NAMO October 2014 Newsletter

How toConstruct

a Content Machine Could Ebola fears scare off

tourists?

WRITechnology

into a Lifelong FollowerHow to Turn a New Fan

ISSUE 06/ NOVEMBER 2014

MOTORCOACHNational association OF

operators Monthly

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54WIRELESS ROAD-SIDE INSPECTIONS ENTER FIELD TEST-ING PHASE/Beginning in December 2015, up to 1,000 drivers...

FUNG WAHBUSCOMPANY’SRETURN TO CITYSTREETS SHOTDOWN BYFEDS/The federal government has slammed the brakes...

FMCSA MAKES CHANGES TO SMS WEBSITE TOIMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE/The website that hosts and displays safety information...

BILL IN HOUSEWOULD FORCEFMCSA TOREMOVE CSASCORES FROMPUBLIC VIEW,REVAMPPROGRAM/A bill has been introduced in the U.S. House to require...

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PRODUCTIONProduction layout&design:

ADVERTISING opportunities:

deliverabilitiesPhone: 1.888.798.1802Email: [email protected]

GreenazinePhone: 1.866.996.6452Email: [email protected]

COULD EBOLA FEARS SCARE OFFTOURISTS?/Nearly 34.6 million interna-tional travelers visited...

WIDOW OF VIC-TIM IN BUS CRASH WITHFEDEX TRUCK SUES FOR NEGLI-GENCE/The widow of an educational counselor who was among...

SMALL BUSINESS-ES SCRAMBLE TO KEEP TOPSTAFFERS/People are quitting their jobs at a faster clip and that’s....

HOW TO TURN A NEW FANINTO A LIFELONGFOLLOWER/Taking those curious new social media followers...

INTERNET MAR-KETING: A SMALL BUSINESS GUIDE/One of the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways for....

FEED FORWARD:LISTENING TOEMPLOYEEFEEDBACK/Many know of the value and importance of providing...

STRATEGIES:SET MARKETING BUDGET TO FIT BUSINESS GOALS/Throughout my years of working with small-busi-ness...

HOW TOCONSTRUCTA CONTENTMACHINE/A marketing revolution has been taking place before...

FMCSA MAKES FIRST MOVE TO-WARD ATTEMPT TO RAISE INSUR-ANCE REQUIRE-MENTS/Set on a fast-paced schedule, the Federal Motor...

AMTRAK TOCOMMUTERS:BE PREPAREDFOR WORSESERVICE/Starting at some point more than a year from now...

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What is Customer Service Anyway?

Really good customer service is an art, not a science and it should be a goal for not just the business, but every person in it.

It’s about creating a relationship of trust and loyalty with customers that transcends the interaction of the moment. Ironically, such bonds are best forged not when things go right but when things go wrong.

Therefore complaint management becomes the premier opportunity to prove our care, responsiveness, and trustworthiness to customers.

Using complaining psychology allows us to turn crises into opportunities, to demonstrate we have a customer’s back, and by doing so to make them more loyal than they had been before a problem arose.

The companies that get it right are the ones who think about how to delight and surprise their customers

Chairman’s Message

with every interaction so they keep coming back. One of our educational sessions at our next conference in Jacksonville, FL will address this topic more in depth. We hope you “SAVE THE DATE” and make plans to join us.

Keep them coming back for more!

Daryl JohnsonJ and J Charter,

Chairman, NAMO

7www.greenazine.com

BEWARE IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!

The rules and the regulations which govern the motor coach industry are rapidly changing and if you are not vigilant, you can fall victim to thesechanges. TranSouth Motorcoach LLC was stunned when a compliance review awarded us with a conditional rating.

The conditional rating served as a Scarlet letter which impeded our ability to bid on contracts,and obtain a reason-ableinsurance rate. In order for us to survive,we quicklyhad to devise a plan of action. Mr. Ken Presley of UMA and our NAMO family helped usformulate a plan.

The first course of action was to go back to basics and reeducate our office staff on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Next, every member of the office staff was required to review the Compliance, Safety, and Accountabil-ity Program (CSA) and gain a working knowledge of it. We created policies and instructions on how the business would be operated and maintained. Lastly we provided training for drivers and maintained staff on a monthly basis.

We reorganized our office staff and created a human resources department and a compliance/safety officer position. Each department head was responsible for addressing problems areas and tasked with coming up with a training program. We identified problem areas and addressthese issues during our monthly training sessions.

We established aworking relationship with the FMCSA, any questions or concerns in reference to the regulations were brought to their attention and addressed in a timely manner.

We relied on organizations such as NAMO and UMA for guidance. These organizations took on our problems as their own, we were able to weather the storm and ended the year on a positive note, that being a satisfactory rating.

Larry Ferguson,OwnerTransSouth Motorcoach


Beginning in December 2015, up to 1,000 drivers will have their logbooks, licenses and other credentials inspected by the Department of Transportation while moving at highway speed. The reward for a clean inspection? Keep on rolling.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has been working to make a concept called wireless roadside inspection (WRI) reality for a number of years. The project is entering its third and final phase called a field operational test (FOT).

Innovative Software Engineering (ISE) is a company that offers telematics and custom software development services. The FMCSA recently awarded a three-year FOT project to ISE to evaluate the viability of WRI for commercial motor vehicles.

In 2010, ISE participated in the pilot phase of the WRI program where it was the first firm to successfully demonstrate the viability of WRI technology during an FMCSA-sponsored Technology Showcase event in East Tennessee.

The current FOT project is being managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a multi-program

Wireless roadside inspections enter field testing phase

WRI Technology


science and technology laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

At this point, 20 inspection sites in five southeastern states are onboard for stage three of the WRI project. The locations are in Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina. The number of locations are expected to grow before the FOT officially begins in December, 2015.

ISE is working to create an interface

with a new government WRI system. The interface will obtain the location of inspection sites in the form of virtual “geofences” that define the approach to participating roadside inspection stations. When a vehicle crosses the geofence, ISE software will transmit the current logbook status, license and vehicle credentials to the WRI system.

Law enforcement personnel can update the geofences daily to create new inspection sites. They can access

the government software through a website using their desktops or laptops. As trucks approach inspection points, the website will notify the officer if the vehicle and driver are in compliance or need to be pulled in for review.

If everything checks out, the driver will be given an instant “green light” notification in the cab to bypass the inspection point, or vice versa, a red light indicating he must pull over.

11www.greenazine.com

Owner operators and fleets interested in participating in the FOT program will need to purchase the ISE eFleetSuite telematics system which includes electronic driver logs and driver vehicle inspection reporting (DVIR) applications.

The hardware device costs $625 with a monthly charge of $22 for the application and wireless fees. During the one-year WRI pilot project, starting in December, 2015, the $22 monthly fee will be waived. Besides

saving on wireless costs for one year, another incentive is the operational efficiency of bypassing inspection stations.

Fleets who participate will also have a voice in influencing the direction of the architecture and system used for WRI.

