JOO_09-16_OnlinEdition

A TARGET MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLICATION 

5400 Laurel Springs Pkwy Suite 703, Suwanee, GA 30024 

CEO: Mark Schiffmacher 

CFO: Susan M. Humphreville 

Vice President: Ed Leader 

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: 

Roger Fair 

RogerF@targetmediapartners.com 

(256) 676-3688 

John Hicks 

JohnH@targetmediapartners.com 

(770) 418-9789 

Greg McClendon 

GregMc@targetmediapartners.com 

(678) 325-1023 

Meg Larcinese 

MegL@targetmediapartners.com 

678-325-1025 

Brett Scott 

Brett.Scott@targetmediapartners.com 

(757) 777-5113 

GENERAL MANAGER: 

Megan Hicks 

MeganH@targetmediapartners.com 

SALES MANAGER: 

Jerry Critser 

JerryC@targetmediapartners.com 

ART DIRECTOR: 

Chad Singleton 

ChadS@targetmediapartners.com 

FEATURES 

Rides With Pride............................................................................... 18 

Class 8 Update................................................................................... 30 

Owning The Wheel........................................................................... 36 

Sudoku Puzzle.................................................................................... 42 

ADVERTISERS 

Bennett Motor Express...........................23 

Bruce Oakley........................................6, 33 

Century Finance......................................14 

Graebel Van Line.....................................17 

Mercer...............................................8-9, 28 

Miller Transporters.................................27 

Minstar............................................... 15, 35 

Panther Expedited Services, Inc............11 

RTI...................................................... 10, 37 

Schneider National, Inc............ 4-5, 40-41 

Stageline Express, Inc............................ 2-3 

Star Freight........................................ 13, 39 

Super Service............................................44 

TruckJobSeekers.com..............................16 

Tradewinds........................................ 12, 43 

Tran Stewart Trucking............................21 

Transport Design.....................................31 

Universal...................................................25 

UPS Freight..............................................29 

Job Opportunities I 7

Meet Miles Johnson– 

Mercer Contractor that 

Believes in Giving Back! 

Mercer Contractor, 

Miles Johnson 

Mercer Contractor, Miles Johnson, understands 

the ins and outs of being a successful Owner 

Operator at Mercer Transportation, but after being 

leased on at Mercer since July of 1992, that 

shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. “After being 

leased on here for nearly 25 years, I can’t imagine 

working with any other company,” Johnson said. 

“You want to surround yourself with good people 

and there are plenty of them here.” 

Miles was one of the first Owner Operators asked 

to become a Mentor when the Mercer Mentor 

Program was launched in 2015, and he eagerly 

accepted the offer. He understands the assistance 

and support that a Mentor can provide. In fact, 

Miles had a Mentor himself. “I started in trucking 

working for my uncle,” Miles said. “After six 

months he told me to take the truck over and run 

it like it was mine. I felt like I had been thrown in 

to the deep end of the pool.” But his uncle didn’t 

just hand him the keys and walk away. “He was 

always there to help me out, answer questions and 

provide moral support,” said Miles. “Helping other 

drivers is a way I can kind of pay him back. I know 

that’s what I am supposed to do.” 

Buying his first truck in 1987, Miles’ current 

truck is a 2000 Peterbilt with a whopping 2 and a 

half million miles on its odometer. “I used to do all 

the maintenance on the truck myself but now that 

I am a little older, I have a local mechanic doing 

any major work that needs to be done,” Miles said. 

“But I still do a lot of the minor stuff myself.” 

When asked what the most important thing for 

Owner Operators to do to be successful at Mercer 

is, Miles didn’t hesitate coming up with the answer. 

“You want to establish a good relationship with your 

Coordinator. Go to lunch with him or her and take 

time to get acquainted,” Miles said. “And meet 

the other people you work with at the office. With 

the Mercer open-door policy, you can meet with 

anyone in the company regardless of their title.” 

Miles travels the road with his four-legged rider, 

Yoda. “I love having her with me. Taking her on 

walks keeps me active,” said Miles. “I may be stuck 

in traffic and frustrated, then I see how calmly Yoda 

is handling the situation and I just laugh to myself.” 

Miles and Susie, his wife of 31 years, live in 

Judsonia, AR. On his downtime he will work around 

the yard or spend some time at his camp on Greers 

Ferry Lake. “Susie and I are NASCAR fans and we 

will take our 38-foot, fifth-wheel camper and head 

to one of the tracks to catch a race several times 

a year.” 

