Trucks

Re "Technology Offers Trucking Firms New Safety Strategies," Aug. 17: One way to increase highway safety is to encourage intermodal freight for long-distance shipments. Such shipments can be loaded into containers, picked up by trucks and placed on intermodal railroad flatcars. At their destination, local truckers deliver the containers to the consignees. In most cases that will reduce the number of trucks on the highways, together with their sleep-deprived drivers. Reducing the number of trucks in motion alone should increase highway safety.

Workers on Friday cleaned up what amounted to a 21-ton tomato salad on Interstate 57 after a truck carrying peanut oil rammed the back of a tomato truck, state police said. Neither driver was injured.

I'm writing in response to the article written by Aaron Curtiss (Feb. 12) on whether or not the state of California should let three-trailer big rigs drive on our streets and freeways. I disagree with Assemblyman Richard Katz and the other officials who say that these trucks are hard to control and cause deadly accidents. These trucks and their drivers do not cause these accidents, it's the people who cut these trucks off. They expect the truck drivers to see them and stop in time, even in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

General Motors Corp. said it will spend $500 million to consolidate its North American production of light- and medium-duty commercial trucks in Flint, Mich., beginning in 2000. The Flint plant also will produce a version of GM's full-size pickup truck beginning in 1999, a move that would increase its pickup production about 4%, the company said. The moves will shift about 2,500 jobs to Flint and preserve about 3,500 truck plant jobs in the city, the company said.

In response to Judy Williams' letter concerning truck traffic during commute hours: Does she realize that most truck drivers drive about 90,000 miles a year to make an average living? They pay road use taxes plus fuel taxes of more than $2,000 a year. Trucks are not just taking up space on her freeways and surface streets. They too are working and delivering commodities needed in her everyday life. I wonder what would happen if everyone had a great idea like Williams to bar trucks during rush hours.

Ford Motor Co. is recalling more than 500 1987-model Bigfoot Cruisers, a promotional light truck equipped with four-wheel drive, to rework certain design alterations, the auto maker has announced. The recall includes replacement of tires that are too large.

In the wake of several accidents on a steep roadway, heavy trucks will be banned from exiting the Glendale Freeway at Mountain Street under a resolution to be considered today by the Glendale City Council. Under the resolution, which is expected to be adopted, trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds would be prohibited from traveling west on Mountain between the freeway and Verdugo Road.

Last month the Orange County Friends of Nicaraguan Children received $5,300 in contributions from county residents for the nationwide humanitarian project of the Veterans Peace Convoy, to take food, clothing, and medical equipment to Nicaragua for war orphans and children displaced by the war. The trucks the veterans were driving were to be left in Nicaragua to transport the aid material to the children. When the convoy reached the U.S.-Mexican border, it was stopped by U.S. Customs officials, who refused to allow it to proceed on its way to Nicaragua, claiming that the gift of trucks would violate the U.S. embargo on trade with Nicaragua.

A. Wayne (Pop) Hays, 86, has had a lifelong obsession with trucks. He rattles off the names and descriptions of nearly every make ever manufactured in this country. He can describe in detail the beauty of the 1918 Menominee Express or the 1930 Kenworth. But his obsession is most obvious in the 170 antique trucks--most dating from before the 1930s--he owns and exhibits in his private truck museum in this farm center 20 miles northwest of Sacramento.

The disappearance of at least 50 U.S. military vehicles from a forward Army facility has mystified commanders for weeks and raised fears that they had been stolen by terrorists planning attacks on American bases. Most of the five-ton trucks and utility vehicles were taken at night from a compound that commanders considered secure. In response to the disappearances, sentries went on heightened alert at U.S. bases and military police launched an investigation.