“This is a research project that will eventually inform policy,” says Hass Machlab, CEO of ISE.

Any fleets and owner operators that are interested in participating in the WRI program should contact ISE at 888-316-3533 or [email protected]

“This is a research

project that will

eventually inform policy,”

saysHass Machlab,

CEO of ISE.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE


The federal government has slammed the brakes on Chinatown bus operator Fung Wah’s latest attempt to return to the road.

The discount carrier has been trying to get rolling again for more than a year since federal regulators shut the company down for safety violations.

But the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is not convinced that Fung Wah has made sufficient safety upgrades, records show. The agency rejected Fung Wah’s application for a new operating license last January and

“We’regoing

to submit evidence in

accordance with the

order,”Linzer said.

Fung WahBus Company’s Return to City Streets Shot Down by Feds

Fung Wah Bus

then rejected Fung Wah’s appeal on Sept. 11.

“The agency denied Fung Wah’s most recent appeal for operating authority because they failed to provide sufficient evidence on how they would comply with federal safety standards, including how they would conduct future drug testing, how they would properly train their staff moving forward, and any corrective action that was taken to counsel or discipline the staff who falsified records in the past,” the FMCSA said in a statement.

“Safety is our top priority and we are focused on removing dangerous bus companies from the road to protect the public and prevent crashes,” the statement continued.

Before it was shut down, Fung Wah ran up to 24 daily trips between Boston and New York for $15 a ticket, making it a hit for budget-conscious travelers.

Federal officials revoked the company’s license in March 2013 after the bus operator failed to cooperate with safety inspectors and

blocked access to some of its safety records. A week earlier, the federal Department of Transportation pulled the company’s entire fleet off the road.

At the time, FMCSA said investigators “found systemic safety problems, including cracked bus frames, fraudulent vehicle maintenance records, widespread hours-of-service violations and the company’s failure to screen drivers for drugs.”

When Fung Wah first tried to get its license back, FMCSA rejected the

company’s Application for Motor Passenger Carrier Authority on Jan. 24, 2014, records show.

Fung Wah appealed on March 5, saying it had improved its safety procedures and complied with the federal agency’s requests.

Fung Wah said it had conducted comprehensive reviews and safety audits, sold 10 of its oldest coaches, hired a full-time safety manager to train and oversee drivers and mechanics and retained a company to ensure compliance with FMCSA

regulations, according to the appeal.

But those claims did not satisfy federal regulators, who rejected the appeal last month.

Despite the rejection, Fung Wah could still return to the roads. Federal officials agreed to review the company’s application again after giving Fung Wah an additional 30 days to show that they meet safety standards, according to an order issued last month.

Alexander Linzer, Fung Wah’s attorney, said the company has until Oct. 10 to submit its evidence. After the deadline, FMCSA will have another 30

days to decide whether or not to grant the license, he said.

“We’re going to submit evidence in accordance with the order,” Linzer said. “We’re hopeful that they’ll let us back on the road.”


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FMCSA Makes Changes to SMS Website to Improve User Experience

FMSCA Website


FMCSA Makes Changes to SMS Website to Improve User Experience


The website that hosts and displays safety information under the government’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability enforcement program has undergone a redesign after the agency discovered “people are looking at data in a little different way than we thought.”

The recent changes to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Safety Management System’s website did not change “anything that goes into SMS,” explained Joseph DeLorenzo, director office of enforcement and compliance for the FMCSA, at TMW’s Transforum user conference this week.

He explained there were three things the agency tried to do with the re-design:

Make it easier to understand what you are looking at,

Get all the information in one place

Give motor carriers a tool to make it easier to monitor their performance.

Most of the important information is shown on the main page of the system, with more detailed information available by clicking on certain items.

“These are cosmetic changes, not methodology changes,” he said. But you now can use the page to bring up more detailed information, how a carrier ranks in relation to similar carriers for each BASIC, and a measure over time graph that give carriers a view of how they are doing.

“If you want to know how you are doing, this what you should be looking at,” he said, noting it is based only on the inspections a carrier has had and the violations they received from those inspections.

The carrier registration page now includes a flag to show a carrier if is Carrier MCS-150 is outdated. If the information needs updating, carriers can click an “update” button to do that online.

DeLorenzo said they were “shooting for a rulemaking sometime next year” on a safety fitness determination rule.’

The redesign also includes a help center to aid navigation through the system, fact sheets and other information.

Rules Update

As for other rules the agency is currently working on, DeLorenzo said they were “shooting for a rulemaking sometime next year” on a safety fitness determination rule.’

And the long-awaited rule requiring electronic logging devices is also expected to be published soon. The interaction between ELDs and roadside inspection officers is “a key for the ELD rule,” he said.


“The goal is to make it easy,” he said. Another thing to iron out is the kind of documentation carriers need to retain to back up their ELDs, plus there is the issue of harassment to work through.

“Once we have it out there, I think it will make it easier for everybody.”

The agency continues to work on the Uniform Registration System, taking the 16 or so forms now used and combining them into one and to develop that as a web-based form.

He said by Oct. 23, 2015, the agency plans to go to all online registration with no more paper registration.


On the near-term horizon, he said, is a rule creating a Drug and Alcohol Clearing House. “The idea here, is to create a clearinghouse that will include verified drug and alcohol test, refusals, etc. to make it easy for trucking companies to check that database before hiring drivers.” The comment period closed earlier this year, and the agency is going through the comments and figuring out how to implement it.

When questioned about the current hours of service rule and if the agency would reconsider it as some members of Congress have requested, DeLorenzo said, “Our position is that the rule has been through the process and that’s the rule.”

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Bill in House would force FMCSA to remove CSA scores from public view, revamp programA bill has been introduced in the U.S. House to require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to remove from public view the carrier rankings and scores produced in the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program

CSA Scores





from public view.

Congressman Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) introduced the legislation Sept. 18. It was referred to the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The public nature of the CSA scores has been one of the industry’s chief concerns, given that shippers, customers and other third-parties could use the scores against carriers, despite the data and ranking problems that have plagued the program since its 2011 inception.

A bevy of trucking groups in recent weeks have sent petitions to Department of Transportation head Anthony Foxx asking him to remove the scores from public view, given their poor performance at measuring carriers’ crash risk and, thus, misconceptions by third-party groups who use the rankings to make judgments about carriers.

CCJ sister site Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills has written at length in 2013 and 2014 about the data and consistency problems that plague CSA, which are only made worse by the public nature of the scores. Click here to access CCJ’s CSA’s Data Trail site to see the articles.

Barletta’s Safer Trucks and Buses Act would direct the agency to remove the scores from public view and requires the agency to submit to Congress a plan for improving CSA and a timeline for implementation.

After Congress stamps approval of FMCSA’s changes, CSA rankings could be pushed back into public view.

“As a father of four daughters, I worry every day about the safety of my girls, and I strongly believe that unsafe vehicles should not be on the road,” Barletta said. “Unfortunately, companies across the country and in Pennsylvania are

being unfairly misrepresented by their safety scores, causing economically devastating impacts to these bus and truck companies, many of which are small businesses.”

