Heavy Duty Trucking, March 2020

FLEET TALK Small fleet discovers a better way to back up By Jack Roberts Senior Editor jroberts@ truckinginfo com rucking is an inside job most of the time anyway But there are times when drivers have to climb T out of the cab and perform various chores and safety checks One of the most common is climbing down to back up a tractor trailer This can be time consuming for drivers especially in unfamiliar surroundings and low light or nighttime conditions And then theres the weather to contend with which can be absolutely brutal in winter months On the day I talked with Jamie Hagen owner and driver for Hellbent Xpress out of Stratford South Dakota it was a brisk minus 22 degrees and windy Not the kind of day a driver wants to climb in and out of a truck in order to safely back into a loading or unload dock But Hagen says hes found a solution Its called SpotterCone and its essentially a laserguided back up system for heavy duty trucks Even though Hagens fleet can be counted on one hand he has an outsized presence in the industry thanks to his role as an influencer on social media most notably his Twitter account @ hellbenthagen where he found the SpotterCone inventor The owner came out to visit me and tell me about his product Hagen says Hes a great guy named George Owens who cut his teeth in the oil patch and eventually ended up as a supervisor SpotterCone shoots a laser lane marker toward the front of the truck to aid straight backing as well as a perpendicular beam to a second cone to alert the driver when he or she has backed to the desired position Working in the oil fields a big part of Owens job was spotting trucks and equipment He quickly noted that it was usually chaos trying to get everyone staged without any lane markings So naturally he turned to regular safety cones Hagen says But real quick these started getting flattened into the mud on the jobsite People either couldnt see them or couldnt back up well enough to keep from running them over Owens eventually realized he needed a way to set up some kind of a marker line to let a driver know when the trailer was where they wanted it to be His answer was the SpotterCone a portable lighted laser equipped safety cone Drivers simply take the cones with them when they initially climb down from their truck to check over the area theyll be backing into They set the cones at the point where theyd like the trailer to end up for loading or unloading When theyve backed up to their desired stopping point the laser sensors in the SpotterCone trigger a light on top to alert the driver to stop backing Hagen who admits that as an ag hauler his backing skills are not what they could be thought it a beautiful solution for my application Its all about safety he says Ive pulled into places with random poles in place that you have dodge there are all kinds of obstacles out there And tanker trailers dont like impacts So if these SpotterCones can save me from backing into something its already saved me money Then theres the productivity not to mention the comfort factors to consider Weve all done it Hagen says Backed and thought we were close So you climb down and nope youve got another 15 feet to go So you climb back up back up some more and you figure this time youve got to be where you want So you climb down walk back to look and no Youve got another 5 feet to go That gets old really fast in sub zero weather With the SpotterCone it literally takes 30 seconds to walk back set them up and youre ready to back up right where you want the trailer to be FLEET SNAPSHOT WHO Hellbent Xpress WHERE Stratford South Dakota FLEET 3 OPERATIONS Tanker trailers hauling food grade soy bean and palm oil FUN FACT Hagens role as a social media influencer on Twitter has led him to a close working relationship with Mack Trucks advising them on new truck designs and technology CHALLENGE Finding a better safer warmer way to back trailers HDT MARCH 2020 82 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM PHOTO SPOTTERCONE