Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

I would like to pin this post on the foreheads of the wind-bags at OOIDA, the ATA, the FMCSA, CVSA and the DOT. This happened at the beginning of this week and I was going to just pass it off as another stupid incident in my life on the road, but this type of unfairness – this arrogance by both the shipper and receiver – needs to be reported by all drivers. The only way it will ever change is if we keep talking about it.

I had a 7 PM pick up appointment at a steel company in Ambridge PA. It was one of those don’t be late deals – a load of steel pipe headed to Baytown TX right off I-10. So I get there an hour ahead of time, which by the way, the shipper strongly tells a driver not to do. I have no clue why since there is plenty of truck parking outside the guard shack. I might add that this same shipper tells drivers not to “loiter” around after loading – they say to get your securement on quickly and GET OFF their property. Just how neighborly is that?  They don’t even allow you to tarp there. I’m surprised this company even allows trucks inside to load the way they treat drivers. The wacky, I mean Wackenhut security clown they’ve hired to “police” truckers demands you shown her/him a photo ID before you’re allowed into the plant. From the street to the spot where they load you is less than 100 yards. That’s 100 yards of misery for the driver. This place, for the record, used to be a large ARROW TRUCKING account. That should tell you plenty.

I park the truck and walk to check in. I guess they can’t afford a CB. Just as well, since I deplore sitting in the truck hour after hour waiting on a call on the CB. Take my cell number and call me for heavens sake. But that’s asking too much for the typical rent-a-cop and a company of this kind. Why pop for a $69 CB and a $29 antenna? I see that there are about six other trucks ahead of me – TMC, Mercer, BT – Builders Transport, etc. Well, I come to find out that this place is running five to seven hours behind. Yes, I said FIVE TO SEVEN HOURS behind. When they’re ready, someone will come and get me. Great, don’t you love when you’re in a deep sleep snuggled in the bunk nice and warm – dreaming about fishing or something – and someone bangs on the side of your truck. It’s why, when I get home, I’m nervous sleeping the first few days.

No apology or excuse was offered – it’s just said very cavalierly -  like it’s rainy now or do the dishes or honey, take out the garbage. The security guard you’re dealing with is clueless as to what is going on – couldn’t care less – and most likely will be working somewhere else next week. Now what if you went to the dentist and was told you had to wait five to seven hours to remove that painful tooth, or please take your seats ladies and gentlemen, but the movie tonight will start five to seven hours later – you’ll just have to wait. What about this – you go to start your car and a voice says “sorry, I’m you’re car and we will not be starting for five to seven hours.” Could you imagine that? So please understand readers, I was very angry, and if you drive a truck, I know you’ve been in the same situation many times before. And you blood pressure goes up and you have to decide how to kill the time. Some drivers live nearby. I live 1,128 miles from my front door – I guess I’m stuck here.

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One thing we like to do at Life On The Road is to take a close look at the “other” media that attempts to cover the trucking industry. We recently talked about Pilot Challenge Magazine. In this post we picked up the latest issue – which is hard to find – of NATSO Truckers News. NATSO stands for the National Association of Truck Stop Operators. Whoever designed the boring ATA website must have also had a hand in the Not-So, I mean NATSO, site. The “mission” of NATSO by the way is: “to advance the success of truck stop and travel plaza members. You will NEVER read in the Not-So, I mean, NATSO Truckers News anything about pot-holes, bad food, lousy service, disgusting rest rooms, long line at fuel islands or inefficient truck stop, I mean travel plaza, management. For operators of travel plazas – doesn’t Pilot just about own every truck stop now? -  T/A a few others – to publish a magazine for truckers is kind of presumptuous don’t you think?