The American Trucking Associations, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the National Association of Small Trucking Companies have voiced support for the bill.

The current system of measurement is unreliable and needs substantial improvement,” said Dave Osiecki, Executive Vice President and Chief of National Advocacy for the American Trucking Associations. “We appreciate Congressman Barletta’s support for the industry and recognition of the need to have a safety measurement system that is reliable, fair and accurate.”

OOIDA’s Todd Spencer said in his group’s statement about the bill that trucking companies themselves are not only affected by the “negative impacts [of] misleading information,” but that public safety could be compromised, too.

“OOIDA appreciates Rep. Barletta’s leadership toward setting clear standards for accuracy in CSA’s methodology and data, and we urge all supporters of small business truckers and highway safety to support his legislation,” he said.

For the bill to become law, it must be passed by both the House and the Senate and signed by the president.

GovTrack gives the bill an 8 percent chance of being enacted.


Ebola Effecting Tourism

Nearly 34.6 million international travelers visited the United States in the first half of this year, a better-than-expected 9 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Commerce. But could Ebola fears reverse the trend in the coming months?

Probably not, industry experts say. “We don’t see this affecting the global or U.S. travel and tourism numbers,” said Max Rayner, a partner at Hudson Crossing travel consultancy—as long as the disease is contained.

So far, health officials seem confident that it will be.

Could Ebola fears scare off tourists? (CNBC, 10/1/2014)

65 percent in August, according to an analysis of online searches on the travel-planning site Hopper, conducted at CNBC’s request.

The U.N. World Tourism Organization acknowledged in August that the Ebola outbreak could affect tourism to the region “due to misperceptions about the transmission of the virus.”

Although World Health Organization officials said they did not recommend “any ban on international travel,” several international airlines—including Emirates, Korean Air, Kenya Airways and British Airways—cancelled flights to

“Ebola can be scary. But there’s all the difference in the world between the U.S. and parts of Africa where Ebola is spreading,” Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, assured reporters on Tuesday after the first U.S. case was confirmed in Texas. “I have no doubt that we will contain this,” he said.

The disease has had an impact on travel to the hardest-hit areas in West Africa, where more than 6,500 cases have been reported and nearly 3,100 people have died. After remaining fairly steady through the beginning of the summer, searches to Western African destinations plummeted


Global tourism was up 4.6 percent in the first half of this year, according to a UNWTO report issued in September. But when it comes to luring high-spending foreign tourists to the United States, some countries are an easier sell than others. “Friendly” “diverse” and “open-minded” are among the key characteristics of the U.S. cited by potential travelers from most countries. But when Brand USA surveyed Russians about their impression of Americans, the No. 1 answer was “arrogant.”

Expected household travel expense, by origin country, for an intercontinental trip

To be fair, the Russians were polled in April, just weeks after President Vladimir Putin recognized Crimea as a sovereign state and President Obama ordered sanctions against Russia. Nonetheless, U.S. tourism marketing officials see Russia as one if its growth areas, along with France, Southeast Asia, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, said Chris Thompson, the president of the Brand USA. Efforts up to now have mainly focused on Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and Australia.

In addition to opening foreign tourism offices and working to improve the logistics of visiting the United States, Brand USA is currently working to develop an IMAX-style film that would play in 800 foreign theaters and grandly tout the upcoming centennial of the national parks system.

Brand USA, which will disband in September 2015 if Congress does not reauthorize funds for its existence, uses matching funds from industry partners including Air Canada, Air Berlin, Best Western, British Airways, Choose Chicago, Disney, Expedia, Las Vegas tourism, Hilton, Thomas Cook, National Geographic, The Guardian and United Airlines.

Other efforts are also underway to improve the international tourism experience, such as the dual-degree program announced in September between the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University and the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

“These graduating students are expected to take executive positions in both U.S. and China-based hospitality, travel and tourism companies,” said Rohit Verma, a professor at Cormell and its Singapore Tourism Board Distinguished Professor in Asian Hospitality Management. “They will be uniquely qualified to cater to the needs and preferences from visitors from each country to the other.

affected West African countries and some neighboring countries closed their borders.

But that’s unlikely to happen in the U.S., as long as the disease doesn’t spread. If this remains an isolated case, said Henry Harteveldt, the co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel-focused research company, “it will not have an impact on travel.”

That’s what tourism officials are hoping. A change in travel plans could mean the loss of billions of foreign tourism dollars. In 2013, international travelers spent an estimated $180.7 billion in the U.S., according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association. And data from the Commerce Department shows the country is on track to beat that number in 2014, with international visitors spending between $15 billion and $16 billion per month in the first seven months of the year. (Canada and Mexico send the most tourists to the United States, but some of the biggest spenders come from Brazil, China and India, according to Brand USA, a public-private partnership that markets the country as a tourist destination.)

The United States has made a successful push in recent years to attract more foreign tourists, who tend to spend more and stay longer in their vacation destinations than domestic travelers do. President Barack Obama set a goal of attracting 100 million international visitors annually by 2021 by increasing marketing efforts, expediting visa processing and taking steps to shorten wait times for passport and customs processing at airports, among other efforts. In a speech in May, he noted that the number of international visitors already has grown from 55 million in 2009 to 70 million in 2013, resulting in the creation of about 175,000 new U.S. jobs.


Widow of Victim in Bus Crash With FedEx Truck Sues for Negligence

FedEx & Motorcoach Accident


Widow of Victim in Bus Crash With FedEx Truck Sues for Negligence

The widow of an educational counselor who was among 10 people killed in the collision of a charter bus headed for Humboldt State University and a FedEx truck filed a negligence suit Thursday against the delivery giant and the bus company.

Krystle Arzola, widow of Arthur Arzola Jr., sued FedEx Corp. and Silverado Stages Inc., the operator of the bus, in Los Angeles Superior Court. She additionally names the estate of Fedex driver Timothy Paul Evans. She seeks unspecified damages.

The suit alleges the FedEx driver drove negligently and that the charter bus did not have sufficient emergency exit procedures in place.

The 26-year-old Arzola was a chaperon accompanying dozens of Los Angeles- area students traveling in the charter bus to Humboldt State for a campus tour. The ardent Dodgers fan was an admissions counselor at Humboldt State and was working toward his master’s degree at the University of La Verne. He planned to become a school counselor.

The bus was being driven north on the Golden State (5) Freeway in Glenn County on April 10 when it was struck head on by a southbound FedEx truck that veered off the freeway, across a wide median and into oncoming traffic in Orland.

Five students and five adults died in the wreck and ensuing fire. Numerous other lawsuits stemming from the accident have been previously filed.

FedEx previously issued a statement extending condolences to the victims and their families and saying the company was “focused on providing support to those affected and cooperating with the authorities as they conduct their investigation.”



Small businesses scramble to keep top staffers

Keep Top Staffers


“At some point, it’s no longer sustainable to give people 2 or 3 percent increases on a base salary you’ve already reduced in some cases by 20 percent in 2009,”Lewis says.

