NY Times article The Trouble with Trucking

Even so, there's really good trucking jobs out there for company drivers and with those you keep your paychecks because you don't sign a contract allowing the company to deduct their own expenses from your pay, ie. truck payments, fuel, insurance, tires, etc.
There's drivers out there driving company trucks making over $100K and it's relatively easy for a new cdl grad to make $60K + with the right endorsements.

 

Comparing truck driving to slavery diminishes what slavery really is. Truckings is a job. For some people its bad For others ok. And others it's good. If it's bad leave. Simple as that. Slaves can't leave. There are also a whole lot of other terrible things that were done to slaves that are not done to truck drivers. Good lord this is America. If u don't like your job do something else. Land of opportunity.

 

You really gotta do your research with jobs.

I HIGHLY recommend people get into construction. These guys don’t put up with that crap. You don’t pay everyone is striking.

Are unions perfect? Hell no.

Does my employer rip me off? Never, I make #### good money and not just by trucking standards.

Everyone is hiring in construction right now and many will get you your cdl for free and pay you as an apprentice. You can then move on to run a dozer or whatever or just keep on trucking try it all lol.

 

Completley agree. Very telling: "Wages for truckers, taking inflation into account, have fallen since 2003. As of last year, they were down nearly 3 percent."

 

IMO this article is a breath of fresh air...the NY Times is one of the largest publications in the world, and covers a very broad reader base, from lowly grunts to large corporate CEO's. If there is one place that could get the issues of trucking into the publics eye, the NY Times is probably the best to it.

 

Bless your simple little heart!

 

You know the public loves it that way so prices stay low. All the drivers are working to supply the public with what they want and have no problem getting low pay for it.... Just wait until you do a long career and you get disabled and see what they do to you. Everyones screwed except for those special ones.

 

A very long time ago a large aged Union Man invited me into the longhouse at the Baltimore Docks one morning early. He said that there is a potential for me to build a life here potentially shuffling boxes or being trained to eventually crane em to and from ship.

I told him that I thanked him for the wonderful oppertunity, but I shared that I had pretty much enough of Baltimore for a while and had this need to run around the USA if possible and make my living there for better or worse.

I sometimes wonder about that morning. Two paths either this way into the future in Baltimore or that way into something else unknown. I took the unknown. And I carefully watched Baltimore invest in the shipping and how. I think it's awesome for what they did.

My body failed me medically due to the work I put on it and it's not my fault or anyones. I worked very hard sometimes for very little. I did it cheerfully because it will please the Lord to see you working with good morale no matter how many feed bags you gotta shift out of that trailer. I don't expect people not part of the industry to understand. Maybe you see my thinking.

 

Sorry guys, as much as I want to agree with you, you need to really read it in the context of reality.

Comparing what it was like in 1979 is bs.

Saying that wages are stagnated is also bs.

Saying the hours are longer is also a lot of BS!

The only reason the article was written because it is a sales pitch of a book to the high brow readers who will now run out and buy it so they can use the subject at their dinner parties and claim they have some authority on the subject with their opinion.

ALL of this other stuff is just crap slung onto the pile, suing over 1099 (which makes up 6% of the entire driver labor force), LP makes up 3% of the owners out there, and slavery?

Really someone had a bad time as a trucker to come up with that --->>> NO ONE forces anyone to be a trucker, as much as they are not forced to work at any one carrier.

If you want to help out the drivers, demand that the license hard to get.

Why is this important?

Because we have a flood of drivers and that means supply is way up, no wonder wages are not going up, they can't when the labor market is saturated.

MAKE THE LICENSE HARD TO GET, TIE A CLEAN RECORD TO IT AND ALSO A PERIOD OF TRAINING THAT IS UNIFORMED ACROSS THE BOARD.

If you want to help out the drivers, start demanding that this is a profession and a skill trade career every time you hear a driver cry about it being a job.

Driving is easy but so is operating a back hoe, or a bulldozer (I've done both and a few other things), but driving is not skill trades. Baking is a skill trade, so are a lot of other things like cooking (*being a chef which is a joke) and so are things like medical transcriptionists but not truck drivers because we are our own worst enemy and don't want to do anything but a job.

If you don't want those two things to happen or put the needed effort into them to get them changed, then you don't care about the drivers.

 

Ok Ridgeline you made a very powerful case. And thank you kindly.

I would have you hear that I can tell you that 936 CAT front wheeled loader with it's 6 yard bucket feeding rock and sand into a ready mix was some of my favorite work ever. Why? It's such a basic Fred Flint-stone work that brought me joy and happiness as I did that work.

No one would have to pay me to do that kind of work with that CAT 936. I would be so happy to keep doing it for free. It's one of my very favorite activities. I could probably hop into any front end loader right now and shake off the rust, fuel it, grease it and check the hoses etc and start scooping rock. It wont be pretty until I get ahold of that engine and the pumps on it.