Truck shutdown April 12th

I very much agree on the image comment. And the rage I see between truckers, all I can think is it must be the stress imposed due to recent rules and regulations. Well I don't run elds don't know anything about them really, only that I won't even consider it, but I realize thats the reason I can't find a place to park. I will shut down for one day, and I will put a nice camper on my truck when they tell me I have to

 

And that's just it. If they were protesting hos they would get a lot more respect I think, including mine. Them whining about a more accurate (and by no means a perfect) way to record hos all they are doing is admitting they can't run legally. That helps none of us.

 

Running legally is whatever it takes you personally to not run into ####. The whole argument becomes pointless when you have one side who's just fine being told what to do when and for how long and the other would like to be left the hell alone. HOS is a government rule, pretty much makes you about the most naive person in the world if you think them doing anything with those is actually going to change anything.

 

What do we want?
We want a 22 hour work day!!!!!
What do we want?
We don’t want no breaks!!!!
Why!!!!!

 

Half-tards!!!! I think you givem to much credit.

 

Why, because if I work 22 hour days for 3 days a week I get a 4 day weekend that's why.

 

Rules and regulations have gotten seriously bent in my life time.

The trucking I used to do has in essence been regulated and then monitored by computer power to the point at which there isnt very much freedom. A gilded cage with me inside a hamster wheel hoping to get parked legally within 11 hours.

One big workaround is married team and that was 20 years ago before any of this ELD stuff or anything like today's idle controls and so on. Maybe I am too old for this, but when you hand me a million dollar medicine load, at least give me a tractor trailer that will do the work in a very good reliable manner without restrictions beyond physics. That medicine has to be where it needs to be. We aint got time for regulating. It's already insane.

It will not get better. Sometimes I think back and say gee I got away with a bunch of stuff in trucking. At the same time there was a alot of abuses from own dispatch etc. So we really didnt do all that well. Inflation took the rest. What do I have? Nothing except experience. Even that is nothing in today's hiring world in the trucking industry.

If I was rolling today I am going to be parked at some point before that 11 hours. And in the bunk after 14. The trailer's situation would just have to be the one area that will need some form of reforming because technically and legally you can work 1000 hours in that dock and no one cares. Just cannot drive a inch until you have been either sleeper berth or off duty a certain amount of time. That usually does not work with dispatch already lining up another load in the name of revenue.

So drop and hook, and careful choosing what you hire onto and being sure that you stay away from the live dock as much as possible. There will be plenty who have not yet figured that out. But they will in time when they get too tired from constant abuses by shippers and receivers who hold all the cards.

I also see a migration to JIT for everything. Take paper for instance. Rolled paper going to a newspaper outfit. (At some point that probably will be reduced greatly as people fail to maintain old style newspaper buying) we already know that the news paper keeps a 30 day minimum supply in the basement of newspaper rolls, a awful lot of it. As a child I took a tour at the old Baltimore Sun-News American plant downtown at different times and when they showed the basement FULL of newspaper print rolls, I asked the guide how many days can you go through all that with these fast machines. He said there is at least 30 days down there. And more paper coming by both train and truck.

Fast forward decades from childhood. ATS had me load at Bear Island in Doswell VA which is a paper plant at 10 one evening. It's required to be at Dow Jones in Des Moines IA by noon the next day. Now in today's regulating ELD etc it will NEVER get there with a solo.

I was there at 12:30 past the 12 PM appt time while they held the building past their authroized shift waiting on my paper rolls that they need to run through the printer. I can never see a dow jones newspaper today at the library without remembering that epic run. It's what? 1200 miles straight through next day delivery for me. A solo. Thank you ATS for giving me a mission impossible in the mid 90's Tossed the paper logs in the bunk, RAN. Got tired, drank coffee ran some more. Get tired again> hop out into the cold rain to hack my body back awake, that was worth another 2 hours. etc. Once the sun came up I was fine. Not fine but you know. That was because I had been up all the previous day getting empty at a dock before being told to go to Bear Island and get loaded for IA the next day ....

Some of you will figure out the average miles per hour is pretty close to 80. That's where the unlimited trucks came in, even with the little kitty in those days. You whipped it and moved down the road. Most of the time the Law was not around to be a problem. So it's there more or less.

Today's roads are 65-70 give or take and it will still get there next day, just much later in the evening. Say 20 hours to 24. Dow would have run out of paper long before then.

Now here is one last thought. I was the idiot for saying to dispatcher yes i will be there by noon next day with that paper roll load. If I was to say no? I don't have a job. There is no one in the company that would explictly tell you to break the law, break the HOS etc. Everything was implied, don't get caught.

That's one reason I do not run like that anymore. Ive gone the opposite, if given that load in that situation, I would have two things. First is no to the original appt and second a postponement of that delivery to a legal date and time that complies with today's ELD. Dow running out of paper in Des Moines is not my problem. They will get more when I get there.

Sleep? That's next week. You run.

The money? pffth, .32 a mile back then. Maybe 352 gross give or take for two days work. 24/7 completely outside of HOS. Never mind that 70 either. That's busted. Got papered over with two days off to make it all work.

They can go right on regulating. When Dow Jones runs out of Paper in Iowa, that's why. They would need to reevaluate how they do business getting that paper.

 

I'll be shutting down for it.

We need some relief for the small companies getting steamrolled by the ATA Mafia.

The no parking signs being blasted everywhere these days in addition to rest areas being shut down ...instead of increasing them is absurd and flies in the face of safety and the uncompromising , inflexible regulations.


We need parking and a S-ton of it already !!

And bring the clamps down on the shippers and receivers with more than 100 loads a year. They should be required to document truck times when they enter and leave their properties. Require them all to get a MC# and respect the regulations. Also require them as a MC# to be subject to the coercion rule if a truck runs out of hours on their property and cannot leave.

 

And you’re why we have and need elogs.
We need you well rested when you share the public roads with other people.
So sleep on your break and work an extra day or two a week so that you don’t fall asleep and kill one of us.

 

I stop when I'm tired, I may not be the brightest bulb but I don't need to be told when or how much sleep I need. What percentage of truck accidents are they on elogs? I'd guess somewhere around 60%, maybe they're really not that effective.