Popular motorcycle apparel and gear guide

Finding the right motorcycle apparel at a discount price has been made so much easier since the emergence of online motorcycle stores. Now you can shop for riding gear in the comfort of your own home. Never before could you hit 20 or 30 different stores and compare prices on apparel, but now with the invention of the internet its only a matter of minutes to find the best price on riding apparel or any other bits you want for your ride. Also the convenience of never having to leave your house and having all your gear delivered to your front door is a nice bonus. In today's market for motorcycle apparel and gear you have a plethora of choices as to what you want to wear. There are almost as many makers of quality apparel as there are when you just go clothes shopping. Some of today's most popular gear is made by Icon. Icon really has its pulse on the market place, they are always pushing the envelope when it comes to design and style. Icon makes pretty much all the gear you could possibly want, jackets, gloves, boots, helmets, and even tank bags. They are probably the most searched for manufacturer of motorcycle gear on the web. One of the newer lines for motorcycle apparel is Arlen Ness. Now Arlen Ness or Ness Tech has made parts for cruiser bikes forever but has recently also decided to enter the apparel market with some really nice looking jackets. Arlen Ness gear is made to appeal more to the cruiser rider where most of the other companies mentioned here are geared towards the sport riding crowd. AGVSport is another well known line, they much like Icon make it all. You can get anything from a jacket to gloves and boots from AGV. AGV Sport makes very high quality gear. Alpinestars is another popular maker of motorcycle apparel. They manufacture helmets, gloves, boots, jackets and even one piece or two piece riding suits. The one piece suits really are more designed to be for track days, offering the best in protection that money can buy. For those of you that enjoy cruising more then sport riding you will find lots of chaps, vests and old school leather jackets are available by a variety of manufacturers as well as their being a lot of generic gear of that type being available. Back in the early biker days if you wanted a jacket you were pretty much stuck sweating it out in a leather jacket even when it was steaming outside. Now you can get mesh jackets that offer as much protection as their leather counterparts. The introduction of mesh jackets was a dream come true for anyone that lives in extremely warm climates. Also many of the gloves now come in a vented format which makes them perfect for warm weather riding. Gloves are now also being made out mesh material to make them even lighter and even more breathable therefore allowing your hands to stay cooler while still offering some protection. Sorry boots are usually still leather and can get quite warm, however in the last few years Icon and a few other manufacturers of apparel have come out with riding shoes which offer some of the same protection as boots but are way more comfortable. Alpinestars makes some really nice ones that double as regular tennis shoes just fine. If you are in the market for quality motorcycle apparel at a discount I would definitely recommend you hit the internet and shop to your hearts content. With so many makers and sites out there take your time and find the gear that you really want.

Cutting carbon emissions through haulage loads

This may seem a slightly unlikely article for me to be writing at first. Working in the road transport industry as I do, many people assume it is automatically impossible to have a green conscience. This isn’t surprising, given that my job depends on hundreds of haulage vehicles dragging loads up and down the country, producing all those environment damaging carbon emissions along the way. Actually, the truth is that my job allows me to be both a vocal green advocate and a road haulage representative while still helping me claim a regular salary. No, I haven’t invented a magical device that changes exhaust emissions into pure oxygen – it’s simply thanks to the nature of the freight exchange. It works like this: under normal circumstances, owner operators or haulage companies manage their own loads with their customers, make their delivery and then return home to the depot for the next load. Environmentally and on a human level, this is in no way efficient. The driver is, in effect, only being paid for the outbound journey, and in these times when the price of fuel seems to be rising on an almost daily basis, this is financially crippling. Now consider a freight exchange – a network of suppliers and haulage drivers/companies who distribute their loads between them meaning that the return journey can contain another job. This means the trip is paid for (both ways) and therefore the haulage company is not operating at an inefficient loss (even for a minute) and profits can rise. All well and good, but this still isn’t looking particularly environmentally friendly is it? Wait, I’m getting to that part. Now, if this return load is being distributed back to someone who is already out on the road, it won’t be given to an owner operator for whom that would be the sole purpose of the trip. This means that there are less wasted journeys (every mile involved has a delivery attached) and therefore less unnecessary carbon emissions all over the place. Better still, if this collaboration for efficiency continues across the industry, then less road haulage vehicles will be required to shift all the work, and we may even see the decommissioning of these carbon-emitting behemoths. The environment will surely jump for joy. Unlike most environmentally friendly solutions which require an element of self sacrifice and extra work, the freight exchange actually creates benefits across the board: the haulage companies and owner operators make more money, the roads get less congested and the environment becomes less polluted. Efficiency shines through and everybody wins – and for that reason, we have seen impressive pick up for our online freight exchange for the 7.5tonne and above market: Haulage Exchange. I can’t say whether our customer base is growing for monitory or environmental reasons (it's probably both), but whichever it is, the gradual migration to Haulage Exchange and other freight exchanges is great news for the environment. And if our drivers save themselves significant money as well, then all the better. What harm is a little incentive when the environment is at stake?

Worrying times for the motor industry

From 1st July 2007 the UK bans smoking in enclosed public places with as many as 600,000 people forecast to quit smoking as a result. This article looks at if charging people to drive will have similar results for the Motor Trade. In The Beatles classic song Taxman the lyric goes, "We’ll tax your feet". Whilst the government hasn’t yet decided to do this it seems the introduction of "pay as you drive" schemes may soon be hitting the roads of the UK but what impact (if any) will this have on the UK Motor Trade. Well there appears to be a few factors that road users might want to consider: 1. If you’re a driver who drives infrequently or at less busy times you could end up paying less. 2. Or you might drive an average number of miles but due to you driving at rush hours (on you way to/from work or school) you will end up paying more money 3. You may want to use public transport more often 4. You and your friends may set up a car pool scheme so you take it in turns to drive 5. If you spend a lot of time on the road travelling to see friends and family maybe you won’t be able to visit them as often as before 6. If you spend time travelling for work maybe you won’t be able to visit customers as much or worse still increased transport costs may mean your less competitive or jobs have to be cut And what about people in the Motor Trade itself? If the smoking ban just announced makes people stop smoking then maybe forcing people to pay more to drive will mean people will simply drive less often. Therefore less cars are needed, less people are needed to service and repair them and jobs are lost in the Motor Industry. Of course these are all what if’s as nobody really knows what impact this decision will have on the transport system, the motor trade or indeed modern life. If maybe a positive move with a journey to work being halved due to less vehicles on the road. It may mean a change in the opening hours for businesses or schools so not everyone is fighting to get to and from work as the same time as the school run is being done. It may mean more money is invested in public transport so we have buses, trains, tubes and other forms of transport that are reliable and we’d be happy using. Or of course it may mean nothing changes apart from the fact that we have less money in our pockets. If the results of this survey conducted by Northern Counties Insurance Brokers are anything to go by. People were asked what impact will having to pay per journey have on you? - 40% said no impact as they couldn't live without their car - 13% said they would stop driving altogether - 6% said they would drive less often - 21% said they would use public transpoty more often - 11% said they would car share to cut costs - 5% said they would walk more often - 3% said they would still drive as often but at different times Whatever your thoughts are on the governments new "pay to drive" schemes the chances are it will happen and the impact on the motor trade could be massive