With plunging oil prices, the consumers are clearly thrilled but the oil producers, particularly OPEC, not so much. This video below and the image, courtesy of CNN, clearly explains the gigantic complexities that impacts the price of oil. With $2/gallon already in some parts of the US, the current geopolitical scene will get even more volatile in the months ahead.
Image courtesy: CNN Money
(Source: CNN; TreeHugger; Jalopnik ; Autoblog ; AutoblogGreen)
Chrysler reaches key Canada labor accord Tentative agreement, aimed at cutting costs and keeping automaker out of bankruptcy, to be presented to workers for ratification.
Time running out on Chrysler The embattled automaker has one week to reach deals with Fiat, unions and banks, raising doubts it can avoid bankruptcy and a shutdown.
Fox Car Report Live: Ford Fiesta, Chrysler Bankruptcy [Official Car Pundit Drinking Game] …imaginary Chryslers on conservative cable channel website. [Fox Car Report Live]
(SSource: Reuters via CNN)
Tentative agreement, aimed at cutting costs and keeping automaker out of bankruptcy, to be presented to workers for ratification.
Chrysler LLC and the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union reached a tentative agreement Friday on a new labor contract intended to cut costs and keep the struggling automaker from bankruptcy, the union said.
The deal, which will be put to CAW-represented workers for ratification this weekend, is one of several agreements that Chrysler needs to reach by next week to win new U.S. government aid and avoid liquidation.
“We were told by Chrysler that they still didn’t have entire deals done to avoid a bankruptcy filing. We urge all the stakeholders in the United States to make equal sacrifices,” CAW President Ken Lewenza told reporters.
Chrysler, which has been kept operating since the start of the year with $4 billion in U.S. government loans, has until the end of this month to clinch an alliance with Italy’s Fiat SpA and win concessions from its bank creditors and major unions or face a cutoff of its government funding.
“We are extremely grateful to the CAW leadership and to its hard-working members for their openness in this challenging environment to create a new strategy that will lead this company on a path to success,” Chrysler vice chairman Tom LaSorda said in a statement.
The tentative contract for Canadian autoworkers with the No. 3 U.S. automaker would leave hourly base pay intact but cut a range of benefits, including an annual Christmas bonus, and add flexibility to work rules that would make it easier for Chrysler to hire temporary workers.
Chrysler will also cut the third production shift at its Windsor, Ontario, minivan plant.
Taken together, the contract changes will save Chrysler an estimated C$240 million in annual labor costs, Lewenza said.
(Source: CNN)
There was a time when airline travel was a special treat, the kind of occasion that inspired passengers to dress up.
Take, for instance, “Mr. Poopy Pants” — a grown man who allegedly soiled himself 10 minutes into a flight from Florida to Minnesota. And then he just sat there.
“We’ve all had our flying hell experiences,” said Gregg Rottler, creator of FlightsFromHell.com.
The site provides a venue for people to share their tales of woe, said Rottler. “It’s therapeutic … so it benefits them and provides entertainment value for others.”
Rottler, a 54-year-old environmental health supervisor in Tampa, Florida, launched the site more than two years ago. Since then,FlightsFromHell.com has attracted submissions from passengers and flight attendants that have run the gamut, touching on categories that include “odors,” “attendant issues,” “weird people,” and “luggage and delays.”
Among the story headlines: “Titanic toddler creates tumult,” “Wifey punched by elderly ‘sleepwalker,’ ” and “Lip-locked tousle-haired 20-somethings.”
“There’s something about being scrunched up with strangers … The seats aren’t that big, and once someone starts going wacko, it just creates an extremely stressful environment that was already stressful enough,” Rottler said.
TripAdvisor, the world’s largest online travel community, recently released survey results from more than 1,500 U.S. respondents asked to discuss what about flying bugs them most.
Flyers griped about fellow passengers snoring, vomiting and having “excessive flatulence.”
