CrossCheck Blog

Truckers love their industry, and a line in Michael Ray’s hit “Kiss You in the Morning” might just sum up the way most of them feel about their rig and the open road: Oh, you little outlaw, Stealing my heart and all… Of course it’s much nicer to have your heart stolen than broken, and now that the recession heartbreak is finally fading, the trucking industry has set about stealing hearts at a great pace. It’s been adding jobs for the last three years, and just last month it broke a pre-recession record by adding another 7,400.

Since the CBO expects us to run out of money for infrastructure this year, now might be a good time for building supply company owners and managers to make two critical decisions: first, what they want to say to their elected leaders, and second, what they want to say to their customers. The message to elected leaders may be the more challenging of the two, mostly because the building industry’s point of view can’t be summarized in a bumper sticker or a thirty-second commercial. Everyone in the industry knows that the American Society of Civil Engineers gives our country’s infrastructure a “D+” overall, with our roads getting a lowly “D.” It’s pretty obvious why they call for $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment between now and 2020.

As gasoline prices began to collapse last year – especially after November when OPEC decided not to prop up the price – pundits everywhere wondered how it would impact demand. Would people buy fewer electrics and hybrids? Would they buy bigger, less fuel-efficient vehicles? Or is the price of gas only one of many factors impacting demand? The simple answers are “Yes,” “Yes” and “Yes,” but simple answers may not be enough to protect your sales margin this year and in the years ahead.

Americans spent over $30 billion on their pets last year, right in step with the economic recovery, and veterinary clinic owners and managers who expect to see their business expand this year may very well be right. But according to the latest dvm360.com survey, not even half of veterinarians practicing today would recommend their profession to their kids. Ten years ago more than three out of four would have. With all this money dedicated to pets, we have to wonder why veterinary medicine professionals feel this way.

Satoshi Nakamoto released Version 0.1 of the application underlying Bitcoin on January 3, 2008. It wasn’t really software at that point in time; it didn’t have a user interface or even a DOS-like command line. To run it, you had to use Visual Studio on a Windows machine. Nevertheless, the functionality was “remarkably complete,” and the first online transaction took place six days later. To make his project open-source, Nakamoto put it on SourceForge and asked other developers to suggest contributions to the core technology. Until mid-2010, Nakamoto controlled which of these suggestions would make it into the official version of the Bitcoin software. Then that responsibility passed to Gavin Andresen.

It’s true that over the past twenty years OEMs have increased the number of parts per car by more than half, topping out today at ten thousand and opening considerable opportunities for auto repair shop owners and managers. It’s also true that people invest more in their older cars than they used to, creating an entirely different set of opportunities for auto aftermarket owners and managers. But the single most important thing successful aftermarket businesses might consider today is this: people still love giant paper maps.

Too many apps on your smartphone? There’s an app for that. And why not? There seems to be an app for everything these days, but according to PC Magazine, right now only seven of the top 100 have anything to do with health.

According to a recent study by New York University, the funeral industry, or at least something along those lines, was invented by Neanderthals 50,000 years ago.

The average price of a car in 2014 was $32,386, the highest ever, but auto dealership owners and general managers might find that this is most interesting aspect of that record: virtually no one paid $32,386 for their car.

We have proof! The heavy equipment industry’s recovery must be solid because, over the course of last year, recreation and amusement park construction shot up 24%.