FAT people are Discriminated against at prime

Depends on how fast of a reader he is and how much time he's in the forum. Heck, if he can read say War and Peace or Battlefield Earth in a couple of days or a week then he can read all of the threads following you twos posts in a short 2 months. Not hard to make an opinion in that amount of time. IMHO!

 

Why? Because I don't knuckle-under, and just accept the Bovine Excrement that folks shove around here concerning my carrier? I get sick and tired of hearing about it from folks who have never even stepped through the doors of the Millenium building. And that includes you. And especially 20-somethings with a smart-allec mouth on them.

If you want to discuss it without posting unsupported personal opinions that reek of a load of Bravo Sierra, that's fine. I'll happily debate the merits of this carrier vs your truck and authority/smaller carrier all day long. Just because a carrier happens to train new drivers doesn't mean that they are a bad corporate actor. Nor does the fact that a fella starts with one truck and grows his success into 4500+ trucks make him second cousin to Satan. And especially because a carrier decides for whatever reason that just maybe they ought to care about the health of their drivers, doesn't mean they are discriminating illegally.

 

All this sleep apnea testing,

isn't it the result of a lawsuit ?

 

Not at Prime as far as I know.

The general push in the industry has been because of a recommendation by the FMCSAs Medical Review Board... those recommendations are usually jumped on by the industry in advance of them becoming rules from what I've heard. That gets the carriers ahead of the curve on such things. Proactive, knee-jerk reaction! I've also heard that the medical review board was stacked with physicians who had financial interests in CPAP manufacturing too. A lot of this comes from Dr. John McElligott - who is a member of that board, and a frequent guest on the Dave Nemo show on the Roaddog channel - Sirius/XM radio. He is generally at odds with the consensus of the remainder of that board.

Personal injury attorneys and Ray LaHood have jumped on this issue as a cause against the industry... you know the ol' fatigued trucker line. Much to the delight of purveyors of EOBR boxes and elog software.

Now at Prime, we are told that it was started as a general push for driver "wellness" (I hate that term!) after one of the younger troops died in his sleeper from undiagnosed type II diabetes. I'm also hearing that sleep apnea (not getting enough "good" sleep in a night) is a major causative factor in weight gain, heart/circulatory problems, diabetes, etc. Sleep apnea can certainly lower your blood oxygen saturation in some folks enough to turn their lips blue at night - and that can't be good for the rest of you. The impression I get is that the medical community is looking at sleep problems as being a trigger that causes all kinds of other problems - that then show up in the doctors office. 20 years ago it was cholesterol that was the "bad boy" that started everything...

So... everyone at least goes through the beginning stages of diagnosis for sleep apnea during orientation physicals, and DOT physicals. We've also been encouraged to inquire about having a sleep test done just to ensure we don't have that problem. No one is fired for having sleep apnea... and they did contract with a sleep clinic to provide services at a lower cost than you'd get socked with otherwise. Its not about sticking it to folks with a weight problem... heck, I've got one of those myself!

 

It is quite refreshing to see someone defending their Boss year after year. We don't find many drivers as Loyal and Committed to their Job as the IRON PONY on the Truckers Report. It amazing!

 

I wonder if this is behind the sleep apnea program ?

http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x212202849/Attorneys-spar-in-wrongful-death-lawsuit/print

 

Got over your hissy fit at being asked to take a sleep test yet?

 

I'm sure it had something to do with it... I don't see a direct cause and affect from that as much as the driver dying in his cab from natural causes. They annouced the "wellness" initiative immediately after that happened.

Of course, one can ascribe the reason behind that to any number of causes... the two mentioned above, the pressure placed on the industry through the FMCSA, etc. Not to mention all of the crack-pot conspiracy theories espoused by the Prime haters.

 

This is a Prime thread in case you did not notice at the top (by the OP). It does no one any good to spread hear say about other companies.

Let's try and be a little more observant...hmm

 

Direct knowledge... was talking with a Covenant driver who had been let go for having too many CSA points. She had a bad inspection....