Unimog Versatility & Extreme Offroad Capability

The Unimog no doubt must be up there with the most versatile and capable vehicles on tyres this planet has to offer.

Where there is harsh terrain, steep gradients or extreme conditions, the Unimog is at home.

It's heritage was formed post World War 2 as a multi-function agricultural machine & road going vehicle, with identical tyres back and front the Unimog moved away from your typical farmer's tractor to a highway capable transporter.



It's ability is achieved by its design, portal gears allow the differential's to sit higher than the center of the wheels, which in turn allows for improved ground clearance.   Its chassis unlike a standard rigid truck is designed to flex.


Below; Images of a Multi-Function Mercedes U500 I personally photographed on display at the Stuttgart Mercedes Museum.





This U500 SWB  has some quiet impress specifications,

Width: 2,474 mm
Length: 5,410 mm
Height: 2,740 mm 
Turning radius: 14.5 m 
Empty weight: 4,300 kg 
Gross weight: 11,800 kg 
Cargo load: 7,500 kilograms 
Tires: 365/85 R 20
Ground clearance: 476 mm
Approach: 44 degrees
Departure: 53 degrees
Climb: Max.45 degrees
Descent: Max.45 degrees
Engine: 4.8-litre straight 4 Turbocharged 160 kW
Max.speed 80 km/h 


Thinking outside of the square, we all now know the Unimog for its agricultural and military aspect - but it has proven a gem for the tourism sector, from climbing the live volcano of Mt Etna Italy to traversing the Cape Canyons of Santa Catalina.

They are used as expedition vehicles in the Mining Industry, throughout the African Kalahari Manganese Basin to the Wilderness of the Australian Outback desert.

What an awesome toy to own, one I will surely blog about in the coming future.


IMAGES 1 + 2 Featured, The Truth about Cars [online] thetruthaboutcars.com, Available from: SOURCE [Accessed 13 August 2012]

Specifications courtesy of Wikipedia
Unimog. Wikipedia [online] Wikipedia.org, Available from: SOURCE [Accessed 13 August 2012].

Concordia to be salvaged by Dutch Co. Smit Tak

Smit Tak crew are intransit to the Concordia sinking to carry out the salvage operation.

Priority 1 is securing any oil that maybe leaking to prevent a natural disaster.

A team of professionals will then assess the cruise ship's structure.

Smit Tak has tendered to salvage the entire vessel but are still negotiating with local government.

Understanding Incoterms

Introducing Incoterms to someone new, 4 key questions, and an overview of the key differences.

What are Incoterms? Incoterms are International Commercial Terms, essentially a global set of universal trade terms developed to establish a happy medium between exporter and importer alike.

Where did they come from? Incoterms were developed by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris, France. They were first published in 1936 and the current set were published in 2000.

Why do we need them? Without Incoterms buyer and seller would would be at constant negotiation, international trade would simply not be as efficient. A generic standard set of rules are invaluable and can be thought of as a cost-saving measure. Once a trade term is agreed upon, the parties can continue without having to worry whom is responsible for freight, insurance or other related cost in the future.

How many of these things are there?? There are 13 Incoterms, yes it sounds daunting at first but if we break them down into categories it will improve your understanding. A simple breakdown and explanation of each term......

Departure Terms (here's the goods sort it out yourself!)

EXW – Ex Works The buyer takes control of the goods at the Suppliers Factory door, all the supplier has to do is make the shipment available at there set location. Any charge thereon falls completely on the buyer

Main carriage unpaid terms (hand balled to your carrier!)

FCA – Free Carrier Basically the seller will clear the shipment for export and drop it in the hands of the buyers selected carrier at there chosen location. This term can be used for all modes of transport.

FAS – Free Alongside Ship Similar to FCA, but maritime specific. The seller will clear shipment for export, and physically leave it at the chosen port, without incurring any Port service charge.

FOB – Free On Board Similar to FAS, although the seller will organize to load the shipment on board the buyer's designated ship. Port charge fees are divided between each party.

Main Carriage Paid (drop kicked to your door!)

CFR – Cost and Freight Seller will pay for carriage and all costs involved to the buyer's destination port. Insurance is buyers responsibility once goods have been loaded aboard vessel.

CIF – Cost, Insurance and Freight As above, however the seller must cover insurance cost to the destination port.