People are quitting their jobs at a faster clip and that’s pushing small business owners to work harder to hold onto top talent.

Dance studio owner Andrea Bisconti has experienced the challenge firsthand. When Kellie Love, an instructor there, said she was planning to leave to start a business of her own, Bisconti decided to act. Love inspires students to keep coming back for more lessons and brings in more than a quarter of the studio’s revenue, says Bisconti, owner of a Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Willoughby, Ohio.

“My most terrible fantasy was I would see students walk out the door in droves and I would be scrambling,” Bisconti says.

As the economy and job market improve, keeping the best employees is becoming vital for small businesses. Forty-three percent of owners are working to keep top staffers, according to a recent survey by Principal Financial Group. The reason: A growing number of employees are giving notice. The Labor Department reported more than 2.5 million people quit their jobs in July, up from 2.3 million a year earlier.


The trend is expected to continue. Thirty-eight percent of workers plan to change employers in the next five years, according to a 2014 survey by the management consultancy Hay Group. That’s up from 30 percent in 2010.

Bisconti figured out a way to keep Love. They are negotiating to make her a business partner. Other owners are using strategies such as communicating and coaching, creating a healthy environment and giving raises.

COMMUNICATE AND COACH

Jon Lal talks continually with the 25 employees of BeFrugal.com, walking around the office at the start and end of the day and chatting about work and staffers’ personal lives. He brings lunch in for everyone once a month.

The conversations give Lal a sense of whether staffers are satisfied or want to advance. He has kept one employee for eight years by giving her a series of new assignments to keep her motivated.

The approach is critical to retaining employees and avoiding unexpected resignations at the Boston-based company, which runs a website with coupons and cash-back deals, he says.

“If (a departure) comes as a surprise to you, very often it means you have not been in very close touch with what’s going on with that individual,” Lal says.

Communicating regularly with employees also gives owners a chance to provide feedback, something staffers want, says Michael Timmes, a consultant with HR provider Insperity, based in Houston. And it’s an opportunity to teach employees new skills.

“People want to be coached (and) want to be given guidance,” Timmes says.

A HEALTHY ATMOSPHERE

At FutureAdvisor, head of recruiting Chris Nicholson polled the investment advisory company’s 30 employees about why they stay. Most said it was the

positive atmosphere created by the San Francisco-based company’s owners. They mentor staffers, set realistic goals and promote a healthy balance between work and their personal lives, Nicholson says.

“If the top management has their heads screwed on straight, the whole organization that grows out around them is going to be in a lot better shape,” Nicholson says.

Legacy Publishing trains its managers to speak to the company’s 95 staffers in a positive way, to give constructive criticism and to pay attention to workers’ quality of work life, says Rhonda Tracy, director of human resources for the Westbrook, Maine, company, which makes instructional software.

“We spent a portion of a meeting yesterday coming up with ways to make the employees’ days better,” Tracy says. One solution: Getting rid of some of the small, tedious tasks that can frustrate or bore them.

SHOW THEM THE MONEY

Owners and HR consultants say most people don’t leave a job solely because of pay unless another employer offers them so much money they can’t refuse. Job satisfaction is more important for many employees. But pay can be an issue at companies that slashed salaries during the recession, says David Lewis, president of OperationsInc, a human resources provider based in Norwalk, Connecticut. And workers at many of those businesses had to take on additional responsibilities as jobs were cut. They’re still carrying a heavy workload.

“At some point, it’s no longer sustainable to give people 2 or 3 percent increases on a base salary you’ve already reduced in some cases by 20 percent in 2009,” Lewis says.



Employee Morale


Taking those curious new social media followers and turning them into lifelong fans that are engaged with your brand takes work. The journey from “My pal RT’d one of your tweets,” to “I now follow everything you post!” does not happen instantly.

Read on to learn how to turn that first like, share, or retweet, into a lifelong follower. The key takeaway will be

How to Turn a New Faninto a LifelongFollower

community and new followers:

Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are visual content starved. Social Bakers found that Facebook posts with images get 93-96% more attention. New followers are going to look through your social profiles – make sure you have lots of images for them.

LinkedIn is mostly set up for B2B.

around creating a strong community – and I’m not talking about one built on group hugs – these a real social media community building tactics.

Make sure that the content is platform appropriate

Every social media platform offers something different to users. You have to use the unique features of each one to truly engage with your


accounts

Regular giveaways, promotions and contests are the type of things that old fans love, and love to share. They are also what can really get new followers interested. A majority of the business social profiles I follow came my way from a friend sharing it with me.

For proof, a Nielsen study on Twitter users found that those who follow business accounts on the platform are doing so 52% of the time to be notified of giveaways, promotions, and contests.

Post consistently and have a schedule

Nothing builds a community like a social profile where users know when to show up. Having long and irregular delays between updates leads to more chances that followers, especially those new followers, will forget you.

This formal atmosphere requires in-depth professional content. Cracking jokes doesn’t work: I’ve tried!

Twitter is free form, provided you stay within the 140 character limit. It will work best if you comment on events in the moment they are happening.

YouTube is the King of Video Content – we all know that. In a business context, that video content is best presented with a familiar and regular host that your fans will connect with – no one wants to be friends with a faceless company.

Take the time to read and view what your competition has done. You can use their most successful content on each platform as a template for your efforts to get new fans following you.

Have regular giveaways and special promotions on your social media

Remember that a consistent schedule is not a CONSTANT schedule. I’ve used the term “tweet flooding” to describe a Twitter user who posts new tweets nearly non-stop, or in sudden bursts of four or more. This activity destroys a social profile and community.

Tools like Hootsuite are popular for help with consistency. You can sit down one day and plan out the content you’ll send out for a week or longer, schedule it, and never forget to post again.

Find them before they find you with your scheduling tool’s search function

A bonus aspect of a tool like Hootsuite is that it can be a community building tool for those who haven’t found you yet – you find them. Hootsuite has a search function which automatically finds certain keywords. That keyword


can easily be your:

Brand name for those who mention you but don’t use your account profile.

Competitors name so you can monitor opportunities to engage with these fans.

Industry specific keywords and phrases.

Your scheduling tool can do more than just schedule – it can help you reach out to new people to include in your community who haven’t met you yet!

Talk to your new fans

You can not forget the ‘social’ part of ‘social media.’ Having one on one conversations with your new fans help to build a community. Even a simple “Hello to @newfollowers” can help welcome them and build that relationship as it builds your community.

newprofileNot only will these small acts increase brand loyalty, but they also show that you’re open to really talking – not just broadcasting a socially masked marketing message.

Matthew is the writer over on the Devumi.com Social Media Blog. You can find him there every Friday posting about increasing your Twitter followers, getting more YouTube subscribers, and commenting on other social media related news. He focuses on Twitter, YouTube, Google, Vimeo, SoundCloud, and Pinterest.




Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing: A Small Business Guide


One of the easiest, fastest and cheap-est ways for businesses to reach con-sumers today is via the Internet.

Digital marketing, also known as In-ternet or online marketing, is quickly replacing print, television and radio advertisement as the marketing ap-proach of choice for businesses of all sizes. Recent research revealed that 1 in 4 of every business-advertising dol-lar is dedicated to Internet marketing.

“Online marketing is ensuring po-tential customers find your business — your brand and messaging — ev-erywhere online,” said Trevor Sum-ner, co-founder of the local marketing firm LocalVox. “With today’s con-nected consumer, your business must be found everywhere consumers are looking.”

The first step to digital marketing is having an online presence. That re-quires a well-developed website and an array of social media profiles. The key is then to use various digital mar-keting strategies and tactics to ensure consumers can find those websites and profiles when searching for the products you sell or the services you offer.

Previously, being in the phone book was the best way to attract customers and ensure they could find you when they came looking. However, that’s no longer the case, said Kirthi Kalyanam, the director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University.

“Small business can easily benefit from Internet [marketing], because search engines such as Google have

Internet Marketing: A Small Business Guide


replaced phone directories and the Yellow Pages in a digitally enhanced way,” Kalyanam told Business News Daily. “The most basic thing a business can do is a to have a great Web page and make sure this page is easily surfaced by a search engine, such as Google.”

Cost is one of the biggest reasons digital marketing is so appealing to small businesses, said Andy Beal, CEO of the social media monitoring tools provider Trackur and founding editor of the marketing news site Marketing Pilgrim.

“Online marketing is a great opportunity for small businesses, as generally you need a much smaller budget than, say, TV or print,” Beal said. “The oth-er big benefit is that online marketing is generally very measurable, which means that a small business owner can be much more frugal with their marketing spend.”

Pete Kennedy, founder and chief marketing officer of the Internet marketing firm Main Street ROI, said online marketing also appeals to small businesses be-cause it helps them generate a steady flow of leads and customers.

“Many small businesses are attracted to online mar-keting, and search engine marketing in particular, because they want a steady flow of new business, without lots of manual labor,” Kennedy said.

While small business owners and employees can do digital marketing on their own, many often hire In-ternet marketing services to do it for them. Such ser-vices use their expertise to help businesses develop and set goals, determine the marketing strategies that will best help accomplish those goals, and handle the implementation and reporting of each tactic used.

Internet marketing strategies


Small businesses have a wide range of digital mar-keting options at their disposal. Among the most popular are search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing.

“There are more channels than ever to manage,” Sumner said. “The reality is that each of these is criti-cally important to your business’ success.”

However, it isn’t necessary for businesses to spend the same amount on each and every strategy, Beal said.

“The key is to test various channels — SEO, PPC, so-cial — and determine which best allows you to reach your target audience at a price point that fits your budget,” Beal said. “You can then scale your spending as you see the return on your investment.”

Lenny Verkhoglaz, CEO of New Jersey-based Ex-ecutive Care, said his franchise system uses a vari-ety of Internet marketing strategies, including SEO, local market landing pages, PPC ad campaigns and

content marketing to help sell its franchise opportu-nity and support the marketing and sales of its home health-care services.

The key to figuring out which tactics are best for you is really understanding who your audience is, Verk-hoglaz said.

“Internet marketing is massive, when you consider all of the channels available to us as small business owners” Verkhoglaz said. “However, with a clearly defined target/customer in mind, you can narrow down on where your efforts should be focused.”

To know which tactics to use, it is important to know what each one entails.

Search engine optimization

SEO is the process of getting websites to show up in nonadvertising search engine results. The goal of SEO is to get websites as high up in the rankings as possible.

“Search engine optimization is the art of getting to the front page of Google when people search for businesses like yours,” Sumner said.

Being high up in the rankings is critical to building an online presence. A recent study from Search En-gine Watch discovered that the top listing in Google’s organic search results receives 33 percent of the traf-fic. Additionally, three-quarters of consumers never click past the first page of results. This means that if


you aren’t rated highly enough, there’s a strong likeli-hood that the vast majority of consumers will never find your website when they search for your business.

Sumner said there is an entire art to getting highly ranked via SEO that includes making sure websites are optimized for the right keywords, putting out a lot of content and getting other outlets to link back to the website.

The main benefit of SEO is that you can attract free traffic and free customers to your business on an on-going basis, Kennedy said.

“Of course, it will take time — and money if you hire an SEO company — to gain that exposure,” Kennedy said. “But, overall, SEO is one of the best investments a small business owner can make in their marketing.”

Austin Paley, corporate marketing communications manager for the online marketing firm Blue Foun-tain Media, said a huge benefit of SEO for small businesses is that it helps them level the playing field with large companies. He said big businesses can’t pay Google to place their website higher in organic search results.

“What Google displays when people search for a key-word represents what Google believes to be the most relevant and helpful content available, regardless of business size,” Paley said. “If you’re a small business, this means you can generate traffic and sales from simply creating great content and making sure the right people see it and link back to it.”

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) is the practice of advertising on-line and only paying when a customer clicks on the ad, Sumner said.

The most popular PPC option is GoogleAdWords. With Google AdWords, Sumner said, businesses bid on keywords, and if their bid is the highest, their ads will pop up when online users search for those key-words.

Paley said PCC can be an excellent way for small businesses to generate quality customer leads.

“Particularly if a business can identify relevant key-words that have low competition, often a small busi-ness may be able to spend very little to generate both

traffic and sales,” Paley said.

Kennedy said the main benefit of PPC advertising is speed.

“You can get a Google AdWords campaign up and running in a matter of days, or even in a matter of hours, depending on how fast you can implement it,” Kennedy said. “And you can start getting clicks on your ads within minutes of [making] your ads live.”

Content marketing

Content marketing is an umbrella for a lot of chan-nels, including blogs, business descriptions, an-nouncements or deals that are posted to a website, social media pages or directory sites, Sumner said.

“The general point is that 90 percent of consumers prefer to find out information about your business from custom content rather than ads,” Sumner said.

With content marketing, businesses aren’t trying to sell anything directly to consumers, but rather try-ing to frame the businesses as a thought leader. That way, those who initially see the content come back much later when they find themselves in need of the product or service the business offers, Paley said. Ad-ditionally, great content marketing also creates new points of entry for customers to get to a business’s website.

“If you have tons of great resource pages or a well-written blog with articles that lots of people love to read, you’re more likely to attract new users who are looking for a product or service that your business offers,” Paley said. “Content marketing allows you to capitalize on these users and build brand loyalty by providing information for free.”

Social media marketing

Social media marketing uses social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pin-terest, to reach a business’s target audience, Paley said.

“With few exceptions, each social media marketing platform covers most target demographics, and us-ing each platform correctly means that businesses can more effectively reach their identified target au-dience,” Paley said. “Given the right amount of time and the correct execution, companies can build up


brand loyalty among their target market that can translate directly into bona fide sales.”

