Things as I see them

If the trucking companies had their way, they would be using immigrants with H-2b Visas to drive their trucks, meaning that American truck drivers would no longer be truck drivers.

 

That's Truth.

 

Op I think you should go get your own authority ... The grass is greener on this side ...

 

Seems to me that driver pay should be hourly since drivers and carriers are regulated by hours not miles,,

 

I agree, always have.

I've said this before many times over the years, but I'll once again repeat it.

Pay drivers hourly, make their logbook their time card.

All hours logged on lines 3 and 4 to be paid at an houly rate.

This would solve a couple of problems;

1) Drivers would log things legally, there is not a driver out there that would screw themselves on their own pay.

2) This would make the MADD, PATT, the feds, and any other group happy as log violations pertaining to hours would basically cease.

3) This also has the probability of saving millions of dollars in that e-logs (as in the type that have to hooked up to truck, (EOBR, ELD) would not be necessary. See reason 1.

Any body that says that you have to have mileage or percentage pay because of productivity needs to look at all the jobs in the world. If a employee does't produce a reasonable amount they are fired.

What about lease operators you say? The trucks could be leased to the carrier, then the driver would be a employee and paid hourly.

This would start to solve the lease/fleece problems as the carriers would have to pay for the leased vehicle no matter what.

What about owner operators , you say? They get their own authority and become true owner operators.

People this is not rocket science, this is trucking. Transportation does not equate to building a space shuttle.

Does this solve everything, no. However it solves a lot of things and is very simple to do,

with little tweaking from people a lot smarter than me it could a workable solution to several problems.

 

I agree with you but it's always gonna be the same because truck drivers are hungry they will accept almost any offer because they are desperate nd i was laughing when i saw a werner driver sitting at a home depot for 8 hours waiting to get live unloaded nd no detention time no nothing for sitting there im like really nd i have seen driver agree to move to move out of state for 5000$ relocation bonus nd after that they get 0.30 cpm at the job like really.

 

I think this is the problem, when you use the term piece-work, it doesn't mean that the driver shouldn't be paid for the work they are when driving for rate per mile revenue in order to complete their task.

What I mean is in order for that driver to take that load from point a to point b, there are steps (legally and common sense) that have to be followed. Pre-trips, paper work, waiting to be loaded/unloaded that are all inclusive to that load when piece-work term is used. However when the driver is unloading or loading trailer in the terminal, taking care of cleaning the bathrooms at the terminal or anything else that is not directly related to servicing the customer, then they are entitled to compensation.

By the way, this was 'discussed' in another thread. There was a court case brought up about my point doing with mechanics and piece-work - Gondolas v. Downtown LA Motors. In that case the mechanics when not working on cars (which included preping the area, the car, doing paper work and regulatory work - this is California), they were cleaning, pushing brooms and so on. That's not the problem, but the problem was that they were being paid an hourly wage to do that work while on "commission" for the car work and the company put the money in the back end of the payroll period by adding up their hours they did not working on cars and "adjusting" their pay for the week so all of that time was above minimal wage.

 

You want to see what you buy at the store go thru the roof, then yeah, let's have hourly pay only! Folks would log just about everything that is not sleeper berth as on duty or driving. You would see 30 minute pre and post trips, 4 hrs on duty at the dock waiting to unload while the driver is actually playing video games on his laptop computer. And the list goes on. It is human nature to milk the system to their favor. The result is it would require double the drivers on the road to move the same freight as now. I am all for it. But if it were to happen, I don't want to hear one complaint about any shortages of stuff at the store or the inflated price. Yeah, the driver would be making out better as far as at the payday goes, but when the inflated cost of what he has to buy is factored in, it may be a net loss compared to now. And with the substantially higher cost of goods to the consumer, any hopes for recognition for the job you do will go out the door.

And then, what would you suppose the pay would be if paid by the hour? I would be willing to bet a driver would actually make less than they do now. That is, except those that elect to drive for bottom feeder pay now. And once their hours run out, they would not be able to even go home or they would have to pay for a plane or bus to do it. And boy, the slip seating game would come back in full force. The only thing you would be able to have on the truck is what you can carry with you. While pay by the hour sounds good, and might be for a regional or local gig, the law of unintended consequences would rear it's ugly head like Godzilla in a Jap movie.

Folks need to be careful what they wish for.