Higher cost of trucking hurts everyone

By CORY CUNNINGHAM
Enterprise news editor

-----Fuel prices continue to rise and everyone is feeling the effects, perhaps in ways they don’t even realize.
-----The trucking industry is being hit hard by the rising costs, and that has resulted in higher prices for nearly everything they haul, since most companies are paying more to have their products hauled and passing those costs on to the consumer.
-----Truckers that are able to get a fuel surcharge for their deliveries are still able to make a profit, but those drivers who can’t get a surcharge may not be truckers for long.
-----“The owner/operators are being hit the hardest,” said Jerry Wiggins, Ogeechee Technical College Commercial Truck Driving program advisor, referring to truckers that own their own truck rather than driving for a company.
-----Irene Ammon, who is a part-time instructor in the OTC program, and her husband own a tractor-trailer rig used in long-haul trucking.
-----“People think that truckers make $4,000 to $4,500 driving to California,” she says, “but you have to pay for your fuel, make your truck and trailer payments. … Truck drivers live from check to check.”
-----Last week, their truck fueled up at Anthony, Texas, where diesel was going for $4.19 per gallon. In California, it’s more like $4.40.
-----“So we try to fuel in the cheaper states, but there really are no cheaper states anymore,” she said.
-----At this rate, the fuel to drive to California at 65 mph now costs $1,500 to $1,700, Ammon said. The return trip costs that much more.
-----Despite the fuel cost surge, enrollment in OTC’s truck driver training program has not dropped off, Wiggins said. The school has implemented its own fuel surcharge, though. Students enrolling in the program now have to pay a one-time $84 fee to help cover the cost of the fuel they will use while practicing with the program’s trucks.
-----National trucking companies are not being hurt as much as individuals or smaller companies because, in addition to being in a better position to negotiate fuel surcharges, they can also make deals with fuel station chains by using that chain’s fuel exclusively for all the company’s trucks in exchange for a lower price.
-----Smaller companies are able to survive with surcharges, but they are being hurt by the increased cost of all products like everyone else. Tires, trucks parts and other equipment has all increased in price due to the trickle down affect from rising fuel costs, cutting into the companies’ bottom lines.
-----Blocker Trucking hauls 25 to 30 loads a week with its five trucks and receives a fuel surcharge on nearly all of those runs, said owner Larry Blocker. Some companies that he used to haul for cannot afford to raise the price of their product, and so can’t afford to provide a surcharge, which means he had to stop delivering for them, or else risk losing money.
-----Many of the worst situations with the skyrocketing fuel costs, particularly for newer drivers, involve contracts for dedicated runs. These are bid on earlier in the year, and drivers who have not been in the business long may not have had the foresight to include a fuel clause. If there is not a clause stating otherwise, a trucker will be held to the agreed-upon price for the delivery, even if the increased fuel costs will reduce the trucker’s profit to peanuts, or even cost him money.
-----Experienced truckers like Blocker, on the other hand, know to plan ahead and include a clause allowing them to raise their rates if fuel costs increase.
-----Canoochee Transport Inc. runs 10 trucks and burns about 6,000 gallons of fuel a week, said owner Andy Hendrix. This costs the company more than $25,000 a week, but, like Blocker, most of the damage to his bottom line comes from the increases in the cost of tires and parts, since he gets surcharges for his deliveries, he said.
-----Surcharges are a two-way street. While Hendrix may reap the benefits of them when his trucks are doing the delivering, he has to pay higher prices when his trucks are picking up equipment or need new tires, he said.
-----However, trucking in this area continues to have a bright future, Wiggins says, because of the location. Three of the five busiest ports on the east coast – Savannah, Jacksonville, Charleston – are within 200 miles, and there will always be products to haul, he said.