Let’s talk about some of the “stuff” inside this latest issue. There’s lots of advertisements – good for them – bad for the reader. C.H. Robinson, in my opinion, probably the most horrible broker on the planet, has an ad that claims “valuing strong relationships and endless options.” What are they talking about? Ever have load from C.H. Robinson? The people that work there are idiots. Howe’s and Diesel Fuel advertise. I like their stuff, even at $18 a bottle. PrePass has an ad. Don’t waste your time getting PrePass – most coops have the system off until the economy improves and the morons who run weigh stations go back to sleep. Overpriced Iowa 80 advertises. I never stop there. CAT scales has a full page, but I don’t know why – every driver knows that’s the only place to weigh your rig. All in all there are 37 pages of nothing but ridiculous advertising. The carrier recruiting ads are the worse. “Don’t just drive – drive Maverick”, “The longer we’re around, the longer we’re admired” says Boyd, “When the going get tough, the tough come to Mercer.” Are these companies kidding?

Randy Grinder is the editor. He is the son of a career trucker and holds a CDL. Wow, I’m sure going to listen to what he has to say. What a resume – whew! Hey, you be the judge, read his stuff – he’s in favor of everything that drivers hate from cross-border trucking to the upcoming CSA 2010 FMCSA legislative safety fun fest. The feedback section has two letters. Yes, 2 letters – that’s it. Todd Dills tells us old news about how “we” are “waddling” out of the recession. He is one of the senior editors. So? He’s not a truck driver, so who cares? Not me. And Todd, I don’t “waddle” anywhere thank you. On page 19, you can read what the big salary safety suits at the ATA have to say. Again, I don’t care. Truckers News likes to quote a lot of “consultants”, who, again in my opinion, should have no standing whatsoever in the trucking media. There is an article about slipping and falling. Say it with me – “who cares.” In exchange for a full page ad, Boyd Bros. is mentioned in the article and photos of them training new drivers is included. I just hope Boyd is not the next Arrow.

And there is my favorite. Are we all not tired of the government and the media telling us how to eat, sleep and drive? I know I am. Well, Misty Bell, who, if you look at her photo could use a few laps around the Not So, I mean NATSO Trucking News office, has the audacity to tell “us” about the “Road to Better Health” and “You Can Do This.” Misty, by the way, also needs a makeover and her editor needs to tell her to write about something else not so annoying. Oh wait, she is the managing editor! OMG. Herein lies the rub, as Shakespeare said, Misty, you also have no standing in this industry to tell drivers ANYTHING, especially how to eat. The rest of the “magazine,” well is horrible. There is the obligatory NASCAR article and some cockamamie one page collage of nonsense by a nobody off the street who I imagine needed a job at a Not-so trucking rag. Yes, I’m being hard, but it’s my time their wasting by presenting this dreck when I walk inside a truck stop, I mean travel center.

Bottom line, I need the “established” trucking media to stop playing around. Get real drivers to write about relevant issues – no more slip and fall fillers. The editors – Foggy, I mean Misty as well -  need to start covering the real problems at truck stops and travel plazas. We’d all like to have 37 pages of advertising, but could you people at least match it with 37 pages of  non-fluff content? And please, stop insulting the few readers you have with this diet and lifestyle crap. You people have no idea what it is to be OTR truck drivers. Stop writing like you do.

It is important that we realize what exactly the government will be measuring with the CSA2010. The seven BASIC or Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories are unsafe driving, fatigued driving, driver fitness, controlled substances/alcohol, vehicle maintenance, cargo, and accidents. Data from these seven areas will be collected on each company and driver and entered into the database. Carriers will receive a rating in each area from the government. Drivers will also receive a score, but will not be rated by the government.

1. Unsafe Driving – Operation of commercial vehicle in a dangerous or careless manner. Examples: speeding, reckless driving, unauthorized passenger, failure to obey a traffic control device, improper lane change and inattention.
2. Fatigued Driving – Operation of a commercial vehicle by drivers who are ill, fatigued, or in non-compliance with the hours of service regulations. This includes violations of regulations surrounding the complete and accurate recording of log books as they relate to hours of service requirements. Examples: Hours of service, logbook, and operating while ill or fatigued.
3. Driver Fitness – Operation of a commercial vehicle by drivers who are unfit to operate the vehicle due to lack of training, experience, or medical qualifications. Examples: invalid commercial driver’s license and being medically unqualified to drive, non-English speaking driver, no medical certificate.
4. Controlled Substances/Alcohol – Operation of a commercial vehicle by drivers who are impaired do to alcohol, illegal drugs, and misuse of prescription or over-the-counter medications. Examples: use or possession of controlled substances or alcohol.
5. Vehicle Maintenance – Commercial vehicle violations due to improper or inadequate maintenance. Examples: brakes, lights, and other mechanical defects, and failure to make required repairs.
6. Cargo – Commercial vehicle violations resulting from shifting loads, spilled or dropped cargo, and unsafe handling of hazardous materials. Examples: improper load securement, cargo retention, and hazardous materials handling.
7. Accidents – Histories or patterns of high crash involvement, including frequency and severity. It is based on information from state-reported crash reports.

