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Mike, I'm interested in seeing how this whole gas/oil drilling thing shakes out. Right now, the rates are really decent for owner operators and getting enough trucks for sand and other uses (fracking) is difficult. But I've heard that some of the big guys are trying to jump in. So, like with anything else in trucking with too many trucks, the rates may hit bottom sooner than later. Has happened in every other trucking sector...
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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I have been to Ft Collins 3X lately, and 'energy' activity is really picking up. (Briggsdale / Nunn area). Most of the trucking is from OK, MT, WY companies who have a fleet of HD trucks. I was in Farmington, NM last week, and there is LOTS of trucking for energy projects. I suspect there are some decent wages, but following energy is certain to 'break-the-bank' (feast or Famine, but ALWAYS expensive). I was mussing at the well used muddy tire chains hanging from all the trucks. I'm too old for that ! (4-5x / day). There were days when I was younger and dumber, and certainly stronger. I can still do very long hours, but the physical stuff gets old REAL Fast.
Over the years, I finally recognized that music not only hath charms to soothe the savage beast, but to empower the putting down of miles. We have a visceral, emotional reaction to music which can either keep a truck driver alive and moving, or put him to sleep.
In the night time, when the miles and the day got long, old country music would carry me through the foggy-headed hours and into the sunrise. Charlie Douglas on WWL (and later, Dave Nemo), Bill Mack on WBAP and the "Truckin' Bozo" out of Cincinnatti were my companions through the long, dark hours of moon-lit miles or plowing against great blizzards of the plains and mountain west or the 'Noreaster's of New England. Mile after dreadful, hard, potentially deadly miles of high-speed getting' it, those DJ's, and the music they played, kept me alert and alive.
During the days, after an all-night session of a thousand miles, I needed rock...HARD rock to get me through to the bitter end.
One of my favorites, which I had on tape and would play over and over and over again, was Loverboy's "Working for the weekend." I can't tell you how much it helped me overcome the effects of not sleeping and enabled me to make delivery on time. It was my constant companion during the day, occasionally supplemented with "The 1812 Overture," and Glenn Miller's "American Patrol."
Favorite music to truck with? Well, back when the great trucking songs from Dave Dudley, Red Sovine and others came out, I was still crewing that Viet Nam-era fighter, the F-4 Phantom II (I'm here to tell you that Motown, the Beach Boys, Strawberry Alarm Clock and other music of that era went perfectly with, say, a postflight inspection in a Kunsan Air Base flow-thru...) I've always liked Rock; more Top 40s than the more Progressive or harder stuff. But I've really come to like AC/DC, Def Leopard and others. And, ultimately, anything except Rap. John Cougar Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses is the perfect song, I believe, to roll along on the NJ Tpk. Enya once played on my cassette player as I crossed WY on I-80 on a full moon night. And Neil Young's "Harvest" was the perfect music for a Nebraska I-80 crossing on a Summer night sunset...
Unfortunately, I never got into trucking radio when I was in our OTR fleet. I found the Truckin' Bozo once I got on this dedicated account since we're just above Cincinnati. I liked Dale Sommers a lot. And I was lucky to hear his final WLW broadcast as I delivered in Indy. He finally played Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" as he said for years that he would. And the C.B. radio was silent...
I've grown tired of Dale's son, Steve. He is not his father at ALL. But I've grown tired of the same old callers spouting the same political trash all the time. I like a few of his callers. but not many. The weekend host, Bubba Bo. is a WHOLE lot better, IMHO. More engaged with ALL his listeners. I've even sat in with Bubba twice in the WLW studios. REALLY enjoyed it!
Rock & Roll in general, doesn't matter if it's 80's or 2000's, just something loud and fast to help keep me awake on th return trip. I like Country but that starts putting me a sleep after awhile out on the road.
It never was much of problem for me because I wasn't afraid of hard work. Nearly every job I ever had in 30 years of trucking involved making multiple, tail-gate deliveries. In other words, I carted it off with a pallet jack, two-wheeler or my bare hands. I picked those jobs on purpose, just because I liked doing it. Peddle runs broke up the monotony and an added side benefit was that I got plenty of exercise. Over the years, I saw literally hundreds of new guys come to work, make one trip and quit with a comment something like this, "I'll be damned if I work this hard the rest of my life!"
