ELD exempt trucks or gliders

Actually many of us would like to see a great many regulations across a great many industries go away.

 

What are you talking about?
"Authority" is not a commercial drivers license, the vast majority of guys driving now do not have "Authority" and never have; before deregulation it was nearly impossible to buy your own truck unless you signed on under someone else. Deregulation made it possible for ANYONE to get their own authority and compete in the Market, sort of like a people who live in a Free Market economy could do.

So you WANT the government deciding how much competition there can be and who will get a chance to better themselves?

 

Who the hell got 2 dollars a mile in the 1970's for highway trucking?

Try 50-75 cents per mile and you had to give the broker 15% just so you could "run under their authority"; whoever told you that most definitely did not truck in the 1970's.

 

When wages and rates are virtually the same now as they were 40 years ago how can you argue it was a good thing? Megas didn’t exist, they couldn’t have. Drivers actually made a good living and didn’t have to live in their trucks a month at a time while getting treated like dirt. A low DOT number used to mean something when you were trying to secure business. What are we at now? Over 3 million I imagine. If everything would’ve kept pace with inflation I may have a different view, but when I look back through the old paperwork in the storage unit and see what dad was hauling for in 1977 it makes me a little sick.

I apologize for being nostalgic. A recent trip to Hawaii, where you still need a sponsor and you have to before the PUC board to make your case before you buy a truck, has me thinking about the pre-mega days.

 

The megas aren't the result of too little regulation, they are the result of too much government interference. They would not exist, at least not as they do today, without the government propping them up with handouts and tax breaks for keeping turn over high and hiring lots of new drivers.

 

We hauled classic cars in a drop frame van. My dad could get three in and he got $0.50 per mile each. $1.50 was out of this world great rate. 1982.

 

Wages were not even close to what they are today in the 1970's, 4 to 500 per week was considered a great job in the 1970's and to get that you had to worm your way through a LOT of years sucking hind teat.

And the whole "stagnant wages" argument fails on numerous other fronts.
1) Regulation costs an enormous amount of money, this translates into less money for wages.
2) Regulation has destroyed the safety record in trucking, this translates into higher insurance costs which mean less money for wages.
3) Regulation has dramatically increased the cost of trucks and regulations have reduced their reliability, this means less money for wages.
4) Regulations have dramatically increased the cost of keeping "compliant" and the manpower need to always prove that you are "compliant", this means less money for wages.
5) Regulations have made the cost of employer provided health care an astronomical expense that goes even higher every year, this keeps wages flatter than they would be but if included in the wage comparison would reveal the lack of integrity in the "stagnant wage" claim.

In spite of this a driver today can pretty easily earn more than double his 1970's counterpart and do it in less hours, when you factor in the health care he is making 3 times his 1970's counterpart and he can do this almost straight out of truck driving school.

The mega's are a result of massive regulation, the only way to minimize the cost of many of these regulations is to spread them over a larger fleet, the same "Authority" that I have to run one truck can be used to run 5000 trucks; mega's LOVE regulation because it makes it harder for competition to challenge them.

 

Specialty trucking has ALWAYS paid much more than general freight and it does today as well, that was most certainly NOT the rates that general frieght haulers were getting.

Last year I got a car hauler to deliver a car that I bought at an auction 125 miles away from my house, the best price I got was $425 and the guy who brought it to me used a GMC pickup and a single car trailer.

If he had a 3 car trailer he would have made $10.20 per mile on that run, but we can't use that to say "guys are getting $10.20 per mile all the time in 2018"

 

Well no truck driver I know who was driving in the 70s or 80s wants to go back to those regs. I don't know what your dad was hauling but I highly doubt it was the average pay if you're singing about it.

 

Guess again. There's a phenomena called inflation. I used your numbers. I picked the buying power of $400 1975 dollars in today's money. It would take $1,851.23 2018 dollars to equal 400 1975 dollars. Twice that would be $3,702.46. Anyone making $3,702.46 a week?

$400 in 1975 → 2018 | Inflation Calculator