Unlike other forms of digital marketing, social media marketing allows businesses to communicate back and forth with their customers, Sumner said.

“Facebook is a great example where anyone can fol-low you, message you, leave a comment, interact with other people on your page, etc.,” Sumner said.

The video messaging service Movy is capitalizing on social media by creating relationships with pre-exist-ing and prospective clients, said Jacob Markiewicz, the company’s public relations and media specialist.

“From here, we are able to create both brand aware-ness, and brand loyalty,” Markiewicz said. “This leads to grassroots marketing and word-of-mouth adver-tising offline.”

One of the best parts of social media marketing is that it can be done for little to no cost, since it only requires creating profiles pages and then generating content for those pages, Paley said

“Creating an account that engages with users and knows when and what to say to their audience initial-ly might win a substantial amount of followers. But what a lot of businesses don’t realize is that they can use these same people to create brand awareness and sales down the road if they are nurtured correctly,” Paley said.

Email marketing

Email marketing, an online version of direct mail, is when businesses use email messages to communicate with current and potential customers.

Businesses can use email marketing for a variety of purposes, including to promote new products or ser-vices, send customers coupons, keep customers in-formed of company news, and gather feedback from customers.

Studies have shown that email marketing has a huge return on investment; Sumner said email marketing returns $38 for every $1 spent.

“If your business is not leveraging email marketing,

you are leaving a lot of money on the table,” Sumner said.

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is that businesses have much more control over it than over other forms of digital marketing, such as SEO, Ken-nedy said.

“Your email list is a marketing asset that you fully control, which gives your marketing more stability,” Kennedy said.

Additionally, it’s one of the easiest tactics to get start-ed.

“You don’t have to learn a lot of new concepts, as you do with SEO or Google AdWords,” Kennedy said. “Anybody can get up and running with email mar-keting in minutes, not days or weeks.”

Additional Internet marketing tactics

There are a number of other digital marketing strate-gies that small business might find valuable, includ-ing affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, viral mar-keting and online reputation management.

Online reputation management revolves around keeping a constant eye on what is being said, both good and bad, about a brand online. While good reviews help build up a brand’s reputation, negative ones can easily tear it down.

Small businesses can use online reputation-manage-ment strategies to combat the online negativity about their brands. This is done in a variety of ways, in-cluding creating additional positive content that will outperform the negative comments in search engine results.

Online reputation management is one of the most important tactics small business owners should con-sider, Beal said.

“When you have a great reputation, you effectively let your customers’ praise attract other customers to your business,” Beal said. “When you have a nega-tive review profile, or tainted Google reputation, you have to spend more — and work harder — to attract customers.”



Many know of the value and importance of providing feedback to employees. But turning the tables and exploring the value of receiving and listening to employee feedback is equally important. Our employees spend a great deal of their time in our companies. They see and hear a lot of what goes on. They develop ideas around what they think will work and what won’t.Yet, business owners often fail to think about how these employees can add value to the organization through their feedback. They miss out on a huge opportunity to explore options and to further engage the staff they have.

Imagine working at a company for a year or so and watching what is going on. You see things that work well, and things that don’t. You develop ideas that you believe could help the company be even better than it already is. However, no one seeks your input. No one pulls you into conversations.

This can create frustration and some form of disconnection. You may end up disengaging from your passion for the organization to remove that frustration. Unfortunately, this can also impact how you feel about leadership and their decision making.

Before we explore how to change our view, let’s take a look at the potential impact.

Feed Forward: Listening to Employee Feedback

Employee Feedback



Narrow ViewIf we don’t seek out input and feedback from others, we run the risk of having too narrow of a view of our company. The folks in the trenches can help us see the things we don’t see from our vantage point. This expanded view sheds light on things we need to know, to act on, to change.

Talent LossIf people get too frustrated with what is going on and their inability

to affect change, they will leave for a better environment. One of the ways we show people we appreciate them is to include them in problem solving. To ask for their input. Then we don’t we send the message that we don’t value them outside of the task they perform.

Growth ChallengesThis is probably the most obvious impact. If we aren’t getting input and feedback from internal players, we can find ourselves struggling

with issues inside the company that impede our growth.

Now that we’ve seen the damage we can do, let’s talk about how we can pull in others.

PolicyEstablish a feedback policy that encourages your employees to share. You want to make a commitment to feedback and make sure that everyone knows you are serious about it. Creating a policy says you


are in it for the long haul; that you mean it.

Intentional EffortHaving a policy is one thing. Intentionally reaching out to your employees seeking their input is another. And this is where you really show how serious you are.

You can set up regular feed forward meetings where it is their opportunity to share. You can create one-on-one sessions periodically to solicit input.

The key is to decide how you are going to proceed. Heck, you might want to ask your staff what they think about a process.

ImplementationTake the feedback seriously. Really listen to what your people have to say and implement something they suggest. They do have good ideas; they do have an interest in what is best for the company. So, be open to really hearing what they have to say and pick something or several things

to implement. And be ready for some things to fail. After all, some of the decisions you make don’t work out either.

We don’t need to know everything and solve every problem. We need to surround ourselves with people we trust and solicit their assistance in problem solving. That is what will elevate our company and further secure our future growth. Presumably, you hire people you trust to help you move your company ahead. Simply expanding on the help to include soliciting their thoughtful input can really help your business and its future.

Establish a feedback policy that encourages your employees to share. You want to make a commitment to feedback and make sure that everyone knows you are serious about it.



Strategies:Set marketing budget to fit business goals

Budget Marketing

MARKETING


Strategies:Set marketing budget to fit business goals

MARKETING


Throughout my years of working with small-business owners, “How much should I spend on marketing?” is one of the questions I get asked the most.

Is 10% of my total revenue too little? Is 20% too much?

Unfortunately, the rules are not hard and fast. As a result, most small-business owners just do seat-of-their-pants marketing.

One month, they might advertise with Google AdWords. The next they might try Facebook. And the next month, they might advertise in a local publication when a friend suggests it worked for him.

Or they just don’t market at all. And in the long run, that is disastrous.

So how do you figure out how much to spend? Use two main approaches:

1. Percentage of sales. Some companies set aside a certain percentage of total sales for all their marketing activities, including advertising, public relations, brochures, social media and trade shows.

In other words, if your handmade furniture company had $200,000 in sales in the past year, and you set aside 5% for marketing this year, your total marketing budget would be $10,000.

You may spend toomuch or way too little.For instance, some companies such as Costco do virtually no advertising.Advertising isn’t necessary for the giant warehouse store’s success, and it operates on tiny profit margins.

Budgeting this way is tempting. After all, it’s easy.

But it’s also arbitrary.

You may spend too much or way too little. For instance, some companies such as Costco do virtually no advertising.

Advertising isn’t necessary for the giant warehouse store’s success, and it operates on tiny profit margins.

At the other extreme, the online contact-management company Salesforce.com spent $25.4 million on


marketing during its first year in business with only $5.4 million in sales — 470% of its revenues. That spending has paid off since its yearly sales are now in the billions.

