMEMBER
PLAN A
• AIM HIGH • 8-12 SEC • RECOGNIZ • WELL IN A • LOOK FOR
THE ART OF CHANGING LANES You can’t just move a semi-truck over whenever you want. You have to plan ahead and make your move without needing help. When you do need help, you often have to rely on the vehicles around you, most of which don’t understand and don’t care about your need to change lanes. I change lanes for various reasons, and most of the time it’s just because I have to. IT’S RARELY FOR FUN! First you must understand why trucks usually stay in the right lane. A truck’s main blind spot is on its right side, and the drivers of trucks don’t want to chance accidents, which makes them some of the safest vehicles on the road. Every year the safety industries release the numbers on the safety of trucks versus everyone else and trucks routinely are the safest vehicles highway. When you minimize the chance of vehicles being in the area that you can’t see, you reduce the chance of accidents. Since before I was born, trucks have had stickers on their trailthat say “passing side” with an arrow pointing to the driver’s side, and “suicide” with an pointing to the passenger side.
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As a semi-truck driver, you spend most of your time in the right lane, on the same side der of the highway where most people pull onto when their vehicles break down, or over for a traffic violation. Since trucks stay in the right lane, they must always be on the patrol cars and disabled vehicles on the shoulder. When a truck is approaching the obstacle on the shoulder it must either move over, slow down, or both. One of the most dangerous maneuvers a driver makes is merely moving from one lane to another.
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To further complicate this lane change, there may be traffic and obstacles ahead that the traffic behind the truck can’t see. Usually, when I’m moving over to avoid an upcoming hazard, there are vehicles speeding up from behind; they rarely want to wait for me to move into the left lane. They don’t know why, or they don’t care why, I’m moving over and slowing down. Occasionally there’s a cautious driver who recognizes what I’m attempting to do, and lets me have time to do what I need to. Since everyone is in such a hurry to get from point A to point B these days, it’s rare to see cautious drivers on the road. I’ll go into a rather lengthy post about that topic on another day. Many times when I move into the left lane to avoid an obstacle or situation on the shoulder, hurried traffic simply maintains their speed, blowing by me on the right. This creates an even greater hazard, having a vehicle speedthe right lane between an obstacle on the shoulder and a semi-truck in the left lane. The trick is to control your environment. You can’t stop the people behind you, and you can’t explain to them what you’re seeing in front of you, but you can keep them guessing and leery of the big semi-truck in front of them. As soon as you identify the hazard, you must look at the traffic behind you and around you. After you’ve done this, you must decide which action to take. Much of the time I just slow down, use my turn signal, and move over, but when I see vehicles behind me speeding up to pass on the right, I’ll start to move back over into the right lane, straddling the center stripe until I pass the hazard. This keeps them in a safer place than if they were to try to squeeze by me. I then begin move back into the right lane as soon as I have passed the hazard on the shoulder, leaving the vehicle behind having to move into the left lane.
AHEAD:
H IN STEERING COND EYE LEAD TIME ZE SLOWER MOVING VEHICLES ADVANCE R A SAFE PATH TO CHANGE LANES
SIGNAL YOUR INTENTIONS:
ing in
to me
• MAKE SURE THEY SEE YOU • COMMUNICATE YOUR INTENTIONS • LIGHTS, HORN SIGNAL *NOTE: IT’S WISE TO LEARN TRUCK LANE RESTRICTION LAWS IN THE AREAS WE TRAVEL.........BE SAFE!
How to Prevent
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Millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and cargo goes up in smoke every year because of wheel-end fires, euphemistically called thermal events. You’ll see it on the news or social media, with dramatic footage of thick black smoke and flames consuming an entire trailer — and the tractor, if the driver can’t get the two units unhooked fast enough. But determining how and where the fires start continues to frustrate the maintenance community, because the damage is often so severe, there’s little left pointing to a cause. Each fire could be a one-off incident — or it could be indicative of a pattern of events that happens to other fleets too, but fleets likely won’t be aware of what maintenance issues their competitors are experiencing. The American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council surveyed members to determine which, if any, contributing factors might show up as trends across a broad truck and trailer population. Nothing turned up that would give investigators something to focus on. Participation in the survey was light, we’re told, because fleets didn’t want to incriminate themselves by admitting to having had a fire, despite being promised anonymity.
WHAT IS KNOWN IS THAT TIRES DO NOT CAUSE THE FIRES. Phil Arnold, a field engineer with Michelin North America, told attendees at TMC’s Fall Meeting that rubber compounds begin to break down when tire temperatures exceed 250 degrees. That’s when a blowout might occur resulting from the deterioration of the tire. It’s not until the rubber reaches temperatures of 500-550 that flammable vapors are emitted by the tire. If an ignition source is present, the rubber will start burning at 650-700 degrees. Spontaneous combustion won’t occur until 850-900 degrees. (The normal operating temperature range for tires is between 100 and 150 degrees). “Tires contain a great deal of potential energy,” he said. “They are like high-grade coal when they start to burn, and they are very difficult to extinguish.” When a tire comes apart while driving, it’s usually the result of under inflation. Heat generated within the sidewalls as the tire flexes weakens the steel belts in the casing while softening the rubber to the point it eventually breaks down and the tire blows apart. With tire fires, the heat source is the wheel end. Heat travels through the metal of the hub and through the wheel, where it comes into contact with the tire bead. Since the bead is built differently from the upper sidewall, the rubber there just gets hotter and hotter, until at some point it begins burning, rather than exploding as the casing might due to under inflation. The source of that heat is friction from either a deteriorating wheel bearing or a dragging brake. In the bearing’s case, failure usually stems from lack of lubrication. There are multiple causes for dragging brakes.
