WHY CAN'T WE DRIVERS STICK TOGETHER

It's been done by truckers years ago. nowadays good luck. you can't even get drivers to talk on the radio, or even wave. try it. you'd be surprised how fast the miles go by

 

Forget even trying to be united. Any trucker can get the last laugh by working hard and saving for retirement. Get involved in a retirement plan with a company or credit union.
At the end of the road, retire and enjoy the good life. In the big picture, no one is concerned about you or will remember you except "MAYBE" your immediate family, and even that fades with time.

 

Heres my problem with striking.


Why not leave? Seriously, why not? Dont like the pay, or how your treated? Then leave. Nobody is forcing you to stay. Leave. Go, doors on the left. Why is it incumbent on us to demand x, y, or z from any company or industry? Free and fair market is about all you can say is worth fighting for, and we have that for the most part. Got a guy in my barn pissing and moaning about how little we get every year for raises, (we are union) he feels we should get double that, why? I am paid market value for a class A, and hes paid over market value for his B, and he feels under paid? As if! When my O/O attempt failed, (my fault, nobody else's) and i needed to get back into a company, i didn't take the first gig offered, or the 5th. I know my value, i know what my skills are worth, and i waited till i could get at least the minimum i wanted. I have a valuable set of skills, im very good at what I do. And i know it. But i also know, i am replaceable. For either better skills or lower cost, and if someone wanted to or did replace me for either reason, i dont want to work for them anyhow. They dont see a value in my skill set. If i couldn't make what i want round here, I'd move. What it boils down to for me is this, why should we as drivers, (especially the happy ones) fight to get someone else better pay, when we know from experience, that its out there, you just need to go get it? What percentage of all drivers dont have the skills, or drive to do whats nessary? A bigger percentage than you think. Its like the kid that gets a degree in sandskrit or liberal arts, and then wonders why he cant survive....

 

There is another aspect to this as well. Has anybody actually sit and wondered how many by % of the whole are drivers that are OOs and OOs driving under their own authority? For a general strike to work it would have to take close to a month. These OOs won't last that long with no income. It is hard enough as it is. Hell even a week with no income might effect 10 to 20%. You will never get the OOs to go along with a long strike because they can't afford to do it.

 

Not a very good analogy. The nfl has a salary cap so you may not have the cap numbers to sign the star running back.

 

You hang out with the wrong owner operators. I regularly shut down for a month at a time. Being able to afford to do so is the whole point of being an oo.

 

It's because of the 62 MPH E Log drivers who ruined trucking for us. If big companies like Swift and Prime were never around we wouldn't be so over regulated like we are now. Trucking used to be the survival of the fittest and now it's just another job that ANYONE can get into.

 

Everyone has a salary cap.

 

I know company drivers that took good care of their money invested it wisely and their 1099 income is actually more then their W2's by much more. One of my Facebook friends retired from Schneider a few years ago and today lives in Naples Florida and spends a lot of time hitting small white balls into holes. So was mine my last 15 years driving. However this is not the question at hand. You know as well as I do (even though you might be loath to admit it) that there are thousands of OO's and for that matter company drivers just barely making it.