In practice, the bulk of established companies spend 1% to 15% of total sales on marketing annually. That’s a wide range: For a million-dollar company, the figure could be anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000.

2. Goal-based budgeting. With a goal-based marketing plan and budget, you have to define your


business goals and develop a course of action.

If you aim to secure 200 new customers, what will it take to acquire them? How much advertising do you need? At which trade shows do you need to exhibit? Do you need to hire a social-media marketer?

This kind of marketing budget makes the most sense. It also takes the most work.

Of course, you may have to trim back spending to meet the realities of your small company’s finances, but at least the budget is based on what is necessary


to accomplish your goals.

In your own business, what factors can help you figure out how much to spend?

• Your profit margin. If you have a low profit margin, you can spend only a small percentage of your revenues on marketing.

Examples of such companies include grocery stores and discount stores. On the other hand, companies with high profit margins can spend a much higher percentage.

If you don’t have to spend a lot on manufacturing, inventory or high rent — say you’re a software, Web-based or service company — you can spend more on marketing.

• Large or hard-to-reach market. If you’re ambitious and trying to reach a very large market, you’ll need a big marketing budget.

That’s why I recommend that smaller companies target smaller markets such as specific industries or geographic areas because the cost is not as high to reach your prospects.

• Newness. If you’re trying to get launched, get noticed or gain traction, you’ll spend a higher percentage of your total dollars than you will need once your company is established.

Yes, a start-up’s revenues are small, but your need to develop a customer base is critical in your early years.

• Aggressive competition. Let’s face it, if your competition spends a lot of money on marketing, you probably will have to spend a lot, too.

Here’s the most important rule: Develop a marketing plan, set aside a marketing budget and then spend it.

You’ve got to get the word out about your business.



A marketing revolution has been taking place before our eyes. Interruption marketing has been overthrown. Businesses—yours and mine—can no longer force people to pay attention. Instead, we have to create valuable content that people want. Which means that marketing now means creating content.

And you need new content... All. The. Time. And every piece of content you create must be “epic.”

The problem? Creating epic content takes a lot of time. And it sucks energy

Allmachines need

raw materials. The raw

material of great content

is data.

How to Construct a Content Machine (Even If You’re Not a Natural-Born Writer)

Content Machine

out of other areas of your business.

Until recently, I dreaded creating content. I’d seen big results for my business as a result of content marketing, but each piece took me a ton of time (more than I care to admit). I scrambled to find the hours, but there was never enough time.

Then I realized the solution was staring me in the face. As a business coach, I help small businesses achieve massive growth by showing them how to turn difficult tasks into predictable systems. So I decided to develop a


system for creating more quality content. And the one I came up with can scale up to put out as much content as I need.

Here’s the content machine I use. Feel free to take it apart and put it back together in a way that works for you.

1. Mine raw materials

All machines need raw materials. The raw material of great content is data. To feed your machine, you need to go data mining

You can use surveys, sales conversations, and industry forums. Through your data mining, you’ll find the pain points of your ideal clients—the problems they want you to solve.

Now that you have the raw materials you’ve mined...

2. Mix in your creativity

As you process the data, you’ll come up with ideas for how you can help your target audiences solve their problems.

Much of this will happen in your subconscious. So ideas might come at the most unlikely times—when you’re in the shower, fixing dinner, or walking your dog. So you need a mobile idea capture system. I recommend using Evernote. Its basic package is free and will do what you need: keep your ideas all in one place.

3. Shape up your ideas

Once you’ve collected several ideas, you’re ready to shape them into articles or blog posts. As with all systems, the simpler and more




streamlined you keep things, the better.

As you’re turning your ideas into articles and posts, you need only four things:

A headline

The problem your article solves for your readers

The impact of that problem on the lives of your readers

The solution or solutions you’ll provide

This step is meant to be very quick. And nothing needs to be perfect at this stage.

Have a set file on your computer or in Google Docs where you keep these outlines live. That way you have a system for housing your ideas so they don’t get lost in a pile of notes on your desk or on your computer somewhere. The more outlines you have backed up in your system, the easier you’ll find it to create content on a consistent basis.

For the next steps, choose one outline to work with and...

4. Bolt on extras

Next up is the research stage. This is where you add the real meat to your article. It’s also the stage where you can get lost down rabbit holes.

You can keep your research as simple as possible using two techniques:

Repurposing content. Look to emails you’ve written, free giveaways you’ve offered, slide shows or presentations you’ve created. You’ll find a ton of ideas ready and waiting for you to use. (I had my virtual assistant go through and categorize all my past email campaigns on a spreadsheet with links to them so that I can quickly plug in what I need.)

Use what’s on hand. Whenever you read an interesting article, clip it to a swipe file in Evernote. Then, when you need an interesting story or statistic, look to your swipe file. This approach keeps you from getting lost when searching across the entirety of cyberspace.

Paste raw resources and drop in links to expand your outline. Then add any other ideas to your outline as come to you. The more structured and specific the outline you provide, the better the output you’ll get while writing.

Don’t become overwhelmed! Once you’ve got a system in place, you should be spending at most 30 minutes on research and expanding your outline.

5. Send the outline to your ‘production department’

Your outline is now ready for your “production department,” which is one of the following:

Two hours you set aside for writing. Take the outline you’ve created and expand it, writing as fast as you can. This is your time for getting words down, not for editing.

A professional writer. I’ve found that hiring a writer is what works best for me. Good writers are able to pull together your outline and research sources into a relevant, structured, coherent piece.

After you’ve written your article, you need to...

6. Get your content ready to ship

Your content is close to finished. Awesome!

This is the stage where you take your content from good to great.

If you’re doing the writing yourself,

make sure every word packs a punch. Eliminate unnecessary words, and make sure you’ve chosen verbs that sizzle.

Outsourced your writing? Make sure the article fits your voice and reflects your brand. I replace words that I wouldn’t use and make the article sound like my voice.

Here is also where you make your headline sparkle. Keeping a swipe file of headline formulas will help you generate the best possible ideas.

Once your edits are finished, you’re ready to publish.

Construct your own machine

I’ve lifted the hood on my content machine to show you how it works.

Like all systems, it will never be perfect. And there will always be things that I can tweak. But these steps allow me to stay focused and produce far more content than I could without a system.

It’s a system I created to solve a problem in my business: Writing content was a long and frustrating process. You can take this same approach to build systems in any area of your business, to achieve any outcome you want.

What machine will you create?


FMCSA makes first move toward attempt to raise insurance requirements

Rising Insurance Requirments


The amount of insurance carried by motor carriers has never been shown to have a correlation with safety.

FMCSA makes first move toward attempt to raise insurance requirements

Set on a fast-paced schedule, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched on Wednesday, Oct. 1, an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that lays out the agency’s consideration to seek increased minimum insurance required of motor carriers.