Above data taken from: Safety Measurement Systems (SMS) Methodology
Version 1.2, April 2009
John A. Volpe National Transportation
Cambridge, MA 02142

It is very possible and probable that you may be good in some areas and bad in others. By breaking the violations down into individual areas, it will help carriers and drivers determine what areas they need to focus on. Because the new system uses all write ups at roadsides, do not be surprised if you thought you were fine because you have not had many out of services to find out that under the CSA2010 you have deficiencies.

James Dawson
Vice President
The Mason & Dixon Lines
www.madl.com

I’m here at a T/A I’ve never been to before. Jessup, Maryland off of I-95 right between DC and Baltimore. It’s not listed in the 2009 Exit Guide. It’s dark and the temperature has risen during the day to about 55 degrees and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish it were cooler. This truck stop is hard to get into, hard to get out of and demands that you pay for the privilege of spending the night. Although in Jessup it is considered Baltimore South. There is another T/A on the other side of the Harbor Tunnel called Baltimore North. They also charge about $12.50 a night for parking. I would have gone there but the tunnel was “temporarily” closed at the height of the rush hour due to an accident.

Here at Baltimore North the place is 1/2 full and 98% of the rigs pulled into those “precious” IdleAire slots are NOT connected. There’s nobody in the IdleAire shack either – if you want service, you have to pick up the phone. I’d like to see all that IdleAire steel be taken down, put on a ship and sent to Haiti to help the reconstruction efforts there. By the way, speaking of Haiti. I hope you don’t mind me digressing a sec – I’ll get back to my transsexual waitress in a second – this was in The New York Times and was being discussed at the counter here at the T/A: “The Obama administration extended a special immigration status on Friday to Haitians living illegally in the United States that protects them from deportation for 18 months and allows them to work here. Administration officials said the special status would cover at least 100,000 Haitians believed to be living in the United States illegally, as well as about 30,000 Haitians who had been ordered deported. Haitians who receive the temporary status will be able to obtain documents allowing them to live here and work legally.” Drivers were asking just how in the heck did the 100,000 get into our country in the first place? And it takes over 90 minutes for me to get back into my own country at the Canadian border. Wow.

So I walk past three security guards inside the T/A into the restaurant and grab a small table. Remember this is Baltimore and there is apparently a lot of unsavory characters that like to shoplift and/or eat and then leave without paying. Anyway, I’m looking at my Blackberry when a high husky voice says: “hey sweetie, what’ll u have to drink?” I look up and I swear to you my waitress looked just like the photograph I posted except the hair was much more curly – and brown. I don’t know if it was a wig. “Her” shoulders were wide as a lumberjack and “she” had no hips whatsoever. Yup, she was all man, dressed as all woman. She swaggered not like a girl, but like the Duke – John Wayne. When she brought food out from the kitchen on a tray, she kind of drifted sideways to the table, like she was a pirate ship tacking in the wind getting ready to fire her “cannons” at another vessel. I’d say she was 6′ 2″ or so and clearly must have been a trucker or longshoreman when “she” was younger. Most of the other drivers she waited on seemed to not want to say anything to her for fear that “she” would simply hurt them. The other 3 waitresses were all about 5 feet tall and weighed maybe 135 to her 300+ well packed pounds. She had the shape of a granite gravestone. Picture Jesse Ventura in a dress.

