Who's Really Driving America's Trucks??

Well...... you can always call Acme ...... I mean.. they were lightning fast on Looney Tunes. They were Amazon before there was Amazon lol

 

You also forgot horse and carriage Amish style to move those peppers

 

False

 

If I were to list things that depress my wages as a truck driver, immigrants would be low on the list. Even then, they're a symptom of another cause - corporations valuing profit above all else. Look at the mega carrier's driver churn model. The money they save in wages more than compensates for the service failures and accidents. Then there's the whole L/P - I/C business model, which I consider a modern version of share cropping. Not to mention the cramming of technology into the trucks as a replacement for training.

On a more macro economic level, mergers and acquisitions/corporate consolidation does more to depress wages than immigrants.

One of my many problems with this topic is that all our problems are being blamed on immigrants, with little distinction between legal and illegal and ZERO discussion about the underlying problems.

'Foreign drivers' didn't make coast to coast 'penny freight'. Intermodal did that - just look at any GP, P&G, KC, or General Mills distribution center. Anything that isn't time sensitive is going on the rails, even in the LTL world. When I started driving 15 years ago, Schneider had a ton of 'long loads' leaving GB. Schneider still has that freight, it's just going on a container down to Chicago instead of an OTR dry van. Then there are guys like AFC and Rader1982 who drive down rates every time they breathe.

'Foreign drivers' haven't made the roads less safe. Industry groups constantly undermining any attempt to raise training standards have.

'Foreign drivers' haven't increased fraud levels. Budget cuts to FMCSA, the proliferation of brokers and load boards, and a culture of valuing short term profits over stable relationships has.

But let's say that immigrants ARE the root cause of all the issues in trucking, and we could magically make them all go away tomorrow. After a short term rise in rates we'd see a regression to the mean as unqualified native born American's fill the gaps. How do I know this? 14 years of training over 350 guys, most of whom were native born citizens. Very quickly I learned that I needed to address proper use of restrooms during 'mutual expectations' - ie "walk into the truck stop, don't piss behind the truck and don't even think of pissing in a bottle in my truck". The battles I had over "why can't I just use the GPS?". The number of guys who couldn't understand time zones would make you weep.

My last trainee should not have made it to my truck, he should have been washed out the first week. 3 different instructors failed him before Steve managed to put the fear of Berstuk into him and he didn't do anything Steve could fail him on. We made it two hours into the first load when I called the Training Manager, who ducked my call. The guy should never have gotten a CDL, but even after I failed him we 'had' to have a Safety Critter take him on a check ride before we could term him (they didn't make it out of the lot). Guys like that are depressing my wages, and they're getting hired because metrics are more valued than common sense.

I would love to get every unqualified driver off the road and prevent any more from getting a CDL. But there will never be the political will to do that, even if corporate interests didn't get involved. Enforcing regulations costs money, while wringing hands/shouting "think of the children" costs nothing. In the almost 2 years since I went line haul, I've seen two open weigh stations (outside of Road Check week). Even OTR, most weigh stations were closed. It's been more than 4 years since my last inspection and I think I've only been inspected 6 times in 16 years. FMCSA audits are a joke, even without the recent budget cuts. Don't get me started on ELDT. The recent 'enforcement' is more about optics than enacting real change.

 

First off, ELDs shouldn't have impacted anyone because they didn't change the rules. They did because we were all cheating the logs.

Secondly, the state of the spot market isn't because of immigrants - legal or illegal. It's because getting a CDL is easy, getting an authority is absurdly easy, and getting financing for a truck is confusingly easy. No person with a CDL should fail a Schneider orientation for skill issues, but more than 1/3 of them do. Getting an authority should take more than filling out some paperwork, and transferring an authority should involve a good deal of regulatory oversight to avoid chameleon carriers and fraudsters.

Then there's the whole finance industry. SFI has one of the more ethical L/P deals, but last I checked it was 18% APR. The high interest rate is to cover the defaults, but one must ask 'why loan money to those who you don't think can pay it back'? The answer is they make money off the defaults as well. Say a guy signs on the bottom line and runs the truck for two months before tossing in the towel. The truck will be made ready for sale or lease, with widely inflated costs. Then the truck can sit for up to 8 months and SFI will still make a profit off it.

In short, it's not immigrants that are impacting the industry, it's the industry itself.

 

Most of the guys hauling containers are foreigners.

 

Lol....you must've never gone to Memphis, Birmingham, Savannah, New Jersey, New Orleans, Charleston etc

 

Tell that to the families who had loved ones killed by people who should have never been issued a cdl in the first place.

 

You must need glasses or binoculars

 

I wear glasses actually.