Cagle: Time to look forward

By AL HACKLE
Enterprise editor
-----While admitting that this year’s legislative session ended on a sour note, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle says that important things were accomplished and that the most important now is to look forward and not back.
-----When Cagle spoke to the Claxton Rotary Club at its weekly luncheon meeting on Wednesday, April 30, he commented on his initiatives for charter schools and career academies, continuing work for a trauma care network and free clinics, the need to manage through a weaker economy, the comprehensive water management plan that did pass this year and ongoing tri-state water negotiations. He followed the Rotary visit with a roundtable discussion at the Evans County courthouse Annex, where officials from area cities and counties praised him for blocking tax reform measures that they believed would have increased the burden on local governments.
-----The question the newspaper put to Cagle during the Rotary Club Q&A session was whether anything is being done so that the Legislature can get along and accomplish more next year.
-----“Was there a conflict?” Cagle quipped and then laughed along with the audience.
-----“Honestly, I was very disappointed in the way the session ended,” he said. “It was very ugly, just to be very candid with you, and I’ve always looked at myself being on the business side as approaching things from the business standpoint, and you have to negotiate and negotiate in good faith, and I was very hopeful that we would be able to have a better resolve to the session than what happened.”
-----The session ended with the Senate and the House, both controlled by Republican majorities, failing to reach agreement on several initiatives, especially tax reform. Cagle, who presides over the Senate, differed with House Speaker Glenn Richardson from the start over Richardson’s GREAT Plan to abolish property taxes. The House leadership allowed GREAT to be negotiated down to the just eliminating the tax on cars, but the two bodies still disagreed on how to make up for the lost revenue.
-----“I had a philosophical difference on the issue,” Cagle said. “The car tax is a local tax; it’s not a state tax – I think most people don’t understand that – and the method by which the speaker wanted to handle it would be about a $600 million hit to local county and city governments and school boards.”
-----Richardson agreed to increase state spending to reimburse local governments, but Cagle, who says that spending cuts should accompany tax cuts, called this “problematic.” The Senate put forward several alternative proposals. A new fee structure for local government services was proposed to make up for the car tax. Another proposal Cagle liked would have substituted a state income tax credit equal to the amount of car taxes for actually abolishing the tax. Nothing passed.
-----“But you know, you don’t look back, you look forward, and we’re going to be very focused at solving the issues at hand,” Cagle said. “It’s not about personalities. Now is the time for statesmanship; now is the time to put principle ahead of politics and the political gamesmanship needs to end. We need to focus on doing what is in the best interest of Georgia citizens.”
-----Education for jobs
-----Cagle said he remains bullish on Georgia’s economy, noting that our state has the most Fortune 500 companies based in it, the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield International, and by some measure, the nation’s “fastest” port. But he conceded that the state government cut $400 million from its budget for a reason, as officials look at projections for 2008 to the beginning of ’09.
-----“We are hopeful that the economy will turn, but we’re in for some lean times,” he said.
-----Cagle, 42, was elected lieutenant governor in November 2006. He is from Gainesville in Hall County, where he purchased his first business, a clothing store, when he was 20, and after expanding it to several locations, founded Southern Heritage Bank in 1999. He was elected to the state Senate in 1994 at age 28. He was introduced at the Rotary Club by Senator Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, who has represented the 4th District since 1991 and now chairs the Appropriations Committee.
