Trans Am Still

......funny....but mean .....think I'll get out the voodoo dolls....does your head hurt?

 

A couple of thoughts about electricity.

1) It's a good thing that I had planned to spend the night in Clearfield, Pa. This is also my fuel stop. Kind of hard to get fuel, or food, when there is no power here. Wondering what happened.

2) Wow!!! You'd never imagine, just how much of a PITA, that it would be, to try and park, when there are no lights and none of the drivers have their parking lites on either. I mean.... this place is dark, dark, dark!!!! And.... I'm hungry. Hey queenie, hop on that broom again and bring me some food!!!

 

I'd say wait time is definitely an area that needs lots of work, on occasion. I've seen many posts about drivers being on a day schedule, then waiting hours on a load or swap throws them into night driving! Considering how "time is money," and truck drivers aren't paid for lay over time (despite waiting 20+ hours), when a load is complete within drop dead time, long waits can be discouraging. It's good to see/hear that a company is going to focus on investing in their drivers! IMHO, for whatever it's worth, I believe the DM or dispatcher could plan better. Surely there are other drivers who would clear their drops and be able to get a load closer to the drop dead time rather than a driver have to wait so long. If long waits occurred very often, is it any wonder why companies lose drivers?

 

It will get worse with these new regs on DOT physicals. I have talked to other drivers and their Drs have said the same thing mine did. About 20-30% of drivers can not pass the new requirements. My Dr also told me they estimate 15-20% of drivers out here have a fraudulent medical card and with this new national registry that will not be possible anymore. I wonder what this will do to the industry. The ATA did not account for this, I do not think they did anyways.

 

I'll send the flying monkeys with a special delivery

 

So is their some kind of scheme in the works to minimize the number of truck drivers? I can see the concern for good health, but why are they changing requirements so drastically after all these years? I can imagine, in part, it's the hair-brained "ingenuity" of some wise guy young whipper snapper attempting to "change the world" positively or do up the "old farts."

 

What has happened in other countries is a manufactured driver shortage that allows them to "import" drivers from other parts of the world. They only import these drivers from countries where the wages are sub par ......they come here and poverty wages seem like riches to them. The industry gets their drivers and gets to keep their payroll low and their profits high.

 

If you notice that the first sentence said that their stock took a 14% dive after management announced that they would have to invest more in their drivers because of a higher than expected driver turnover. Funny thing is that last year Swift did quite well financially.....seems to me that they just don't like the idea of having to pay more. These are the numbers for the first quarter of 2013 -

Swift Transportation, a mainly truckload carrier, saw its first quarter profit jump much higher while earnings also increased from the same time a year ago.
Net income moved from $ 6.2 million in the first quarter of 2012 to $23.3 million in the most recent quarter. During the same time revenue rose almost 4% to $856.8 million, from $826.9 million.

 

I can remember my brother having a program on his computer to print out very realistic looking medical cards for his drivers that were lacking one. Told you he was not someone we would ever consider driving for! I see his old company on here constantly in the Bad Company Section. Most of his drivers also had a license in two or three states ....minimum .....think my brother had four.
Eliminating drivers with low wages, high wait times, an unfair point system, over-regulation, electronic and video leashes, and non-relevant medical issues would be one way to create a driver shortage.....wouldn't it?