So you get the idea. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole place was weird. Do you recall the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie? That’s just want this T/A buffet restaurant reminded me of. Everybody was from someplace different – dressed differently and spoke their own unique language. There were Mexicans, Indians (from India), Asians, Pakistani’s, Arabs, Poles, Russians and others I could not identify – the entire United Nations was eating here, many of them, including me, being served by whatever his/her name was. Do I care that she was – is – was once – a man? Absolutely not. She was better than most of the “real” women waitresses that T/A has around the country. And after all, it’s a free country right? We are all LIBERAL free-thinkers, right?  If our government can wave a magic wand and make 100,000 illegal Haitians instantly ok to be here and work, oh let’s see now, hum, as truck drivers, well, then I’m certainly not going to say a darn thing about my waitress that is a guy! Peace and love – peace and love, brothers and sisters.

Let’s move away from talking about the ATA – aka the SS Fat Guy – see photo. Hey, if you have problems sleeping, just play the vid of their membership chairman on their terrible website. You’ll be snoring away in no time. The ATA needs to hire a media consultant. There is still no word from the ATA about the Arrow mess or the problem of senior management/CEO professionalism and ethics in trucking. It doesn’t surprise me. New year, new decade, same ‘ole ATA. That comes from being fat, dumb and rich. But I want to shift your attention over to the ATA’s pen pal – OOIDA – the owner-operator independent drivers association, the NAACP of trucking. Why do I say that? Because by name, the NAACP  is 40 years behind the times, just as, by name, OOIDA is far behind the times.

It’s alright that OOIDA is doing a few little human interest stories about former Arrow drivers. I’m sure next will be tales of Haitian owner-operators. On the OOIDA website, which despite constant redesign, is interesting as drying paint and their blog, which desperately needs the Weisser touch, is transparent to, well, everyone. There is the story of the “jilted Arrow driver (who) may be forced to pay child support twice.” OK. But where was OOIDA six months before Arrow went under? Didn’t they, with all their “connections”, might have uncovered that something was afoul in Tulsa? There is no mention if the driver profiled, a Travis Chamberland, was an OOIDA member. Do you think that OOIDA might have “suggested” to Chamberland that they’ll profile his troubles if he pays $45 for a year’s membership (now on sale for $25) in the “association?”  I hate to assume anything, but wasn’t Chamberland an Arrow “company” driver. Did the former Arrow driver need to get the Oklahoma Child Support Services toll-free number from OOIDA as opposed to the web or the plain ‘ole yellow pages? I think not.

Because truck drivers, most of whom NOT OOIDA members, know that there are thousands of other Chamberlands that are being screwed by trucking companies and brokers every day that OOIDA is NOT reporting on.  Not members because they cannot afford the OOIDA membership and certainly don’t see any value in it. Many I know have never even heard of OOIDA. I take you back to Wayne’s posting on Dan Rather’s report on the Detroit trucking school. There is a “polished”  young man that Rather interviews who claims to make a lot of money selling trucking school to new (desperate) students. This guy needs to work for OOIDA. After he changes the name to include ALL  drivers, and gets rid of the stupid tractor trailer that sits in truck stops that doesn’t sell memberships, he would then shift the focus to the folks that need representation – namely all the other thousands of drivers who are the victims of unethical managers and CEO’s of small, medium and large sized trucking companies and brokers. Yes, that’s a mouthful. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you believe this? I had my truck in for service and someone stole my brand new GPS. The Mrs. gave it to me for Christmas and I had just used it in Canada. It was a beautiful thing – state of the art technology – a Garmin Nuvi 1350. So the service tech pulls my truck out of the bay and parks it with the door unlocked and the key in the ignition. I’m surprised the thief  just didn’t take the whole truck. Nothing else was touched – not my pile of Canadian change, not my Pentax – which was hidden – or my Dell laptop which was also hidden. It just didn’t occur to me to take the thing off the windshield mount and tuck it away somewhere. Why? Well, let’s go back to the beginning of this truckers week.