The agency submitted the ANPRM to the Office of Management and Budget on Oct. 1 – a day later than the agency projected. However, FMCSA projects the advanced notice will clear OMB on Oct. 12 and to publish in the Federal Register on Oct. 22. That’s a pace far faster than the typical 30- to 60-day time period allotted for



OMB review.

While the abstract of the ANPRM at OMB is void of any information, the agency has been toying with the idea of raising the minimum insurance requirements since earlier in the year when it released a report on financial responsibility.

In the report the agency noted that the current minimum insurance requirements of $750,000 for general freight and $1 million for hazmat were set in 1985. The report states that minimum insurance for general freight coverage would be $1.7 million now factoring in the cost of medical inflation, based on the medical consumer price index.

In the agency’s report on significant rulemakings, the agency did not matter of factly state it was seeking to raise the minimum insurance levels. Rather the agency reports it is “considering” a rulemaking.

“The FMCSA announces that it is considering a rulemaking to increase the minimum levels of financial responsibility for motor carriers, including liability coverage for bodily injury or property damage in the case of freight and passenger motor carriers,” the report states.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has been opposed to raising the minimum insurance levels and to the way some of the conclusions were reached in a recent report being used by the agency to justify an increase.

The report does confirm that the number of crashes costing more than the current $750,000 minimum liability insurance for interstate operations is very small, a stance that OOIDA has taken since the first mention of increasing insurance minimums was raised.

OOIDA Director of Government Affairs Ryan Bowley points out that a footnote to the study used as the basis for the report says that approximately 74 crashes per year occur that are above the minimum level. However, the study conducted by Volpe National Transportation Systems Center did not consider fault in the crashes studied.

Bowley points out that between 75 and 85 percent of crashes – depending on what research you use – are the fault of the passenger car driver. That would drive the number of truck driver-responsible crashes to fewer than 20.

“Even though the agency’s report confirms that fewer than 1 percent of all truck-involved accidents result in injuries or property damage that exceed current insurance requirements, it seems pretty clear they plan to raise those requirements anyway,” said Todd Spencer, OOIDA executive vice president, after the report was first released in May.

The agency seems to be bowing to the economic objectives of the personal injury attorneys and mega-trucking companies who have been campaigning for higher insurance requirements,” Spencer said. “Trial lawyers will see windfall payouts in the increases, and big trucking companies – who already use special exceptions in the law to avoid buying insurance on the open market – see an opportunity to drive up business costs and do away with their small-business competitors.”

Spencer points to the core mission of FMCSA – highway safety. “The amount of insurance carried by motor carriers has never been shown to have a correlation with safety.”

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Starting at some point more than a year from now, commuters who take trains from Long Island will find their access to Penn Station badly curtailed, with the number of operational East River rail tunnels reduced from four to three.

There “will be an appreciable reduction in capacity into Penn Station in peak periods,” Stephen Gardner, a vice president at Amtrak, told a handful of reporters Wednesday morning. “So, it’s not probably 25 [percent]. Is it 20 or so? In that area? We’ll have to see.”

In mid-March, nearly a year-and-a-

Thesethings are degrading,

and we have to maintain

them at higher rates to try to

prevent them from failing

Amtrak to commuters: Be prepared for worse service

Amtrak Service

half after Hurricane Sandy, Amtrak’s consultants mounted a high-tech scanner on the back of a flatbed truck and, moving a mile an hour, probed the tunnels that comprise the linchpin of the nation’s busiest rail line.

On Wednesday, Amtrak released the consulting firm’s report.

Its findings? Sandy did a number on four of the century-old, under-river rail tubes serving Penn Station, two under the East River and two under the Hudson. That doesn’t bode well for commuters from Long Island


and New Jersey, not to mention passengers who take 260 million trips a year along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

“I don’t really have words to accurately describe how critical all of this is, not just to Amtrak, but to our responsibility as the nation’s national passenger rail company to deliver effective passenger rail service,” said Tony Coscia, Amtrak’s chairman.

At issue is salt, coupled with the tunnels’ pre-existing decrepitude. The chlorides and sulfates from Sandy’s

deluges stayed behind even after its waters vanished, and they continue to weaken the tunnels’ concrete and corrode its cast iron and steel.

Unless it is remediated, salt will continue to attack two of the four tubes that run east from Penn Station across the East River to Long Island City, Queens, and which carry Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak trains, along with NJ Transit cars bound for Sunnyside Yards. At some point more than a year from now, Amtrak will take down one of those tubes to repair it. That should take about a

year. Once that’s done, Amtrak will take down the other tube for repairs.

The situation is even worse in the tubes running from Manhattan’s west side.

Starting at Tenth Avenue, two single-track tubes burrow into bedrock, snake beneath the Hudson River’s bed of clay and re-emerge in New Jersey.

Those tunnels also got badly flooded. At their deepest point, salt water inundated what are known as bench



walls, which run along the sides of the tunnels, carry all sorts of important electrical wiring and cables, and, in the case of an emergency, serve as exit ramps.

The problem is that the region cannot operate with fewer than two tunnels crossing the Hudson into Penn Station, unless it’s willing to put up with “a draconian reduction of service,” Gardner said.

“The nature of the work is such that you have to take down the bench walls, excavate out the track,” Gardner said. “You can’t do an hour and then go away and come back. It’s just an impossibility really. You need to have an extended outage to permit this work to occur.”

That means that Amtrak, which owns the tunnels, can’t do the sort of top-to-bottom rehabilitation that the report calls for until another cross-Hudson rail tunnel is built to provide redundancy.

Had New Jersey Governor Chris Christie not killed a cross-Hudson project called Access to the Region’s Core, the railroad would have had some of the redundancy it needed to perform the repairs at some point in the near future.

“The fact that we don’t have ARC puts us much more under the gun now,” said Richard Barone, the director of transportation programs at the Regional Plan Association.“There’s a worst case scenario where you could potentially be at a loss of both tunnels. There’s a lot of uncertainty because we’re in uncharted territory looking at infrastructure of this age.”

In ARC’s absence, Amtrak is pinning its hopes on a still unfunded, many-billion-dollar replacement

project called Gateway.

The hope is that Gateway will double rail capacity beneath the Hudson by the middle of the next decade ... and also that the existing century-old, salt-saturated tunnels will hold up until then.

That’s no sure thing.

Earlier this year, Amtrak’s C.E.O. Joe Boardman told a gathering of urban planners that the cross-Hudson tunnels have “got something less than 20 years before we have to shut one or two down.”

In the meantime, Amtrak will have to make do with patchwork. And riders will experience more delays, more cancellations, and more unreliability.

“These things are degrading, and [that means] we have to maintain them at higher rates to try to prevent them from failing,” Gardner said. “That will decrease the availability of the tunnel for service, over time.”

Coscia wouldn’t put a cost estimate on Gateway, though a couple of years ago Gardner pegged it at around $15 billion.

“We don’t have the resources to do all of the things that we think need to be done, but we do have the capacity to try to make the case, to convince others to give us those resources, which is what we’re really doing here today,” Coscia said.


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NAMO October 2014 Newsletter