-----State investment in education and workforce development, Cagle said, must be part of maintaining a strong economic environment in Georgia.
-----“Now is not the time to increase spending, but now is the time to invest in these critical assets in our state,” he said. “That’s why we put more money into strategic places to help while also cutting taxes to help foster that pro-job culture.
-----His initiatives include the creation and funding of Career Academies and increased flexibility for charter schools. Set up by high schools in partnership with technical colleges, Career Academies allow students to get advanced training for specific technical trades while earning their high school diplomas. The state awarded $15 million to establish the first five academies last year, and the Legislature approved another $15 million for five more this year. Cagle noted that the 2008-’09 budget also restores $50 million to state funding for school systems taken away by austerity cuts in recent years.
-----Health care
-----On health care, Cagle says that making affordable options available to the currently uninsured would help other families as well.
-----“We know the cost-shifting that occurs within the hospital structure,” he said. “You and I that pay for insurance are paying for those that cannot. The average family of three pays about a thousand dollars a year in additional premium cost for those that can’t pay.”
-----People without health insurance often go to emergency rooms for primary care, resulting in higher costs, Cagle points out. The number one reason that Georgians go to an E.R. is an upper respiratory infection – often the common cold – and treating a cold in an E.R. costs on average $1,400, or at least 14 times the typical cost of a doctor’s office visit, according to the numbers he used.
-----He supports the Safety Net Clinic concept to “triage people out of the emergency room when they don’t really need emergency care into a free clinic network that is a real foundation of charitable activity at the local level.”
-----While that has yet to become a reality, this year’s state budget does include $60 million to create a trauma care network. Hill credited Cagle with expending much time and political capital on improving the healthcare system and expanding care to the uninsured.
-----Water
-----Water use planning is an area where the Georgia General Assembly accomplished the main thing it set out to do this year, with passage of the statewide water management plan. Cagle said the plan should ensure that Atlanta with its “unquenchable thirst” does not tap into South Georgia water resources and that resources are managed regionally.
-----He said that not just the drought but “mismanagement by the (Army) Corps of Engineers with the amount of water they allowed to come out of the reservoirs” resulted in the crisis. He added that he believes that current negotiations with the Corps and other federal agencies will have great success and that the comprehensive water plan will help Georgia in tri-state water negotiations with Florida and Alabama.
-----“It’s critical that we demonstrate to the courts, in the event that we go there, that we are managing the resource in a responsible way,” he said.
-----Evans County Administrator Caughey Hearn praised Cagle for his stance in the tax reform fight.
-----“We appreciate your involvement in the tax reform issue,” Hearn said. “I think you helped us all avoid a disaster this past time and I hope everybody can come together for a good compromise that will work for all of our benefit.”
-----This praise was repeated by officials from the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, the Georgia Municipal Association and various cities and counties when Cagle held his afternoon roundtable. Senator Hill and Evans County Commission Chair Charles Oglesby joined Cagle at the front table, while the cities of Claxton, Cochran, Hinesville, Metter, Midway, Pembroke, Reidsville and Sylvania and the counties of Bulloch, Candler, Emanuel, Evans and Tattnall were represented in the audience by elected and appointed officials. The Heart of Georgia Altamaha Regional Development Center was also represented in the group of about 60 people.