Monday morning – delivered wood in Mississauga. That’s Ontario. Get dispatched to pick up a load of pipe in Harrow. “You must be there by 5 PM to load.” Right. Get there in a snow  storm at 4:45 PM. I finish loading at 11 PM!  The paperwork was not ready until 8 AM – that’s the next morning. Tuesday – got everything ready for customs but the shippers fax machine is broken. What else is new? Broken fax machines are becoming more the rule than the exception at most of the places I service. So I drive off to the Husky in Windsor – that’s a truck stop – to use their fax machine. We’re good to go – cleared through customs. Right.  Holy, we’re NOT cleared Batman.” “You need to park and see your broker” says the Border Patrol/Customs officer. Seems there is a discrepancy with the truck license number in the “system.” OMG. About 90 minutes later everything clears and I’m on my way (again) to Baltimore. Just one small little thing – my wiper washers don’t work plus I have lost a left hand spot mirror, the right one is badly cracked and my APU heater is leaking toxic fumes into the bunk. But onward I go. Yes, I have reported the problem to the shop/road repair for two weeks, but the freight is the priority. I’m losing sleep worrying about the fumes creeping into the cab and my possible death, but the freight, not the driver, as I said, is the priority.

You know what its like to drive in the winter with no way to clean your windshield other than to stop every fifteen minutes and break out your can of ammonia Clindo? Well that’s pretty much what I had to do. With that and the remnants of toxic APU gas still making its way up my nose and worrying about the DOT writing me up for the missing and damaged mirrors, well, I was kinda stressed after about 275 miles driving. Its roughly 550 miles from Windsor to Baltimore. Beep. That’s the QUALCOMM. “Are you rolling to the final?” Stupid question. “Yes”, replied I. Beep. What’s your ETA? I picked a time out of the air – “0730.” 10-4 THX was the response. Window clear again, off we go. Then about hour later.  Beep. “This must deliver tonight at 2100!”. I believe it was 4:30 PM or 1630 when I got the message. I wanted to rip out the QUALCOMM and throw it off to the side of I-80 and get that application into that juice tanker carrier down in the Sunshine state.

I arrived in Baltimore at the consignee at 8:30 AM. I get no messages from my company, who seems to have lost interest in me and the load. I was told by the consignee at 9 AM that the crane is broken and they don’t have the personnel to unload me until 9 PM that night. Bastards. If you wanted this stuff so badly then get it off my truck so I can go get my wipers, mirrors and APU repaired. 11 PM that night, I get unloaded. Because I was late, there is no detention, waiting time or layover. I go the 7-11 down the street and buy $30 worth of junk food. I fall asleep after three large chocolate cream filled donuts and a jug of low fat milk.

7:30 AM Thursday. Beep. I get a pre-plan going 350 miles from the Port of Baltimore to somewhere in Ohio. It’s called “short-haul” Thursday to “position” you for a long weekend trip. Right. I refuse the trip saying I MUST get this work done. Beep. “Why are you telling us about these problems now? You’ve been on the board since midnight! The CSR – customer service representative – says he needs this picked up NOW.” I look at the Qualcomm. I wonder if my steer tires could crush the thing? Five minutes later. Beep. “You’re off the board.” Beep. “Proceed to the dealer.” And now my friends, the fun begins.

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I’m sorry, but I just can’t Detroit off my mind. Having just drove through there, I’m really upset at the destruction, poverty and hopelessness. You can see it big time in the faces of the people in Wayne’s posting on trucking schools in Detroit. The US and Canadian truckers over at the Fifth Wheel truck stop in Milton Ontario are also sad about Detroit. We talked about a bunch of stuff about Detroit and the state of trucking in general – the other night over a Sunday dinner of roast beef, pork, ham and mashed potatoes.

For us, going into Canada to deliver and pick up at their steel mills, factories and warehouses reminds us of the way Detroit used to be twenty years ago. The Province of Ontario is thriving and Detroit and many other cities in the US are dying. Actually, Detroit is most likely dead, but I prefer to think of it as frozen – like Ted Williams head sitting atop a tuna can – so as to possibly be brought back to life should something exciting happen economically. The auto industry, which we all know isn’t what it used to be, had been keeping Detroit alive, but we know what happened to Ford, GM and Chrysler and poor Detroit went right down the drain and there’s not a whole lot left.