Mercer is proud to have Miles on our team as 

an Owner Operator working with our customers 

and as a Mercer Mentor assisting other Mercer 

Contractors. It’s great to see a person, who 

received help when they were starting out, pay it 

forward and be there for others. Job well done, 

Miles! • 

8 I Job Opportunities

AT A GLANCE 

Company: Tradewinds 

Headquarters: Westfield, IN 

Years in Business: 20 years 

Number of Terminals: 1 

Terminal Locations: 

Indianapolis, IN 

Benefits: 

• Lease Purchase Program 

$0 Down Payment 

• Paid on PRACTICAL Miles 

• Home Weekly 

• Solos = 2700 Miles Per Week Avg. 

• Teams = 5200 Miles Per Week 

Avg. 

• $2,500 Sign on Bonus! 

Using the free mobile app on your smartphone, scan the bar 

above for more information about this company

SHOW TRUCK PICTORIAL 

Aaron 

Spiniolas 

2003 Peterbilt 

379 EX HD 

Harvord, IL 


Pictures taken at the Paul K. Young Truck Beauty Championship (PKY) @ MATS 


Sid Calangelo 

2015 Kenworth W900L 

Duenweg, MO 

Job Opportunities I 19


Sean McEndree Sr 

2006 Peterbilt 379 

Salado, TX 




Felicia 

Berggren 

2015 Kenworth T680 

North Glenn, CO 




Earl Millirons 

Forest Park, GA 




Thomas J 

Liegel II 

FLIPPIN, AR 



CLASS 8 UPDATE 

A couple of 

CLASS 8-RELATED 

news items to note: 

USED CLASS 8 SALES REBOUND FROM MAY DECLINE WITH 15% RISE, 

STILL DOWN FROM 2015 

Used Class 8 truck sales posted a doubledigit 

month-over-month increase, following a 

sharp decline in May, according to transport 

analyst firm ACT Research. The report noted, 

however, that sales were down year-over-year 

and yearto-date 

compared 

to the 

s a m e 

period in 

2015. 

“June Class 8 used truck 

volumes grew 15 percent 

month-over-month,” said 

Steve Tam, ACT’s vice 

president-Commercial 

Vehicle Sector. “For 

perspective, May sales fell 18 

percent month-over-month. 

When we see dramatic, 

opposing shifts such as this, 

we tend to average the two 

points together, ascribing the 

variation to shifts in timing 

of purchases. Taking that 

broader view, the change 

in volumes is easier to 

understand. As a case in 

point, year-to-date sales in 

May and June were down 5 percent. Dealers 

are reporting an increase in customer traffic, 

but this has not led to surging sales. The 

average price and age of used Class 8 trucks 

fell month-over-month, while average mileage 

rose by a mere 1 percent.” 

ACT provides data on the average selling 

price, miles, and age based on a sample of 

industry data, the 

company said. In 

addition, the report 

provides the average 

selling price for 

top-selling Class 8 

models for each of the major truck OEMs – 

Freightliner (Daimler); Kenworth and Peterbilt 

(Paccar); International (Navistar); and Volvo 

and Mack (Volvo), the company stated. 


CLASS 8 UPDATE 

SURVEY SHOWS CLEANER DIESELS HAVE IMPROVED AIR, FUEL EFFICIENCY 

The introduction of more advanced diesel truck 

engines, innovative emissions control systems and 

cleaner diesel fuel over 

the past decade have 

successfully resulted 

in major improvements 

in air quality and fuel 

efficiency, according to 

new research compiled 

by The Martec Group, a global technical marketing 

research firm, for the Diesel Technology Forum. 

The 4 million cleaner heavy-duty diesels 

introduced from 2007 through 2015 have saved 

U.S. consumers: 

• 29 million metric tons of CO2 

• 7.5 million metric tons of NOx 

• 218,000 metric tons of particulate matter 

(PM) 

• 2.9 billion gallons of diesel 

• 69 million barrels of crude oil 

“It is clear from these findings that the new 

generation of clean diesel technology is delivering 

large and expanding benefits to society in the form 

of fewer emissions and lower fuel consumption,” 

said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the 

Diesel Technology Forum. “The reductions from 

the 2007 and newer trucks on the road today 

are equivalent to removing the CO2 emissions 

from 6.1 million light-duty cars from the road for 

one year, removing the NOx emissions from all 

light-duty cars for two years, and removing the 

particulate matter from all light-duty cars for six 

years.” 

Schaeffer said 42 percent of all medium and 

heavy-duty diesel commercial trucks (Classes 

3-8) in operation in the United States – 4 million 

of 9.5 million diesel trucks – were now equipped 

with newer technology clean diesel engines; up 

from 38 percent last year. 