CPT – Carriage Paid To CFR, except Insurance risk commences for buyer as soon as the truck (or first carrier) delivering goods to the port is loaded.

CIP – Carriage and Insurance Paid The container freight/multimodal equivalent of CPT.

Arrival terms (confused yet!)

DAF – Delivered At Frontier is designed for Road and Rail freight. The buyer will organize customs clerance and transport to the frontier; country borderline / chosen destination. Insurance changes hands at the frontier.

DES – Delivered Ex Ship (named port) similiar to CIF/CIP the seller will cover insurance to the destination port. This term is generally used for bulk carriage e.g. minerals or agriculture, as the seller is required to make the product available onboard the vessel itself.

DEQ – Delivered Ex Quay (named port) Equivalent of DES, except insurance covers goods untill they are unloaded at destination port.

DDU – Delivered Duty Unpaid (named destination place) The buyer chooses a destination, from this point onwards the buyer is responsible for any loading charges, or insurance cover. Everything prior is the seller's responsibility. Local customs clearance entry costs or any duty tax can be negotiated in the contract.

DDP – Delivered Duty Paid (named destination place) Essentially the opposite of Ex Works, the seller will pay for all transport charges, insurance, customs clearance and duty. From origin to the buyers warehouse.

Melbourne to Sydney High Speed Train

Ever since seeing the Tyco Super Turbo Train commercial as a child, I have been dying for a High Speed Rail Network linking Australian Capital Cities.

Furthermore after admiring the speed & efficiency of the ICE train around Germany, I have become a complete advocate of the proposed Melbourne to Sydney High Speed Link.

February 2010 I attended UFC 110 at Acer Arena Sydney Olympic Park, having traveled from Geelong Victoria, The round trip involved a 3am wake up call, and arrival home just after midnight, in other words an immensely long & tiring day for a 2.5 hour event.

The reasoning behind this was the available flight times & required Check in periods prior to and fro. The Interlinking public transport from home to Airport, Airport to Venue and so on...

Initial thoughts that passengers could fork out less than $100 per ticket, travel at +350kph and arrive in less than 3 hours blows my mind!

Yes this would be one hell of a expensive logistical challenge given the recent fall in our economy, but I feel the benefits alone should be merit to push this through parliament as soon as possible, and get the construction ball rolling.

(September 12. 2006). Tyco Super Turbo Train w/ Daredevil Jump. [online]Youtube; courtesy of user: panbiscuit. Available from: SOURCE [Accessed 25 Sep 2011].

The Secret of calculating Air freight cost

If your company is airfreighting quiet often and using an air freight forwarder, you should have received a rate sheet, usually split into regions.

Generally speaking each region will have four methods of calculating the total charge, maybe a fifth or sixth for a country or airport with additional handling or customs requirements.

An airfreight charge per kilogram, war/fuel surcharge, fixed local charge per shipment and variable local charge per kilogram will typically be the basis for calculating the cost of freight. Additional factors may come into play including origin terminal handling charges or document fees.

Information the freight forwarder will require to quote the shipment composes of the outer carton CBM (Carton dimensions - L x W x H), Volumetric Weight (Outer Carton CBM x 167), Gross Weight of Carton & the number of cartons.

The greater of the Volumetric Weight and the Gross Weight will equal the chargeable weight which will then be plugged into the freight forwarders rate sheet.

For further detail, e.g. calculating the freight per unit cost if say you were shipping 100 units per carton, a units per carton column can be added into the formula.

Click to Download the excel spreadsheet I use to calculate airfreight cost on a day-to-day basis.

WFP 125 x 125 Banner

The World Food Programme, has offered great incite on logistical nightmares it has encountered through A-Grade Journalism. I have discussed and used examples in the past including Nepal Logistically Challenge and Libyas desert corridor realising logistical dream.

It is for this reason I have decided to place a 125 x 125 Banner on Logistical Challenge to help support there cause.

Once again thanks WFP, and as token of your appreciation, if you can afford it please click here and make a small donation now, If you want to add a banner to your webpage I encourage you too please follow my source below.

WFP (1 July 2011). Link to Us | WFP | United Nations World Food Programme. World Food Program[online] www.wfp.org. Available from: SOURCE [Accessed 1/7/2011 July 2009].