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: CNN)
There’s probably no way to describe the feeling. Joe Pirrone’s pride and joy, his F350 Super Duty turbo diesel truck, turned out to be a stolen “clone.”
One moment, Guiseppe “Joe” Pirrone was on a long weekend at the beach.The next moment, he found out the pickup that he bought a year ago is stolen, and he is still on the hook for the $27,000 loan.
Stories like Pirrone’s are scattered across the country, and Tuesday the FBI announced that it has broken up one of the largest auto theft cases in the U.S. Capping “Operation Dual Identity,” arrest warrants for 17 people were executed in Tampa and Miami, Florida; Chicago, Illinois; and in Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico. The suspects were accused of “cloning” vehicles, which is making stolen cars look like legal ones.
The FBI says that the ring was operating in the U.S. for more than 20 years. More than 1,000 vehicles were stolen in Florida, with more than $25 million in losses to consumers and banks.
“Individuals have been victimized at every level, from the average Joe, to the banks, to big companies,” said Dave Couvertier, of the FBI’s Tampa field office. Car theft rings clone vehicles by taking license plates, vehicle identification numbers (VIN), and other tags and stickers from a legal car and put them on a stolen vehicle of similar make and model.
“This does not just affect big business. Anyone could become an unwitting victim of this particular scam. It could happen to anyone,” said Couvertier.
Pirrone knows how it was done because it happened to him.
Last year, he bought a used 2005 F350 Super Duty turbo diesel pickup to use for his landscape business in Fort Myers, Florida. He bought it off a small used car lot and took out a $27,000 loan from a credit union.
“I had it for about nine months. It was a great truck,” he told CNN.
California wants to take a big-picture look at decreasing carbon emissions from transportation, and in doing so, it has managed to step on some toes, mainly some ethanol producers. Since California is often a trend-setter on these type of things, this case could be a good example of what the rest of us might see in our own states down the road.Biofuels play a big role in this, but it’s the way they’re doing it that has some people riled up. I’m a biofuel fan myself and have two vehicles (both 25-year-old-plus diesels, one of which was featured on CNN.com’s American Road Tripsspecial) that I run on biodiesel, so I find this all quite interesting.
California’s proposing a “Low Carbon-Fuel Standard” aimed at decreasing carbon, not only from tailpipe emissions but also from the overall production of fuels and their use. As part of this, it has proposed a rule limiting the use of ethanol in the strategy, mainly because it says ethanol from corn (because of its land use and impact on food crops) can have a higher impact than regular gasoline produced in the state (according to the Los Angeles Times).
Supporters of the proposal claim they aren’t trying to ban ethanol or anything; in fact, according to the fact sheet I linked to above, they’re advocating going from an ethanol blend fuel called E5 (5 percent ethanol, 95 percent gasoline) to E10 (10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline) and E85 (85 percent ethanol) for flex fuel vehicles.
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(Source: CNN iReport)
The society’s adjustmentsto the changing economic climate has some positive implications for the global climate. Listen to what the younger generation has to say .. I am sure Kyle is not alone..Refreshing to see more people abandoning the “need a car” attitude and starting to think “Yes, I can do without a car”..Kudos to Kyle for sharing his thoughts and Transportgooru wishes you the very best for your “no car” life..
(Source: CNN)
One dentist in Iowa found an ingenious way of keeping his chair filled with patients.
You may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. I may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. But the truck stop dentist figured it out a long time ago.“When your dental practice is in a truck stop, you don’t have a lot of patients coming in for their six-month cleanings,” said Dr. Thomas P. Roemer. “You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional — they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now.”
Dr. Roemer’s one-man dental office is inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott. The complex proclaims itself to be the world’s largest truck stop, and if you’ve never been there — well, the truck stop itself is probably a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment is spread over 200 acres, that it features its own movie theater, a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, the Super Truck Showroom (more than 75,000 truck-related items for sale, festooned with enough gleaming chrome to make you reach for your sunglasses).
