it's really hard to get behind a movement that doesn't even know what its' mad about.

That’s typical of most “movements”, right? People just don’t educate themselves on the thing they are “against “ nowadays....sad...

 

It's typical to pick the worse examples , to make a whole group look foolish or undermine their cause , if you don't have any objections to ELDs you will probably support this tactic and lol when they pull a couple silly comments from the crowd .
Anyway this horse has been beaten to death , the mega fleets and their Elog fanboys won the battle .
Hope they enjoy chipping away at another freedom

 

Who couldn't see this coming? Truckers can't get out of their own way. Hell, they won't even agree what day of the month it is.

The trucking industry has a bad enough reputation among the general public, now they see these morons are assumed to be the best and the brightest of our group? Is it really any wonder why our industry is in the crapper?

Lord help us.

 

Did he really say "he can't let off the accelerator because he'll lose money"?

 

Dude, I've been doing this on and off for a long long time.

Back in the day before deregulation, we knew what we were fighting for, we had to get out of our trucks because they were trucks and not glorified large campers that just happen they be pulling a trailer.

You sat at a table or sat at the counter to have lunch, we were not at some fancy duded up travel center but a truck stop that serviced truck drivers.

So we mingled, we talked, we got to know each other and it was a community in itself.

We made it ours, we would fight for what was ours and did it by doing the right things to,protect our profession.

But today, we don't have a clue what we are doing when it comes to fighting for anything, many were not even born when deregulation happened, let alone saw the best of the post deregulation trucking world.

Listening to some of these guys today, I have to walk away, some think that their daddy's or grand pappy's experiences somehow became genes and gave them some idea of what it was like when they only started to drive a couple years ago.

But .... all of that is gone, those days are not to be relived and we are now a fractured, we are separated by that sleeper which holds all of our world. Hell some don't even need to step into a truck stop, they can fuel and just leave because they have their toilet and shower right there in the sleeper. Others who go into the truck stop never say much if anything. Forget the lunch counter, that's a bygone thing, the modern driver grabs their grub from the hot dog rollers or at the fast food counter, only to run back to the truck before someone realizes that their sweat pants are so stained and dirty that they can walk on their own.

To believe we have a fighting chance to change anything is a joke, sorry to be so cruel but it's is the truth. We are our own enemy, and until we learn to pick a fight and do it right, we will never do much other than complain.

Sorry for the unconnected rant.

 

Ridgeline , it's painful to read your post , I've seen the same change and feel it's the responsibility of us drivers that know better to try and guide these younger drivers .
This has always been a cutthroat business run by hookers , without standing together we all will continue to slide down the tubes .
I don't know the solution or if it's to late but I just feel responsible to fight back and try to tell the way it was when this was a real career .
They have mostly destroyed OTR , now you see local and LTL taking hits , we need to organize or continue to get screwed .

I know , it will never happen

 

It is common for me to see some moron state "with elogs, I can't pull over to take a nap. They are dangerous." That is a laughable lie. Any healthy person should be able to make it through a 14 hour day without a nap anyway.

 

It (organize and band together) CAN'T happen today. It's not a matter of won't. The industry has become too large and too varied from sector to sector. Not all sectors have the same needs and wants and all the various sectors are large enough to matter and impact major industry specific change options.

I was not involved in trucking forums and social media in early 2000's when the current HOS came into play. Was there such an outcry then? What about when CARB starting mandating their crap on ALL truckers who came into their state? Where was the huge amount of crying and complaining then? That was the time to "band together". But honestly, technology advancement always forces uncomfortable change. But this is not the end of bureaucratic intrusion into industries. We allowed government to get this big (little by little, over the past 50 years) and now we're paying for it.