Keywords in a plethora of text

How often does this happen? There was a really relevant point in a body of text you read a few days earlier and after finally tracking down that webpage in Google, or finding that ebook on your PC, its time to start breezing through 500 odd pages of text to find that elusive statement.
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To save some time simply Hit CTRL & F, & an impresive "Find" Utility should appear which allows you to enter a specific keyword. After you have entered a somewhat unique word or phrase associated with your search, click "Find" and with some luck you should be teleported to the hidden line in no time.
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Im surprised how often this can be overlooked, people use find / search functions all the time to locate where they have saved files on there hardrive, but never think to use it as an indexing tool throughout large documents.

This could be handy, especially if your house bills, invoice or packing lists have been created in Excel or Word, and you need to find a certain field repeatingly, yet now efficiently.

5 reasons why your computer is crashing

Hard disk drives (Hdd).

Quiet often data becomes fragmented. Thus it can be a good idea to defragment the hard disk maybe every few weeks; or even once a month to prevent the Hdd from freezing your computer.

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Go to Start Menu, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

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Hard disks will slow down and crash if they are over burden. Get into a regular pattern of housekeeping your Hdd every few months and free some space on it.

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Tip! Open the Windows folder on the C:\ drive and find the Temporary Internet Files folder. Deleting the contents (not the folder) can free space.

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Simply empty the Recycle Bin every week to free more space.

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Your Hdd should be scanned every week for errors or bad sectors.

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Go to Start Menu, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk

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Fatal OE / VXD Exceptions.

These are often caused by graphics card problems..

These can be resolved by reducing the resolution of your video display..

Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, Display, Settings.Slide the screen area bar to the left. Glance at the color settings on the left. High color 16-bit depth is acceptable..

If your computer is freezing often it could be due to your graphics card.

Double check there are no hardware conflicts.. Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, System, Device Manager,.Select the + next to Display Adapter.

A description of your video card should appear. Highlight it and select Properties. Go to Resources and select each line in the window, looking for a message that says No Conflicts..

The way to resolve a hardware conflict is to uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and hit the Change Settings button.

Then search for a setting that will display a No Conflicts message..

Another useful way to resolve video problems is;.

Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, System, Performance, Graphics -.Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left..

By far the most common cause of graphics card problems are obselete or faulty drivers.

Look up your graphics card's manufacturer on the internet and download for the most recent driver for model..

Viruses.

If you do not have a Windows start-up Disk on hand, Get one.

Some Viruses attack the boot sector of your hard drive, making it impossible to start.

Nowdays you can use the Windows Operating system Cd that came with your system, but if your oldschool and still have a 3.5" floppy drive, you can create your own start up Disk..

Go to Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, Add / Remove, Start-up Disk, Create Disk..

Im not going to go into specifics as it's pretty obvious, but you should have some form of Virus protection installed, just be very vigilant and always update your virus signatures; they are installed in a *.DAT file. Your *.DAT files should be updated periodically from your antivirus software website..

Overheating.

Central processing units (CPUs) are equipped with electric cooling fans. If the fan stops or is starting to make a whining noise (ball bearings dying) it may start to overheat and generate a kernel error.

This is a quiet common problem in chips that have been overclocked to operate at higher speeds than they have been designed for..

One solution is to upgrade the fan / heatsink. Another is too simply vaccum / blow out with compressed air the copious amounts of dust clogging the case vents, heatsink fins & motherboard..

CPU problems can be fixed by disabling the CPU internal cache in the BIOS. This will reduce performance slightly, but increase stability..

Don't be afraid of cracking open your PC case, its not very difficult usually only 3 or 4 phillips head screws need to be undone to remove the side panel of a tower, or the top of a desktop machine..

Printers.

This ones right out of left field, so I thought Id include it, The action of sending a document to a printer generates a larger data file, often called a postscript file. Generally speaking Printers usually only have a select small amount of memory called the buffer, which can be overloaded by the post script. Printing a large document will also use a decent chunk of CPU power, slowing down overall PC performance.

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Anything unusual throughout your document e.g. new fonts, characters or intricate diagrams, may confuse the printer, causing your PC to crash. The easiest method in solving these frustrating episodes, can be to clear the buffer by simply pulling the plug on the printer for ten seconds.

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So there! 5 potential reasons why your computer is crashing, and what too look out for in the future to prevent these frustrating freezes.