May 2017 Volume 37, Issue 4
TRUCK NEWS Eastern Canada’s Trucking Newspaper Since 1981
Delivering daily news at trucknews.com
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Page 14
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Page 46
Too many trucks
Orders on the rise
On the road
Titanium posts financial results, claims overcapacity continues to be an issue.
Early indications suggest this may be a better than expected year for truck demand.
We take Kenworth’s new T880S with set-forward axle for a spin.
Medium-duty, big decisions
Working hard for less money
Medium-duty truck buyers have plenty to think about before choosing a vehicle.
RET ADVERTAIL ISING P AGES 47 -
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Latest Best Fleets to Drive For survey shows drivers are working more and getting paid less By Sonia Straface MARKHAM, ONTARIO Company drivers and owner-operators working for the 2017 Best Fleets to Drive For are making less money year-over-year while driving more miles. This is according to results published in March during the 2017 Best Fleets to Drive For webinar put on by Jane Jazrawy and Mark Murrell of CarriersEdge, which administers the program. The awards program recognizes for-hire fleets that provide exceptional workplace experiences for their drivers, and shares that information to showcase to others what successful carriers are doing to attract and keep drivers. The program itself is in its ninth year and is produced by CarriersEdge in partContinued on page 12
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Power lift
Huge components are moved for the Lower Churchill Project power system By Carroll McCormick ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND n a dark February night, a 128-wheel Goldhofer hydraulic platform trailer does the limbo under deactivated power lines, lifted out of the way by utility lines people. Over a constantly salted and sanded road, it moves a 205-ton stator 37 kilometers to Soldiers Pond, southwest of St. John’s, Nfld. This three-hour move is one of six carried out by Transport Bellemare International in service of the Lower Churchill Project’s Labrador - Island Transmission Link: three stators and three 225-ton rotors, which will be mated to become synchronous motors, but more properly called synchronous condensers. High-voltage direct current power flowing down from the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric generating facility in Labrador will be converted to high-voltage alternating current at Soldiers Pond. “The purpose of the synchronous condenser is to maintain the stability and reliability of the electrical transmission grid as it adjusts to conditions during operations,” explains Stephen Follett, project manager, HVdc Specialties with the Lower Churchill Project. The stators and rotors, built in Trois-Rivières and Sorel, Que., arrived by barge last fall at the Pennecon Energy Marine Base in Bay Bulls, for the hydro project owner, Newfoundland and Labrador crown corporation Nalcor Energy. The 90-foot long Goldhofer, with 16
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axles and weighing around 60 tons, along with five 1996 Western Star tractors with dual drive axles and 600 hp engines, and a 60-ft., 12-axle, self-propelled Goldhofer trailer, hitched a ride to the island on the barge. The Bellemare team, 12 strong, including supervisors, engineers and operators, moved the stators and rotors off the barge with the 60-ft Goldhofer. Its hydraulics, which power two feet of up and down axle travel, are so responsive that the trailer can hold loads level even as the barge, moored alongside the wharf, bobs up and down on the waves. In the Pennecon Energy Grand Banks Warehouse, the 90-foot Goldhofer does a hydraulic dip, backs under a rotor that is sitting on steel saddles, and then raises itself and its load up in just a couple of minutes. Pulled by three tractors and pushed by two more, the procession – the top speed for these loads is 20 km/h – works its way out of Bay Bulls, up the steep and narrow South Side Road, west along the Witless Bay Line, and then north to Soldiers Pond. En-route, the hydraulics raise and lower individual axle ends, roll the whole platform on the curves and pitch it on the hills, to keep the load as level as possible. Once safely down the steep access road and onto the converter station site at Soldiers Pond, the 12-axle Goldhofer takes the stator and moves it into place. It will be joined by the other stators and rotors, as well as seven 175-ton transformers transported by day from Bulls Bay by Mammoet, using another Goldhofer. Continued on page 24