Glenvue back in compliance

By AL HACKLE
Enterprise editor

---Glenvue Nursing Home is back in compliance with state regulations after a two-day follow-up visit last week by an inspector for the Georgia Department of Human Resources.
---A seven-member team from DHR Office of Regulatory Services’ Longterm Care Division had visited the home for an inspection and resident interviews completed March 13, tagging the 155-bed home in Glennville for 21 deficiencies, its most ever and up from eight deficiencies last year. The “tags” for deficiencies represented a smaller number of observed incidents and statements by residents, some of which were cross-referenced to multiple regulations. DHR gave Glenvue until April 28 to correct the deficiencies or face penalties.
---Glenvue, which is owned by Evans Memorial Hospital Inc., had submitted plans of correction for all of the tagged items by March 30. The plans were accepted, and one DHR surveyor, Becky Woods, visited the home April 29 and 30. Before leaving on Wednesday afternoon, April 30, Woods, a registered nurse who has been a nursing home administrator, conducted an exit interview with Glenvue Administrator Danny Lynn and Director of Nursing Val Durrence, RN, that the home was back in full compliance.
---Lynn immediately announced this to staff, residents and visitors over the intercom.
---“I wanted them to know that we work hard and we’ve done a good job,” he said in an interview the next day.
---The deficiencies recorded in the inspection team’s initial report ranged from an alleged failure to monitor pressure sores appropriately on three residents and complaints, voiced by two residents during an interview by inspectors, about staff attitudes, down to the use of styrene cups by some residents in the cafeteria, and some minor problems with the building such as cracked tiles and missing light fixture cover.
---“In no way do I think that our standard, our quality of care was any lower that it’s ever been,” said Durrence, who has been director of nursing at Glenvue for seven years.
---Officials with Glenvue and EMH Inc. said they believed this year’s inspection was stricter than in the past because the division’s South Region director accompanied the team.
---A recent report by the Georgia Health Care Association appears to support the perception that Office of Regulatory Services inspections have been tougher in the district that includes Glenvue this year than elsewhere in the state. The report, which Lynn received at an April 16 GHCA meeting in Vidalia, shows that for longterm care facilities inspected during the current fiscal year, the average number of deficiencies reported was 10.3 for the South district, compared to 5.3 for the Central district, 5.9 for the East and 3.8 for the West. The number of more serious “life safety code” deficiency tags was also higher in the South district, with 2.8 per home on average, compared to 1.8 in the Central district, 1.3 in the East and 2.5 in the West.
---Lynn and Durrence observed that nursing homes are subjected to inspection on all the regulations in a massive 715-page manual, and that represents just the federal rules.
---“This faces us every day,” said Lynn, holding the book and later adding that “there are no perfect nursing homes.”
---Durrence, who worked previously as a hospital care nurse and home care nurse, says that the regulations involved with a nursing home exceed those she encountered in either of her previous roles.
---“It’s a lot of regulations, which is good,” she said. “We want to have the best care for our residents.”
---But Durrence added that in a home with 200 employees and more than 100 residents, staying in compliance takes constant attention. To ensure that the home would pass on the reinspection visit, the Glenvue staff undertook additional in-service training, practiced procedures, and documented everything that was done.
---“We’re relieved,” Durrence said of the positive result. “The staff had worked really hard to make sure we were back in compliance.”
---She said she was discouraged by a lack of communication from the DHR surveyors with staff in the initial inspection and noted that some of the deficiency tags were removed prior to the revisit when Glenvue officials were able to communicate with DHR.
---But the annual survey does keep the staff on their toes, she said. Although expected on an annual basis, the surveys are unannounced and can be repeated an an interval of nine to 15 months.
---Lynn called some of the deficiency tags in the initial inspection ridiculous, such as the one about some residents being served beverages and desserts in styrene foam cups and bowls when some have expressed a preference for these containers. The preference will now be noted on each resident’s care plan and diet card.
---The DHR survey focuses on isolated observations rather than trends and can put a facility out of compliance because of statements by one or two dissatisfied residents, he observed.
---“I think because of this survey we looked at ourselves more internally, because our heart’s desire and our goal is that we provide the very best care that these residents can get,” Lynn said. “The thing that sort of helps guarantee those things is that we have probably more RN’s in this facility than any facility around.”
---Editor’s note: The count of 21 deficiency tags was given by Danny Lynn during our original interview about the March inspection. Martha Tatum, CEO of Evans Memorial Hospital Inc., had told the EMH board that there were 22 tags. The Claxton Enterprise saw the report, but did not attempt to count the deficiency tags, which were not tallied this way in the report.

