Just some of the stupid things I see

No doubt, but we shouldn't be treated like the lowest common denominator when the fact is that most people are responsible. Generally these rules and regulations have more to do with generating revenue, and commanding obedience, than they do with justice, and most irresponsible people don't follow rules and regulations anyway, they only affect the people who don't need to be told how to do the right thing. If we want to let what if scenarios run our lives, I could make a case that we should live our lives in the hospital from the time we're born. Think of all the bear maulings that could be avoided. Making and enforcing various laws is big business and lots of people make their living from it.

If people taking too much time at the fuel island were the problem it's made out to be, there would be a market driven solution implemented, and there would be no reason for the government to get involved. I can see someone wanting a law about how much time you're allowed to fuel, when all that is needed is for the truck stop to charge for excess time. It's the truck stop's fuel island, if they want to allow a guy to hog up the space preventing another customer from spending his eight hundred dollars, that's their choice. People need to stop looking to government to solve every little problem, their record is dismal.

 

Gonna have to start knockin' a few more off the teat before that happens...

 

So what's governments job if not to at least attempt to create a relatively level playing field. I do whatever I feel like and you do the same. Maybe you feel that you can safely drive at .16 maybe you think 90 mph in a playground zone is ok maybe you think its ok to drive 20 hours a day or 100 plus a week. Some standard has to be set at some level. Do I like being told how many hours a week I can work? NO! I also don't like the fact that I have to work as many hours as I do just to make an ok living. If I could make the same money driving 40 or 50 a week I would have very little incentive to push myself to the point of total fatigue. You want to blame anyone for many of the restrictive laws in both our countries look at the lawyers. They are the ones who have taught people that they aren't really to blame for their own stupidity, it must be someone else fault.

 

Last week I was fueling and their was a truck parked in front of me, no biggie, until I needed to pull up to fuel my trailer. Ok he's been there 15 minutes or more by then, I stroll up to fi d he's been sitting in the truck the whole time. I ask him to pull up further so I can fuel my trailer he sits there another 10 minutes. I was about ready to cut a couple valve stems for him and ask him how he liked sitting. I mean really you can't pull ahead before doing paperwork?

 

Government should have absolutely no role in creating a level playing field. The playing field isn't supposed to be level, people who work harder and smarter should achieve more than people who don't work hard and make poor decisions. Government involvement has led to what we have now where people are artificially slowed down to the level that the incompetent operate at. Since incompetent can't do better, in order to make it "fair" for everyone, the competent must be dragged down to the level of the incompetent. This process allows the incompetent to stay in business and continue to be a hazard to the rest of us.

I agree standards should be set, but they should be set by the people who are invested in the success of the business, the carrier, the owner of the equipment, the owner of the freight, the insurance company, the driver, etc.

Usually defenders of government regulations resort to the use of ridiculous examples like 90 in the school zone, I'm sure it's possible, but I'd imagine it's pretty rare. I don't understand how a business model would work where it would be acceptable for a driver to repeatedly get in wrecks and hurt people. Margins are often tight enough that there isn't money left to fix the truck and pay for wrongful death lawsuits that all this speeding and running longer hours supposedly produces.

 

Well, I'll assume that the paperwork he was doing was his logbook, the only paperwork that you aren't allowed to wait until the end of the day to fill out, another example of how government regulations cause more problems than they solve. Or maybe he was stalling out to finish his thirty minute break, another worthless regulation.

 

You could have cleaned his windshield for him with that spray bottle of used engine oil. Annoying and time consuming, but not expensive to fix.

 

Kind of stupid.

Make him stay in there longer.

 

Hmm.. I mention how DB got driven off by the " anti government" crowd and they still don't get it.... Of course, that's not to mention the idiots that try to explain that a " regulation aint a law so they ain't gonna follow it", never mind that the agency (FMSCA, duh) has been authorized by congress to come up with regulations and enforce them because the trucking industry can't be trusted to police itself? Maybe the reason is also because no one wants to take their family on the road and share it with someone who is either driving an 80000 lb behemoth like its a sports car, driving with defective equipment that can cause an accident and kill someone, or the driver it so tired he or she has to hold their eyelids open with toothpicks? I got news for you... As long as the trucking industry CEOs ( and no i dont mean all of them)continue viewing profit more important than people's lives, you are going to have to follow regs. Otherwise get out of driving, and start your own country somewhere else so you can play out your "answer to 1984 is 1776" fantasies. All DB and scalemaster are doing is sharing some of their experiences so you can see what kind of stupidity they witness, and enlighten us as to why they are doing it. If following a set of rules is too much, then go complain in the politics section.

 

Maybe the truck stop should make the pull forward area fee parking. You have a choice, pull around and park for free, or pay ten dollars to use the pull forward spot. The ten dollars would be applied to the guy behind you when he pays for his fuel, or it gets applied to the next guy who chooses to pull around. I don't know, I don't run a truck stop and getting stuck behind another driver isn't a big problem for me. I guess I don't worry about my logbook much, so a few extra minutes isn't going to come out of my drive time anyway. One thing I do know is that nine times out of ten, a government solution has unintended consequences that negate or even outweigh any benefit from the regulation. Truck stop rules, you have a choice whether or not to participate in, government rules are for the most part mandatory and enforced through violence or threat of violence.