Comments on: Don’t have one?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:04:58 +0000

After 31 years I still find it hard to believe that so many drivers have the answer for all of this wait time, bad laws or bad companies by blaming everybody else but the drivers. Let me tell you, the driver, how to fix the problems. 1. Get to know your local politicians and vote, write letters on your down time instead of blaming someone else, if you don’t vote then shut up about the laws and politics. 2. Inform your company that you will not sit for more then one hour with out being paid, sit a reasonable amount don’t overprice yourself. You are the one sitting in your truck with your mouth shut and saying nothing, grow a pair if you know what I mean. The company uses you because you let them. 3. If you can not make a living running legal then find a company where you can. By sitting there on your butt and saying nothing is making the company more money, more then likely they are getting paid for their equipment sitting and not telling you. 4. If you run illegal and get tickets for log books and speeding please don’t whine to me because you are the one driving the truck not the company. Learn to tell the company when to make an appointment instead of just saying “yes boss”. 5. And please O/O please don’t cry to me about cheap freight when “you” drove “your” truck to pick up this cheap load. Grow a pair and say no to cheap freight.
The bottom line is if you the driver will not stand up for yourself then how in the he** can you expect someone else to do it for you. Grow a pair if you know what I mean or shut up. You might be surprised by how much more respect you get from your company when you grow a pair.

By: Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Linda Sunkle-Pierucki — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:04:51 +0000

Until there is some kind of regulation that says you have to be paid a reasonable amount for detention pay, nothing will ever happen. When freight is good, they move faster – or the carrier charges them. When freight is bad, the carriers slack off on detention charges and you sit for free. The carrier doesnt need the truck freed up for more freight, so it really doesnt cost them anything to leave you sit – shippers know this. But dont ask that they reclassify truck drivers as skilled labor without some real teeth in driver training/qualifications; otherwise, you’re just replaced with a visa import who’ll work cheaper. Visa workers cant be imported to do unskilled, ‘entry-level’ jobs and that’s all that has prevented a thundering herd of them being shipped in to take our jobs due to the ‘driver shortage’. This is the real reason they squeal about a driver shortage – they want the laws changed on visa workers. The big carriers have been trying to finagle a change in the law to do this for years . . the unskilled labor classification is all that has stopped them so far. As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for . . you might get it!”

By: Ronald Putnam

Ronald Putnam — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:16:04 +0000

Welcome back to the 1950’s and 60’s.Remember the Steel Haulers Strikes?This is nothing new!

By: Brett Aquila

Brett Aquila — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:26:01 +0000

You’ve hit on the main reasons why I’ve gotten out of trucking after 15 years – detention at customers and ever-increasing scrutiny and enforcement by both the trucking companies and the law-enforcement agencies.

The detention time at customers had gotten completely out of hand many years ago and simply continues to get worse. Unfortunately, because of the hyper-competitive nature of the industry there is nothing that trucking companies can realistically do about it. If they begin pressuring their customers, the customers will simply switch trucking companies and go with someone that will tolerate the waiting times – simple as that.

Government is always trying to find a system that will allow our freight to move efficiently and safely, but unfortunately they only seem to focus on the logbook. The 14 hour rule has made a mess of things because of the detention time at customers. You get 14 hours in your workday, but often times anywhere from 3-10 hours per day can be spent at customers waiting in your sleeper to load and unload – and splitting sleeper berth time is much more difficult than under the old rules.

If government wants safety and efficiency, limiting the detention times at customers would be a huge benefit to the entire economy. It’s very tough trying to enforce hourly work limits on drivers that are spending a huge number of hours sitting and doing nothing while not getting paid for it, and then getting paid by the mile, not the hour.

Realistically, the only way to solve the detention time problem is through government intervention. Trucking companies competing fiercely from coast to coast can not “band together” to fight this – it will never happen. Somebody is always willing to let their drivers sit for free, hours on end, to get more freight.

With modern technologies like electronic logbooks and GPS, maybe the government will someday come up with a better system of keeping drivers from working dangerous hours than trying to limit the number of hours a driver can work in a day – that just isn’t working well for anybody. And they definitely need to find a solution to the detention problem at customers – that is killing the efficiency of the economy and throwing a wrench into everybody’s plans. The money that it’s costing drivers, trucking companies, and customers in the form of higher prices for goods must be staggering.