Well....it didn't bother me.
Additionally, I never did much snacking on the road and pretty much avoided fast food, just as I do know. Not because I care about living "healthy" but because it's just something I didn't like doing.
But, for a lot of drivers today, I think there are a couple of chief culprits if they're out of shape:
1. The hours of service rules. The new rules force a driver to do even more sitting around than the old ones (IF you abide by the rules, which I never did). 13 hours is a long time to do nothing every day and, if a driver is like most people, he gets bored. And, what do people do when they're bored? Eat.
2. The disappearance of sit-down restaurants. The highways used to be covered up with full-service, sit down truck stop restaurants, mostly independently owned. They're about a thing of the past now as far, far too many truck stops have been bought out and rebuilt by outfits like Pilot. The first thing Pilot does when they buy a truck stop is close the restaurant and put in a Taco Bell or KFC or some other brand of fast food. It's hard to say if that's in response to customer demand, or that the customers eat that junk because they have no other choice.
Personally, I think it's the latter and it's driven by increased profitability. With the installation of a fast food franchise, the truck stop owner doesn't have to do much more than take in a percentage of the sales.
3. The rise of the big trailer load carriers. With trailer load freight, it's mostly just drop and hook and the only exercise a driver gets is dollying down. That's not enough. Worse, using their satellite nannies, they force drivers to abide strictly by the HOS and the dispatcher can do just about everything but hold the steering wheel. Drivers are not really allowed to do anything but drive and that's bad for your health. And, they almost universally have slow trucks, which are boring to drive. That often means more snacking.
4. Lack of places to exercise. Yes, some truck stops have workout rooms, but they don't get used much. And, if a driver just wants to walk it off, where can he do that? Around the truck stop parking lot and risk being backed over by a J.B. Hunt driver? At a rest area? On a side road? The biggest challenge is, of course, finding a place to park to do your exercising. I can be done, if a driver wants too badly enough, but it's not easy.
In the end, if it's a problem, it's not one which can, or should, be solved by new rules and regulations or even the carrier. It's the drivers responsibility and if he's not interested enough to do it, he shouldn't be forced to.
In the end, if it's a problem, it's not one which can, or should, be solved by new rules and regulations or even the carrier. It's the drivers responsibility and if he's not interested enough to do it, he shouldn't be forced to.
Great analysis, thanks.
It said in the article that 85% of drivers are obese, and medical insurance costs are 70% higher in trucking than in other industries. Should those who refuse to do anything about their health be allowed to continue on the insurance policy or should they get dropped or added to some sort of "high risk" pool for which they'll pay higher premiums?
Even with exercise I gained 10 pounds or so on a month-long cross-country roadtrip. A lot of your points are the reason why.
It said in the article that 85% of drivers are obese, and medical insurance costs are 70% higher in trucking than in other industries. Should those who refuse to do anything about their health be allowed to continue on the insurance policy or should they get dropped or added to some sort of "high risk" pool for which they'll pay higher premiums?
Even with exercise I gained 10 pounds or so on a month-long cross-country roadtrip. A lot of your points are the reason why.
No, I don't think our personal choices should be considered when health care comes up. The reason is that once you accept the idea that your personal choices should determine the availability of health care, pretty soon nobody will have it because we ALL engage in activities which might be harmful to our long-term health.
All that argument amounts to is giving insurance companies a legal right to collect premiums and not pay out when the time comes.
I noted in that article that some companies are crowing about how much health care money they're saving by forcing their drivers to take a DOT physical every year, instead of every two years.
Know why they're "saving" money? Because by testing drivers yearly, they find disqualifying conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease etc. early. You'd think that means they then work with the drivers to improve their health, holding down costs, but you'd be wrong. A driver who fails the DOT physical CANNOT DRIVE in interstate commerce, which means the companies can then FIRE THEM for being unqualified!
Hell...no wonder they're "saving" money.
Maybe things like that are the reason 40% of new drivers quit within the first 90 days. As I've said all along, there isn't a shortage of good drivers...there's a shortage of good jobs. They have a "driver shortage," because they're not worth a damn to work for.
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Music and truckin'
Great analysis, thanks.
