https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEGN5mbE-3U
FK – I was eating breakfast in an IHOP in Nogales, AZ a few years back and another trucker with very red eyes tells me that two days before he was in North Carolina or thereabouts. I didn’t get the idea he was driving team.
That’s a 3-4 day trip if driven sanely or ‘legally.’
I have no problem with basic regs to protect employees from employers who will treat them as truck parts, to be used up and discarded. The old style of trucking is fine for that tiny percentage of the pop. that truly doesn’t need to sleep much. Most of us are not like that which means most truckers aren’t either. The smart ones know that ‘lifestyle’ isn’t good for anyone.
This plus the fact that most blue-collar workers, especially nowadays, are left with little personal time anyway, for proper rest, proper diet and proper exercise, family, hobbies, furthering their political education so they can understand and give a damn about the latest ‘protest’ one way or another, etc. Yeah a lot wouldn’t bother anyway but that doesn’t mean those of us who know better should be treated like jackasses just because most are willing or stupid enough to put up with it.
Go to a truck stop and pick up those little mags that advertise for trucking jobs in an industry that has for decades complained about ‘lack of drivers’ with a really high turnover and see the ads showing guys fishing or hunting with their kids. A day and a half off a week allows time for all that huh?
I was sent on a run or two that shouldn’t have been. I was given 10 hours to do a 10 hour drive for a Fed Ex run after already having delivered a load that day. That company is insane. It’s local van drivers here in Kentucky do 12 hour days 5 days a week. That equals no life and what amounts to slow suicide.
When I order something I have absolutely no right to require anyone in the process of getting that item to me to commit fast or slow suicide or damage their health mental or physical.
Then I remember the driver who was weaving his 53′ trailer all over the road like a drunk. When I finally got up the nerve to pass him he was clearly driving while asleep.
I blame the companies whose crap we deliver. Make them financially responsible for all accidents so they get sued and not the driver who’s just trying to exist. That’s what trucking is, an existence.
The ‘just in time’ delivery system is part of this problem as well.
Pay truckers by the hour as some say is coming anyway and allow time for being a healthy, safe, intelligent human being and tell the corporations to build warehouses again so their crap gets to them in plenty of time to keep their assembly lines from shutting down. Or force all shippers/receivers to pay a standard rate for freight to all truckers big and small so they don’t feel the need to commit long term slow suicide or endanger themselves and others on a daily basis.
I haven’t driven with the e-logs but I’m told you’re not allowed to move the truck at all on the 2 day break which is absurd. Hundreds of miles from home and the truck is the only way to shop, seek recreation, proper exercise whatever. Another example of over-writing regs. Oh, I’m told in some trucks it’s possible to simply unplug the computer and drive anyway.
“The love of money is the root of all evil” as someone once wrote and it’s the reason our interstates and two-lanes aren’t as safe as they should be and those shysters have those billboards advertising ‘legal help’ for big truck crashes.