I’m just an old fart, but I remember going on business trips for my dad. This was before FEDEX and UPS. Yes, Wilbur and Orville had flown already. Smartass. Anyway, I would carry important papers for rich NYC business people to Dallas, Houston, Toronto, LA and Detroit. Everything in these cities “back then” was big and thriving. Men were men and women were women. I don’t know what that means really but it was true back then. This was America at its best. We had manufacturing. The airlines, telecommunications and trucking industries were all regulated by the government. It was actually fun to fly and there was no argument about who ruled late night television. China was a Communist country with no interest in Coke, Nike or Apple and most of its billion people worked on farms.

But then here we are – 2010. The airlines, telecommunications and trucking industry – all deregulated – are under so much intense government scrutiny, they might as well still be considered regulated. Dallas, Houston, LA and certainly Detroit are filled with crime, drugs, gangs and preposterous traffic. Union construction jobs are now all but gone and the work is done by illegal immigrants making minimum wage with no benefits. Unemployment is high and the infrastructure is falling apart. Manufacturing has all but shifted to the Pacific Rim and Mexico. Just like the auto industry sucked the life out of Detroit, our government, by over-regulating every aspect of capitalism, has sucked the spirit out of our country and bled it dry. We are a nation of sheep flipping burgers, pulling 80 hour weeks driving trucks and working at Wal-Mart. We go home to listen to millionaires like Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly sell books, seminars and shirts while blaming liberal Democrats for every problem. But I have one solution.

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Big trucks. Bigger trucks. Huge trucks. Heavier trucks. Really big long huge heavier trucks are what the ATA wants. That’s because the longer and heavier the trucks are – the fewer drivers you need to hire. That’s the secret agenda of the ATA – fewer drivers, less pay – more money in the pocket of the ATA. Hey that rhymes! The ATA consists, by the way, of mostly small to medium sized trucking companies who join to take advantage of the perceived “pull” of the ATA in Washington. Companies like Hahn Transportation, Bulldog HiWay Express, Titan Transfer as well as biggies like CRST, US Xpress and CR England. Truth be told, most legislatures don’t know the American Trucking Association (ATA) from the Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA) or the Air Transport Association (ATA).

Let’s hear what the ATA has to say about trucks on steroids: “Current law bans trucks with a gross weight exceeding 80,000 pounds from federal interstate highways. Increasing allowable truck size and weight limits on our interstate highways will benefit our nation’s economic productivity, reduce emissions, and improve safety. The ATA supports allowing more productive vehicles to operate on the interstate highway system, consistent with sound engineering standards and safety. At present, 6-axle trucks weighing 97,000 pounds are used extensively throughout the industrialized world.

“Bringing our federal regulations more in-line with international competitors will reduce logistics costs for businesses and consumers, allowing them to better compete in the global economy. Using more productive trucks also decreases the number of trucks needed to haul the same amount of freight, reducing accident exposure, lowering pavement maintenance costs and mitigating traffic congestion along critical freight corridors. Truck size and weight reform will increase fuel efficiency because fewer trips are needed to deliver the same amount of freight.”

What a bunch of corporate gobble-de-gook double speak nonsense. It boils down to one thing and one thing only. As I said, heavy and longer trucks – fewer drivers. I wouldn’t put it past the ATA behind closed doors to want to eliminate 1/3 of all the trucking jobs by using longer, heavier trucks driven by alien workers who can’t speak English trained under some Federal grant using our tax dollars. The ATA will advocate anything and everything that chips away at the little bit that the average driver has earned. That’s why the American trucker earns LESS now than he did 10 years ago.

The infrastructure of this country has been falling apart for decades. We spend more time and money and employ more resources rebuilding other parts of the world than we do our own country. Look at our large cities and the roads and bridges going to, through and around them – crumbling. Just when a new road is completed, it is already out of date. The ATA thinks new roads and more funding will support their big truck fantasies. Supersizing vehicles is just a bad idea – there is no valid justification at this time for it. If the ATA had their way, we would have giant “more productive” limos, buses, SUV’s and motorcycles. Let’s ride the ATA way! Why should a motorcycle carry just one person when it can carry ten? How about a bus with 300 passenger riding alongside a truck that has 10 axles and weighs 150,000 lbs. Because the ATA “secret” membership wants to supersize their homes, motor boats and wallets. Remember -  “fewer drivers, less pay – more money in the pocket of the ATA!”

we are long past the point where our governments are out of control. We are over-policed, over-taxed, overly monitored and have little or no voice and power to do anything about it. If Canadians, Americans and certainly truck drivers on both sides of the border weren’t such sheep, the time would be ripe for a revolution, and one far beyond “tea-parties.”

