After years of planning, the nation has new regulations that require diesel engines in new trucks and buses to run cleaner. Last fall, long before the new engine regulations kicked in, truck stops nationwide were selling low-sulfur diesel fuel. It is five to 10 cents a gallon more expensive than the version it replaced.
USA Today reports:
Federal regulations that take effect today mandate cleaner diesel engines in new trucks and school buses, dramatically cutting pollution but raising costs.
The new engines, in combination with low-sulfur diesel fuel that began selling nationwide in October, will reduce particulate emissions by up to 98 [percent] over the previous generation, the
Diesel Technology Forum says. Nitrogen-oxide emissions will fall by half.
But the new engines could add up to $12,000 to the cost of a new big-rig truck, which can run upward of $100,000. In addition, operators fear higher maintenance costs and worse fuel mileage.
"Clean air is not free," says Rich Moskowitz, who handles regulatory affairs for the
American Trucking Associations, which supports the transition.
Truckers seeking to beat the price increases made 2006 a record year for truck makers. More than 373,000 big-rig trucks were built in North America, says Ken Vieth of
A.C.T. Research, which follows truck sales trends. The tally easily topped the previous record of 330,000 trucks in 1999.
But in 2007, Vieth predicts "a production drought," with sales falling by more than 40 percent to 220,000 as trucking firms hold off buying to see how the new clean-diesel trucks perform.
Toll Cheats Cost MillionsIt would be interesting to see how much your state loses to toll runners and to see how aggressively your state goes after payment. What kinds of excuses do people use to get out of paying?
The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune reports that tollbooth cheaters cost the citizens of Florida $25 million in 2006. The figure is way up from 2005.
In 2006, tollbooth violations on Florida's turnpike system cost the state $20 million to $25 million in lost revenue, twice as much as was lost two years ago.
That sharp increase has troopers stepping up efforts to catch tollbooth cheaters, who could end up with a court date and more than $100 in fines -- far more than the toll they tried to avoid.
Turnpike officials say violations are up because more SunPass lanes and electronic monitoring of tollbooths make it easier for people to slide through without paying.
"It gives toll evaders more excuses to not pay the toll," said Joanne Hurley, community relations coordinator for
Florida's Turnpike Enterprise.
According to the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
somebody tries to cheat toll collectors on the Pennsylvania Turnpike about once a minute. That makes about one in every 50 drivers a cheater. The yearly toll runner total: nearly three-quarters of a million. The state says about 80 percent of the toll runners eventually pay up. Credit for that number goes to the cameras the state uses to catch the scofflaws.
Good Luck on New Year's DayWhat old traditions do people still cling to on New Year's Day in your part of the country?
In Kentucky, where I grew up, people eat
black-eyed peas and cabbage for good luck on New Year's Day. I am not a big fan of black-eyed peas but have eaten my share of them as preventative medicine.
Hoppin' John, made with ham hocks, rice and black-eyed peas is also a New Year's good luck food in my home state.
Last year, my family bought a New Year's bread loaf called
vasilopita from a Greek bakery. By tradition, the person who gets the piece of bread with a gold (or silver) coin hidden in it will have good luck in the New Year.
123NewYear.com gives
traditions from all 50 states and many countries.
Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes "coming full circle," or completing a year's cycle. For that reason,
the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year's Day will bring good fortune.
In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year's Day.
My Poynter friend
Butch Ward passed along this Irish tradition:
My family lived in a three-story row house on Ashton Street in southwest Baltimore, four doors down the street from my grandfather, Coleman O'Toole. An immigrant from County Galway, Coleman had arrived at Ellis Island in 1913, moved to Baltimore and married Nora Nolan from County Mayo, and joined the city police force in 1922. Forty years later, he turned in his badge and gun at the mandatory retirement age of 70. For all the years I knew him, he lived alone in that big house, Nora having passed away in 1950.
Throughout my years on Ashton Street, I was my mom's emissary to Coleman. (He didn't like my dad, who had committed the unpardonable sin of not being born Irish.) And each year on New Year's morning, my emissary role took on special significance, for the Irish believe (at least this is what Mom told me) that it's good luck for your first visitor on New Year's Day to be a man.
(Of course, given that this is an Irish superstition, it was often expressed from the "glass half-empty" perspective: It's bad luck for your first visitor to be a woman.)
So it was that each New Year's morning, while my friends' parents were preparing good luck meals of roast pork and sauerkraut, I hustled up the street to 2533 Ashton, wished my granddad a Happy New Year and, marching purposefully into his living room, ensured that he would enjoy good luck for another year.
InfoPlease.com includes
these other traditions:
The Spanish ritual on New Year's Eve is to eat 12 grapes at midnight. The tradition is meant to secure 12 happy months in the coming year.
The Dutch burn bonfires of Christmas trees on the street and launch fireworks. The fires are meant to purge the old and welcome the new.
One of my favorite New Year's traditions happens in Maine, where, in the town of Eastport,
they will drop a 22-foot-long sardine to welcome 2007.
The Boston Globe found
a few other celebrations worth mentioning:
In North Carolina, Brasstown drops a live opossum in a cage from the top of a country store.
In Pennsylvania, Lebanon drops a massive bologna.
In Florida, Key West boasts three drops within a mile of one another -- a conch shell, a woman dressed as a pirate wench, and a drag queen named Sushi, generally ensconced in a red high-heeled shoe.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected. The figures on the Florida toll costs are interesting. If...
