Driver retention

That’s not true at all.
First of all how many people do you know make minimum wage? And don’t include the 16 year old.
Around here no one pays minimum wage. Even a burger flipper is getting over $13 a hour.
The problem is that most people have champagne taste with a beer pocketbook.
If you are making minimum wage you only have yourself to blame.

 

I'm also hourly, but like to get done ASAP. People who move slow annoy me. Get your ### in gear, and go you lazy piece of crap. When you are at work, work, and work hard. Put down the phone, junk food, and just concentrate on the task. There is no excuse for having to wait anywhere to get loaded or unloaded. They know trucks are coming, and they have one job. That job is to load, or unload trucks. Having to wait more than 10 minutes is completely unacceptable. If their building is too small, build on an addition, more truck docks. Buy more forklifts or whatever is need to load/unload. Hire people, train them, pay them well, and get doing the task in a timely manner. Procrastination is completely unacceptable.

 

There are a lot of folks complaining in this thread, and I doubt if many of them are liberals.

Anyway, as a former business owner who employed crews who went out every day in trucks I provided, using tools I provided to install closet shelving, mirrors, shower doors, and door hardware for new construction, I can say that paying an hourly wage to employees who operate mostly unsupervised cost me a whole lot of money. After it became clear to me that my crews were milking the clock, I switched over to a piecework compensation plan. Half my employees quit, but the other half started working a lot harder (and making a lot more money), and frankly we were all happier.

More recently, as an employee I switched from driving OTR (cpm) to local (hourly) for my company, and I found much the same thing. There was no incentive to work with any sense of purpose or urgency, rather it made more sense to dawdle, to stretch out my time as the more time I was on the clock, the more money I made. I didn’t abuse this (much), but some of my coworkers were pretty inventive about killing time.

I’ve also worked for this company as a salaried driver on a dedicated lane. I got a straight day rate, regardless of how much or little I actually drove. It was easy work, I averaged about 2,000 miles a week and my paycheck was okay, but I eventually switched back to OTR/cpm and while I’m driving a lot more miles (average 3,000 miles/week), I’m making more money as well, and really, if I’m going to be out in the truck for 5-6 days at a time, I’d rather be driving and earning than sitting parked in the truck somewhere wishing I was at home.

 

I don't know anyone making minimum wage, but the people I know isn't a large enough group to form an accurate sample. Those $13/hour burger flippers are only making about half of what the minimum wage would be if it would have kept up with the cost of living anyway. Walmart has made too much money exploiting employees with low wage jobs like that, encouraging them to apply for socialized assistance instead of paying a living wage with benefits.

 

The flip side to your story is the owner operator who was hustling to get one more load in for the day when he drove around the lowered gates at a railroad crossing. The resulting collision killed him and left an expensive mess that others had to pay for due to his lack of insurance. Who knows how he ended up in that situation, but I doubt he would have felt the need to drive in front of the oncoming train if he'd wasn't being paid piecemeal.

 

First, how many times did that happen last year? Not at all? Once, twice? Second, only a ###### fool does anything that stupid.

 

How many times does an accident like that need to happen before people realize there are downsides to the race to the bottom? And how many fools drive trucks, haven't you noticed there are too many as it is?

 

How many drove off the road because they fell asleep? How many ran in weather they should have shut down for to make a couple of extra dollars? How many work zone accidents are caused by speeding trucks?

I'm not against piece rate, but there is a down side to it.

 

I would disagree with that a little bit, if all things remaining exactly the same as they currently are with only the pay changing. The megas would still churn drivers simply because of how they treat drivers as a commodity and not a person.