New AC equipment makes EMH more energy efficient

By CORY CUNNINGHAM
Enterprise news editor

---Trane Building Services, which is working to replace antiquated air conditioning systems with more energy efficient equipment at Evans Memorial Hospital and Glenvue Nursing Home, has completed much of the work and hospital officials are already noticing a difference.
---A lot of the air conditioning equipment in Evans Memorial Hospital was installed when the hospital was built 40 years ago. Most of this equipment, including two chillers and several air handlers, usually only lasts about 20 years, said Doug Hennen of Trane.
---“Charles (Edwards, EMH maintenance director) has done a phenomenal job keeping everything running, but at some point it just all falls apart,” Hennen said.
---Edwards said he doubted the old chillers would have even lasted through the summer, since parts are not available for them anymore.
---Once the hospital board decided the system needed replacing, the question became how to pay for it. Hennen said his goal in working with the board was to replace the system with as little affect on the hospital’s budget as possible.
---With more energy efficient equipment being installed, the hope is that the energy savings will offset the hospital’s payments for the equipment.
---The whole project, which also includes new lighting, plumbing, the replacement of Glenvue’s roof and work on the hospital’s roof, is budgeted at $2.5 million, and Trane projected that the hospital will save that much in energy costs in 12 years, EMH Chief Executive Officer Martha Tatum said.
---The hospital reallocated $1 million from its 2006 bond issue for the project and also took out a 15-year loan for $1.5 million from Little Rock, Arkansas-based First Security Leasing, which specializes in lending money for “green” projects, said EMH Chief Financial Officer John Wiggins.
---The biggest pieces of equipment that have been replaced are the chillers and cooling tower. The two chillers, which are actually larger than the old ones, are expected to use half the energy of their outdated counterparts.
--- One of the chillers supplies air to the surgical suite, and it was one of the driving forces behind the project because the old chiller was struggling to keep the operating room cool enough, Hennen said. The new surgical suite chiller is able to replace all of the air in the operating room 15 times an hour, Edwards said.
---There were also several air handlers that needed to be replaced, and that has been done already, Hennen said. The new rooftop units and patient room units have been installed as well. About the only work remaining to be done at EMH is 35 fan coil units that need to be replaced, but hospital officials have told Trane to now focus on getting Glenvue done first.
---At Glenvue, Trane workers have installed new air-conditioning units in about 40 percent of the patient rooms. But other work at the nursing home is finished, including new plumbing and lighting, and a new roof. Once the work is completed, residents will be able control their own room’s temperature.
---The plumbing and lighting should save a lot of money on energy, Hennen said. Because of improvements in florescent lighting technology in recent years, lighting upgrades will produce the greatest cost savings of any element in the package. Lighting was upgraded not just at EMH and Glenvue, but also at the Hames Building, the Women’s Center, Surgical Associates and the Jack Strickland Rehabilitation Center.
---Glenvue’s new roof has been completed, providing better ventilation so as not to trap heat. Hospital officials also improved the EMH roof by coating it with a white sealant that reflects heat rather than absorbing it.
---The project was estimated to take about seven months, and with about three months left, the work is moving along right on schedule, Hennen said.
---Last month, EMH’s utility bills were 15 percent lower than usual, Hennen said, and Trane has projected Glenvue’s to be 35 percent lower. This past month’s water bill at Glenvue, thanks to the new plumbing, was almost half what it used to be, Tatum said, adding that the staff at both EMH and Glenvue is thrilled with the new lighting.

Cagle visits

---Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle was scheduled to make two appearances in Claxton on Wednesday, April 30, first to speak to the Claxton Rotary Club at noon and then to talk to elected officials from Evans and surrounding counties in a 2 p.m. round-table at the courthouse annex.
---The Rotary Club had invited Cagle as featured speaker for its weekly luncheon for members and invited guests. Cagle’s office informed local officials only last Thursday morning that he wanted to hold the round-table discussion while he was in town.
---Both events occurred after this edition of The Claxton Enterprise had been printed. (Although it always carries Thursday’s date, the Enterprise is printed Tuesday night.)
---Officials from Candler, Bryan, Bulloch, Liberty, Long and Tattnall counties, as well as Evans, were invited to the roundtable.
---Cagle had to cancel plans for a visit to the Claxton Rotary Club last October and his staff recently agreed to put the club back on his calendar. Rotary Club President Alfie Cofield said Cagle also planned to make a personal visit to the home of Virgil Strickland, the longtime Rotary member who first invited Cagle to talk to the club. Strickland has been unable to attend Rotary meetings the last two months after being diagnosed with an advanced cancer.

Throw it away free Saturday

---You know that pile of old tires behind the shed? What about that TV that didn’t work well enough for the yard sale?
---Maybe you have something else you would like to discard. This Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon is your chance to throw it away free at the Evans County Community-Wide Cleanup.
---Furniture, mattresses, TV’s, appliances (for air-conditioning and refrigeration units you must have proof of refrigerant removal), scrap metal, tires (guidelines follow) and bags of ordinary trash will be accepted at the collection ramp in the Industrial Park, off Cedar Avenue in Hagan adjacent to the OTC truck driving course.
---For tires limits apply. You may bring one of the following three combinations: • 7 tractor tires; • 4 tractor and 6 passenger vehicle tires; or • 12 passenger tires. No tire generator or licensed business may dispose of tires at this event, and no “skidder” tires will be accepted.
---Tires should be removed from rims, but once separated the rims could also be discarded as scrap metal.