CSA 2010: The data

Being an independent has nothing to do with it. I am company and I will not take out anything that has any issues. I can't afford the luxury of caring about your profits, utilization numbers etc. It's your truck and you enjoy the profits from said truck and as such you will feel the pain of repair to said truck. That's why you have all the layers of management wasting salaries that should have went to your professional drivers.

Remember this? " There's 10,000 just like you waiting outside my gate for your job" or this ? " I don't have to pay you overtime, you're a truck driver" or this one " Drivers don't get that " or my favorite, " Well so and so can do it, or did it, why can't you?"

It is all about me and my license now and there's only one of those and 10,000 just like you....... sound familiar?

 

Or when you call in about something wrong on the truck and they have the nerve to say, don't worry about it, drive it, because that is all you are good for.

 

This is for you drivers out there:

Let it be it known, I am no truck driver, I am a construction worker (heavy equipment operator, too) that knows how to fix everything in the yard. My CDL was to move equipment that I would run. And the occasional dirt derby... When the biz went downhill, I jumped into something larger than a day cab and smaller than a 60 foot goose with a 275k excavator (or something equally ungainly) on it. I traded narrow inner city streets for open roads and superslabs. The wide open spaces are a piece of cake to navigate, and the road goes on forever....

I would drive expedite occasionally during the winter after the snow season got done, so knew what OTR really meant.

I got my cajones knocked by every company out there, when they needed drivers and were paying good. Apparently they all think a van to a dock is harder than backing up a 15 foot wide machine blind for half a mile on a driveway overgrown with trees. C R England took me on and I proceeded to impress the pants off of them with my style and flair. A 53 foot van is easy to back up after you've learned to back the excavator into some quite impossible places.....

This is how I spell $afety, because thats what it all boils down to. My lease truck passes all of its inspections. During my last annual, the inspector said I had cracked shoes on my front brakes... Horrors! I went down to see, and proceeded to rub the dirt off of the shoes and couldn't find any cracks..... One of my taillights was not burning, because of corrosion/salt, so I replaced the light and the plug, and all of the rest of them, too! My prior inspection that morning they were actually working (my student can back me on this one).

I fear no weighmaster, I scale my loads. I check out EVERY trailer I hook to. I air tires, adjust brakes, repair lights that I can reach. I flat out refuse to even attempt to repair lights on the top of the trailer for safety issues, and also the fact that the lights themselves I can't find anywhere, so I write it up.

Inspect away....

I polish my own chrome for upper body workout, crawl under the tractor to grease regularly and inspect, and cook my own food.
I weigh about 195, and I'm 6'2". I keep my monster clean.

I hate being griped at, so I learn what I need to prevent it. Rules, regs, and if I don't know it, I have a book. I have opened the book on more than one officer, usually a local rookie that has no clue....
I like to think I've learned my job well, the complaints from home base are few and far between.

There's the setup, here's the blow.

Personally, I'm getting tired of being in an industry that 1) can't get the least bit of slack from those we provide a service to. I'm tired of getting trampled on by the country as a whole. 2) I can't seem to make a dime. Well, no wonder, the contracts nowadays are tailored specifically to keep a driver broke. This does two things: you can't afford to take any time off, and you can't afford any legal help to get out of it. 3) the feds are going to take even more from us, effectively cutting our below poverty level wages somewhere around 30% if my figures are correct, for a current lease operator.

I'm not sticking around for that. I've had enough.

For the others who read these posts to try to see how we feel, here you go. When my lease is up, (just before these new laws come into effect, thankfully) I'm done. I'll make more money flipping burgers than driving truck. I can't even make minimum wage out here. Personally, I hope a lot of the good drivers do the same, so the politicians can get exactly what they are begging for. They will have trucks with three non-english speaking people going down the road that will be happy to send more money out of the country than ever before. It won't matter what the language is, but it won't be english.

This is the next step in a problem created by government in the first place, so lets apply a poison ivy patch to fix it....

 

Once csa goes into full effect and they do away with all the experienced drivers that do exceed points due to alot more time out there on the road,that are obviously harrassed by d.o.t. on their "bad days" with their "short ##### syndrome" and realize that crashes have went up 200%,when freight isnt getting across america with good companies that do require experience, what will have to happen is every company out there will be taking in more students with clean records to please a law that is only making things worse, sounds just about like everything else america has done lately pointless and damaging

 

Being that this is a CSA2010 thread, I'm baffled by the continued use of the phrase, "me and my license".
I don't see the correlation between CSA2010 and your license. Probably because there is none.
Your license is issued and regulated by your STATE government agencies. NOT FMCSA.

Now, I've paid the money and looked at my PSP report. All I see on there were things in relation to roadside inspection reports. I've had moving violations from "city kitties" that do not show up there. Mainly because no roadside inspection reports were generated.

And I'm still waiting to hear exactly HOW this thing is supposed to cost hundreds of thousands of truckers their jobs!!!
A company can fire you, but that don't fix their safety record! And your safety history doesn't transfer to a new company, wishing to hire you.
The PSP just highlights your individual safety problem areas for enforcement officials and for companies (to watch and, hopefully, help you improve upon).

My company told me that I'd been flagged for a couple of things. But I was in no danger of termination, so long as I was on the road to improvement.

This thing is meant to shed the most light on those with the most persistent safety issues. And they can use it to determine if it's a driver or the company(ie; one driver with logging problem vs. an entire fleet with logging issues).



Look......the trucking industry is ever evolving, ever changing. You'd better get used to it and figure out how to adapt alongside of it or you're not gonna make it. And I know how much everybody hates change. But that's just how it is.

 

BTW, economists are estimating that this CSA2010 thing, plus EOBRs and speed governed trucks, are gonna create an additional demand for 250,000 drivers, by 2012, just to keep up with current demand. AND they're projecting rate increases.
Lastly, they're expecting that shippers/receivers will, necessarily, HAVE TO become more efficient because of all the new/upcoming changes.


I know, I know.................we'll see.

http://www.truckinginfo.com/operations/news-detail.asp?news_id=72561&news_category_id=73

 

258,000 drivers lost their jobs.......we didn't want to worry you!

 

Any links to any of this dribble....?

 

It was tongue in cheek. I guess it didn't come through that way.

 

My crash described above was ruled non-preventable. I ended up running team with a lease operator for about a month 'just in case' it came back bad news for me and my company decided to fire me. This guy I teamed with is the exact guy this CSA is targeting. We drove thousands of miles with a nail in a drive tire; he's probably still on that same nail now. Picked up a trailer with a clearance light out, he gave me all kinds of static when I said we should get it fixed asap. He liked to keep scratch paper notes of cities and times rather than just putting it on his logs and chewed me out for updating my logs at my first stop after midnight. Never does pretrips and runs his truck up to 3 gallons low on oil-- he may be out of business before CSA can catch him anyway....