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Safely preserving productivity: Dart Transit Co.'s campaign to provide better-quality rest and more flexibility to drivers earns it the distinction of CCJ's 2008 Innovator of the Year.

Article Excerpt
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For Dart Transit Co., leading the trucking industry is nothing new. Not long after Earl Oren founded the company in 1934, Dart began pushing the envelope on trailer capacity. Indeed, members of the Oren family hold several patents on trailer designs.

As standard trailer lengths grew, the Orens went a bit further than others--35-foot trailers when 32 feet was standard and 42 feet in response to a 40-foot standard, for example. Dart Chairman Donald Oren, Earl's son, recalls lobbying for 53 feet when the standard was 48 feet.

"I went from state to state with my 48-inch ruler that had a 5-inch extension," Oren says. He tried to show that adding five feet at the back of the trailer without changing the wheelbase would allow for more capacity without a significant change in the turn radius. And when 102 inches became established in law as the maximum width, Donald and his son David--now Dart's president--worked with Wabash to develop a plate trailer with walls thin enough to allow pinwheeling of can pallets, providing 13 percent more capacity in a 53-foot trailer.

"I'm extremely proud of our efforts to get longer trailers," Donald Oren says, adding that allowing nine trailers to handle the freight that once required 10 trailers contributes significantly to reduced traffic congestion and increased safety.

While political realities and other considerations may have ended the era of ever-larger trailers, Dart Transit is leading the industry in other ways--including one initiative that bears a greater connection to high-cube trailer designs than you might think.

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In June 2007, Dart asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to exempt 200 of its owner-operators from the 14-hour dock and the split-rest limitations of the hours-of-service rules--provided they abide by a comprehensive fatigue risk management system, including use of electronic onboard recorders and a requirement that drivers receive...

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