PM AND THE DRIVER’S ROLE While procedures differ for various wheel-end assemblies and lubricants, at the bare minimum, technicians and drivers should watch for signs of lubricant leakage. Oil-lubricated hubs should be checked every time a trailer enters the shop. The lube should be checked for signs of water contamination (milky appearance), and the oil should be smelled to see if it has been subject to high temperatures (it will smell burnt). Also, the condition of the sight-glass should be checked. With grease-filled hubs where the lubricant is not visible, the wheel should be jacked up, rotated and checked for signs of rough rotation, stiffness or looseness. If the hub cab is removed, verify the correct lube levels (not over-filled), and check for contamination and corrosion on the outer bearing.
Wheel-End Fires WHEEL BEARINGS Wheel-bearing-related fires can almost always be traced back to lack of lubrication, whether it’s lube loss due to a seal failure or contamination related to water ingress, or debris in the bearing well damaging the seal and causing a leak. Any situation that might increase friction between the axle spindle and the hub needs to be addressed in the installation and maintenance of the wheel-end assembly. “Over-tightening (excessive preload) the bearing can limit the lube film, which will generate heat, though perhaps not to the level where there’s a risk of a fire,” says Ean Dickerhoof, an application engineer for mobile on-highway products at Timken. “Conversely, excessive end play can affect seal alignment compromising seal life, which can allow debris to enter the system or the lubricant to leak out.” DRIVERS SHOULD BE TRAINED TO INSPECT HUB CAPS FOR PROPER CONDITION. THIS ONE IS OVER-FILLED WITH LUBRICANT.
Obviously, seal condition and lube levels and condition need to be inspected at regular intervals, Dickerhoof adds, being careful to maintain the proper lube level.
“Some people think packing the cavity full of grease is better than partially filling it,” says Michael Gromosiak, Timken chief application engineer for mobile products. “There’s a certain percentage fill that’s recommended. If you overfill the cavity you can overheat the bearing, because there’s no heat dissipation.” Timken says bearings ought to run somewhere in the 160-175 degree range. Running at 250 and higher is getting into risky territory. In the case of complete lube depletion, temps will continue to rise until the wheel-end assembly either fails completely and separates from the truck or it heats the surrounding materials to a point where the tire catches fire.
DRAGGING BRAKES “There are a lot of different reasons a brake can drag to a point of a thermal event occurring,” says Joseph Kay, Meritor director of brake engineering. “In general, it takes a rather large force applied to the brake shoes on a drum brake or brake pads in a disc brake to generate substantial rubbing forces that cause the brake system to get hotter and hotter as the vehicle is driven.” Kay points to several potential sources, including driving with the parking brake applied, a failed parking chamber diaphragm not compressing the parking spring completely, brakes not releasing after a brake application, corrosion-related binding of the camshaft or disc brake caliper internal parts or sliding system, malfunctioning slack adjusters, or excessive brake lining swell. “In most cases the driver will not be able to detect brakes that are dragging because of the engine power hicle,” Kay says. “This is where the driver needs to smoking from the brakes or any handling differences, or deceleration.”
one or maybe two and weight of the vebe aware of excessive such as unusual pull
Literally any moving brake part could be suspect, from valves that do not fully exhaust application pressure due to fouling or corrosion, to broken parking brake springs that inhibit full retraction of the push rod, or lack of S-cam or slack adjuster lubrication, says Keith McComsey, director of marketing and customer solutions – wheel-end at Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake. “Proper preventive maintenance and inspection of all wheel-end components is critical, as is the proper specification and condition of brake linings per the OEM literature.” As for TMC’s survey results, they revealed 88% of reported fires occurred on vehicles equipped with drum brakes and self-adjusting brake adjusters, while 25% of respondents reported fires on disc-brake-equipped vehicles. Drivers are the last line of defense against wheel-end fires, but they can’t be expected to notice everything or even know what to look for without proper training in wheel-end inspection. Drivers should touch and smell the wheel-hub area for excessive temperatures and tell-tale odors of overheated brakes on wheel-ends. On top of that, drivers should “GET OUT AND LOOK” if something doesn’t feel right. A dragging brake can be difficult to detect from the driver’s seat. Drivers won’t always feel the brake dragging and its not uncommon for a driver to mistake a dragging brake for a heavier-than-usual load, a headwind, or even terrain that seems to make the engine work a little harder.” Determining the cause of a wheel-end fire might not always be possible, but you can certainly reduce the chances by proper pre-trip procedures and common sense.
Joseph M. Kaplan Safe Driver of the Year Award Winner CONGRATULATIONS Mr. Michael Phillips Out of 135 nominations submitted by UPS for this years award 6 UPS drivers have been selected for this years very prestigious title, one of them is our own CACH 710 Feeder Driver Michael Phillips. Mike has racked up forty one years of safe driving which has earned him the title of “SAFEST MAN ALIVE” for 2021, He will be invited to attend the NSC Safety Congress/Expo that is being held in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, October 12th. WAY TO GO MIKE!
GARY STAHL, 710
NEWELL BROADWAY, 710
36 YEARS SERVICE 25 YEARS SAFE DRIVING
36 YEARS SERVICE 26 YEARS SAFE DRIVING
CIRCLE OF HONOR
SUPERSTARS HOWARD MOORE, 705 46 YEARS SERVICE 26 YEARS SAFE DRIVING
FRANK CRUZ, 705
42 YEARS SERVICE 35 YEARS SAFE DRIVING
SUMMERTIME QUOTE: “Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can
happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.”__Unknown.