Momentum Freight's Weblog

Engine maker Paccar is launching an MX class of diesel truck engine that is slated to become standard in Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks later this year; if they live up to their PR, they will be welcome additions to a freight carrier’s fleet. Paccar is currently importing the engines from a Dutch subsidiary but will be building them in Mississippi later in the year. The MX is designed up to current EPA 2010 standards, with exhaust recirculation and a truck version of a catalytic converter.

Our vocabulary term for the evening is B10, which is the time it takes 10% of a product to fail. The MX has a B10 of a million miles. That sounds like a lot when you’re comparing it to car engines that are expected to last around 100,000-200,000 miles, but a million miles would be 6.7 years of being used five days a week, 600 miles a day. Most trucks engines have B10s of half as long. The warranty is for 250,000 miles, so they aren’t counting on the Peterbilts petering out for a few years.

Trucking transport firms don’t like replacing trucks if they don’t have to and are leery of tackling the new 2010 truck standards as a beta-tester, but the MX has the advantage of already being used in Europe and China; that will be a good selling point for them going forward. Knowing that someone else has put the engines through their paces already will help get firms to fork over the bongo bucks required to by a truck these days.

Sources:http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-deta…_category_id=36
http://www.surveymethods.com/glossary/B10_%20Life.aspx

The European Union naval partnership (EUnavfor) thinks the crossbones and skull of Somalia pirates could be flying from the flag pole of the North Korean freight carrier, the Rim, after the cargo vessel was seen heading toward an area off the coast of Africa where Somalia pirates are in control of things. The Rim is the thirteenth hijacked vessel, along with over 263 sailors now that the Rim has been hijacked, that’s still in the hands of the Somalia pirates, and one of over 80 ships that the pirates operating along the coast of Somalia have hijacked in the past two years. The ships taken do include several large freight carrier ships, along with smaller ships, moving along the trade routes running through the Gulf of Eden.

The fate of the crew members hasn’t been talked about much lately, but this has to be the main concern of all agencies involved in the problem. There are family members of these kidnapped individuals that are spending uncomfortable times while they wait to hear news that their loved ones have been released and we hope this is resolved safely and quickly. The pirates appear to have their own timetable for events to follow and will probably be demanding compensation for the return of the captives in their own time. There are many in the world opposed to paying ransom to the Somalia pirates for the return of the ships, the cargo they were carrying and the crew members.

The authorities tasked with patroling the trade routes the pirates prey on believe it’s possible the Rim might have wandered off the internationally recommended transit corridor in use and was attacked by Somalia pirates once this happened. Freight carrier vessels need to stay on the path that has been laid out for ships moving through the areas where pirates are known to operate, but ships can easily go off track and this is when they become vulnerable to attacks by pirates.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34623070
http://www.ifw-net.com/freightpubs/ifw/ind…tid=20017745819