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BS. The alternative is drivers heading down the road at 80 MPH on no sleep and popping pills to stay awake. Now if they want to kill themselves, that's their right. But they don't have the right to take out that innocent family who just happens to be in the way when they fall asleep.
That is correct.
We need the government in some areas..... and this is one of them.
Same with airline pilots----and I think we all want it that way. Including mandatory retirement....
Well, that would probably be bad for those who got their careers started a little, too late in life. Unless some sort of pension comes with that mandatory retirement, it might as well just be called an age-related lay-off.
Any driver who complains in this manner ought to take a closer look at how things were in the pre-deregulation days -- roughly, before 1980. I worked for a couple of general-commodity, (terminal-to-terminal) carriers back in the Seventies, and can attest that the poorer food, reliance on cheap motels rather than sleeper-cabs, and inconsistent logging practices all took their toll; one summer, I lost five drivers to heart attacks (three of them fatal) while on duty.
We still have a long way to go, but drivers today have more options for both a healthier lifestyle and a saner personal life; and there seme to be a few more among them using audio-books and the like to develop an intellect and a deeper understanding of how that charming thing called "the system" works. Unfortunately, there is still a plentiful supply of "raw material" with a lot of rough edges to be knocked off and smoothed over.
Truck drivers don't like the mandatory electronic logs that can't be fudged like the old paper logbooks were. Even newer Federal laws also dictate the length and timing of rest breaks. Combine that with the electronic logs and you've got a recipe for resentment among the old-timers who liked things just fine the way they were before.
Last edited by Bo; 09-26-2017 at 06:45 PM..
Reason: grammar
Truck drivers don't like the mandatory electronic logs that can't be fudged like the old paper logbooks were. Even newer Federal laws also dictate the length and timing of rest breaks. Combine that with the electronic logs and you've got a recipe for resentment among the old-timers who liked things just fine the way they were before.
Exactly. They now actually have to follow the laws.
The laws don't tell them when to eat, just regulates how long they can drive in a row and how much off time they have to take before they can drive again. Making it all digital may seem big brother like, but its automated, efficient and can't be fudged.
Exactly. They now actually have to follow the laws.
The laws don't tell them when to eat, just regulates how long they can drive in a row and how much off time they have to take before they can drive again. Making it all digital may seem big brother like, but its automated, efficient and can't be fudged.
Which, in the real world of line-haul operations in any mode of transport, isn't always as simple as those in the ivory tower within the Beltway would lead us to believe. I'm going to cite one example I recall from my dispatching days:
The nature of the American economy is such that the Eastern Coastal cities always import and consume more goods than they produce; what's more, the outbound freight, if there is any, tends to take up less space. So moving empty trailers westbound from Eastern termini, especially at the beginning of the week, is a common phenomenon.
So on Sunday evenings at a couple of companies where I got to see things from the inside, drivers would take a load into the eastern cities, but have little or nothing to bring back. If an empty trailer was readily available -- no problem.
But occasionally, the shipper or terminal might have only a half-full load when the driver returned from his mandatory rest in mid afternoon. And if that load was expected to "fill out" -- but not until well into the evening, the driver had a problem; he could not "force himself to sleep', but if the loading took another six hours to "fill out", the driver might then face another ten hours (and in sleep-inducing darkness) to complete his trip back into the interior.
The situation I described above was, admittedly, not an everyday occurrence. And I also have first-hand knowledge of incidents where the scenario worked in reverse (upon completing an urban delivery and "out of hours", drivers would head inland hoping to drive until nightfall, but cause a serious accident due to diminished attention),
There is no easy answer here. And from what I've of the increasing use of recent immigrants with limited command of English by some firms during a brief attempt at returning to the industry a few years ago, the conditions "around he edges" won't be getting much better any time soon.
What a whiner, I am glad that truck driving is a heavily regulated industry. Only a few decades ago, you had drivers out on the road faking log books and popping pills they bought at the truck stop to stay awake.
An Indiana truck driver called out the Big Brother-esque over-regulation that he experiences in his occupation.
Writing in The Federalist, Matthew Garnett said that for truck drivers, the federal government "literally decides when [they] work, eat and sleep."
"I never thought I'd come to a time in my life when "Big Brother" would be watching me 24/7. But then I became a truck driver. Every minute of every day is monitored by Uncle Sam, who takes care that I can never make a decision for myself based on my circumstances," he wrote.
The government only decides that if the driver(s) let them. Everybody is being monitored 24/7. OTR trucking is downright crappy work. The better end of trucking is in the regular route, more than decent hourly pay type of gigs. They're out there. A person just needs to have a clean MVR, the skills to pay the bills, a solid work history, and have a reputation for being a reliable person.
What a whiner, I am glad that truck driving is a heavily regulated industry. Only a few decades ago, you had drivers out on the road faking log books and popping pills they bought at the truck stop to stay awake.
Oh, it still goes on. Even e-logs can be manipulated. Funny thing is all of these regulations came down as a result of those old skoolers who can't stay away from the high speed chicken feed and/or glass pipe, and they sure do love blaming the downfalls of the industry on the newer, younger drivers. Stupid asses did it to themselves.
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