I have just spend the last week in Canada. Yesterday, before crossing at Windsor into the American disgrace known as Detroit, I was parked for lunch at a T/A off the 401. I looked out from the bunk to see a uniformed Ministry of Taxation “officer” hovering around my truck like some dirty lot lizard. He had a clipboard. He was doing a lot of writing. He looked at his watch. He looked at my APU. It was about 15 degrees and running. I honestly wanted to get out of the truck and kick his butt. But that would have accomplished nothing other than get me a few nights in a OP jail cell and a lot of satisfaction.

In Canada, the government demands truckers have speed limiters. You can’t use your cell phone or your CB. That’s right – no using the CB while driving. If you take a road test using an automatic transmission your CDL is restricted. When a weigh station is open there is no PrePass- you must enter. And you have all kinds of commercial vehicle inspectors and tax “spies” creeping around every rest area and truck stop trying to find more creepy ways to make the Government more money. And if all that’s not enough, the Office des transports du Canada – the Canadian Transportation Agency – wants mandatory EOBR usage and watches VERY closely what’s going on here in the States for more despicable ways to squeeze additional revenue out of  truckers.

The FMCSA now tells us that “it” would be reviewing, revising and rewriting the HOS – hours of service – rules this year. There is the whole BMI, fatigue management – sleep apnea exams, restrictions and regulations by the DOT. And the CSA 2010 – that will not only affect drivers but CARRIERS as well. As reported in Truck News – “in the lead-up to CSA 2010, the FMCSA has ’severity-rated” 3,589 different trucking violations which will determine driver and CARRIER safety ratings. For instance, falsifying log books is worth seven points, having insufficient brake linings nets four, etc., with all points scored against both the driver and the CARRIER.” And let’s not forget NAFTA – the go no-go cross-border trucking issue and the ATA wanting longer and heavier trucks on our crumbling interstates.

Like dogs, both the CTA up in Canada and the DOT/FMCSA like to sniff each other’s rear ends in the name of fines – I mean safety. It’s enough to make you barf. For a little flavor, add in the Internal Revenue Service, the FCC to control what you can and cannot listen to, the EPA, the destruction of our health care system by a aged prejudiced Senator from Nevada and scores of local and state governments with “their” hands in your pocket. You can’t even park your truck on your own property anymore for fear of violating some local code and getting fined. I once got fined for having to many leaves in my pool!

Go to usa.gov and you’ll be shocked at how many government agencies there are to tell you how to live, breathe, walk, talk and work. It’s 1776 all over again, but this time it’s not the British, it’s our own government. For truckers it’s the ATA, DOT, FMCSA, CTA and goodness knows who else. Drivers, it’s only going to get worse, and remember there is never ANY discussion about the “pittance” they pay you. Did you see that house the CEO of Arrow lived in? There’s lots of money in trucking even with all the current and NEW upcoming regulations, but the drivers, well, you’re never going to see any of it. Can you say – baaa, oops, sorry, I mean  baaa Comrade!

Dan Rather on HDNet has done a few reports on trucking. Mostly about training, trainees and company training programs. This episode, Dan goes straight to a trucking school in Detroit, MI. A place where the economy has hit the hardest and people are desperate for work, any kind of work. This is about a private trucking school that promised students jobs and promised they would be making a lot of money in a recession proof industry.

For most of us, this is nothing new and we’ve heard the horror stories of trucking schools and a rookie’s first year of trucking. This puts it out there for the rest of the public.

More crooks in the trucking industry stealing money from people that just want to work.

THIS IS REQUIRED VIEWING FOR ANYONE THINKING OF GOING TO TRUCKING SCHOOL. For the rest of us it sounds all too familiar and will make most of us sick, again.