For Class 8 trucks running the newest 

generation (2010 and newer) engines, the new 

technology saved truckers $2,400 a year in fuel 

costs by using 875 fewer gallons of fuel (based 

on 125,000 miles traveled). • 


OWNING THE WHEEL 

BY JOHN EWING 

IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION FOR TRUCKERS 

ACCOUNTING – PART 3 

If you missed the previous articles please visit my blog, http://www.truckershelper.com/blog/ so 

you can review them. This one won’t make a lot of sense without reading the other articles first. 

We left off with one piece to the accounting 

puzzle left to solve and that was 

understanding the account types and 

why a particular type of account must always be 

one type of account. You cannot enter Income 

against an Expense account and you cannot 

enter an Expense against an Income account. 

These two types of entries require accounts that 

match them in order to work. This issue arises 

because an Expense is a negative value account 

and an Income account is a positive value 

account. So when you try to enter income (a 

refund for example) against an 

Expense to reverse the amount 

you spent for the item you 

returned you are trying to enter 

a positive value to an account 

which requires a negative value. 

In accounting, checking, savings & cash are all 

CASH accounts. Credit Cards are liabilities and in 

order to simplify accounting we record liabilities 

as positive numbers. This simplifies accounting 

for computer systems because then you are 

using a single entry system and pay a credit 

card the cash is a minus and that same minus 

can be used without modifying it to reduce the 

balance of the liability. Not all systems function 

this way, some represent everything as positives 

and you never see the minus sign. Everything is 

then handled in the background which I believe 

The easy way to look at 

accounting is that things you 

own are a plus value and things 

you owe are a negative value. So 

things that add to your net worth 

are plus value items. These are 

things like your CASH accounts. 

makes it harder for the average 

person to understand it. This is why 

accounting type people often refer 

to debits and credits rather than 

just showing and using positive and 

negative numbers. 

In a debit/credit system you will 

always see a check shown as $200 

or you’ll see things in columns, but 

generally the amounts listed in the 


OWNING THE WHEEL 

BY JOHN EWING 

IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION FOR TRUCKERS 

columns do not have signs, they are simply listed 

as debits or credits. In a single column system the 

amounts are often shown with either a negative 

sign or brackets (000) to indicate a negative 

number. Personally I prefer to show the signs 

as I believe it’s easier for the average person to 

understand the 100 -100 = 0 than the visualize 

that debit 100 and credit 100 = 0. The effect of 

these two ways of saying the same thing is that 

they do say the same thing. So how 

you say it is simply a matter of personal 

preference. So if you represent CASH 

as a positive value then money you 

have is a + and when you spend it the 

expense will be a negative. 

With a credit card purchase you 

have gained something in the form 

of an expense. So you ADD to the 

EXPENSE account. An expense is a 

negative account therefore the credit 

card (Liability) which you incur when 

you pay for that expense with a credit card must 

be a positive to balance the transaction. When 

you then pay the credit card that payment is 

from a cash account and therefore the negative 

(spending cash to make the payment) will reduce 

both the CASH account and the LIABILITY. 

TILL NEXT TIME, BE SAFE. 


SUDOKU PUZZLE 

Sudoku 

How to play: You must complete the Sudoku puzzle so 

that within each and every row, column and region, the 

numbers one through nine are only written once. 

There are 9 rows in a traditional Sudoku puzzle. Every 

row must contain the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 

and 9. There may not be any duplicate numbers in any 

row. In other words, there can not be any rows that are 

identical 

There are 9 columns in a traditional Sudoku puzzle. 

Like the Sudoku rule for rows, every column must also 

contain the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Again, 

Difficulty: Easy 

there may not be any duplicate numbers in any column. 

Each column will be unique as a result. 

A region is a 3x3 box like the one shown to the left. 

There are 9 regions in a traditional Sudoku puzzle. 

Like the Sudoku requirements for rows and columns, 

every region must also contain the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 

5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Duplicate numbers are not permitted 

in any region. Each region will differ from the other 

regions. 

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AT A GLANCE 

Company: Tradewinds 

Headquarters: Westfield, IN 

Years in Business: 20 years 

Number of Terminals: 1 

Terminal Locations: 

Indianapolis, IN 

Benefits: 

• Lease Purchase Program 

$0 Down Payment 

• Paid on PRACTICAL Miles 

• Home Weekly 

• Solos = 2700 Miles Per Week Avg. 

• Teams = 5200 Miles Per Week 

Avg. 

• $2,500 Sign on Bonus! 

Using the free mobile app on your smartphone, scan the bar 

above for more information about this company

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