Did this Bill Pass ---- FAA and THUD bill ?

I always was paid for that stuff. Not all companies I worked for paid for traffic delays, but a couple of them did. Best way to fight that bill is don't work for companies unless they pay accessorial pays for everything. Many companies these days even pay for pre/post trip inspections, fueling, DOT inspections,etc. If drivers would quit hiring on with junk companies, the problem would solve itself.

 

I Never liked unpaid "Pre" and "post" inspections..... Free labor for a carrier.
A Good Inspection can take 30- minutes or so- At least What I check for.

After Dereg- It was 19 cents a mile- in 1990 it was 22 cents a mile and that's it...........company non union otr drivers got shafted so bad- hmmm,They still do don't they?

 

Congress is on recess at the moment. Nothing is moving for a while.

After a careful examination of my own life time earnings from trucking, companies cannot afford to pay me what i am worth and still stay in business. Profit margins will vanish across the fleet.

The industry has way bigger problems than simply pay for this pay for that pay for something else. One of the biggest barriers is state laws that ban over time pay to the trucking industry as it is a exempt sector in Labor. There are also no laws or limit to how long you can spend in that trailer unloading. I have been in that trailer 24 hours straight sometimes. Again, if they paid me for that time etc it will wipe out any profit for that run.

We paid lumpers 60 to handle a load in my day, now I understand it's 300 to handle the same load.

Drivers demand a salary of a minimum of 1000 a week regardless of miles run. The old model of paying miles is dead, it just does not know it yet.

When I started top OTR pay was .25 Beginners pay was .20 Granted that you can get a meal in any truckstop in those days for 4 dollars. Those days are gone forever. Now .50 is considered beginning pay. We are pretty much going to have to start either a 1000 dollar net minimum salary, which means a gross of around 1500 each week or... start paying company drivers 1.00 a mile.

1.00 was considered a break even point for o/o's way back in the day. Now you wont see a o/o pull anything for less than say 3.00 a mile.

You also cannot retain young newbies in the industry very long. 90 days and they are either quitting due to being home sick or simply fired for a preventable accident. Or being late twice, that's a service failure and they are gone.

As long there are 50 to 100 people filling orientation each week, this state of affairs will continue. Survivors of the first year will more than likely still be with us in 5. But with the pending of trucks that are essentially living self aware units able to do what the human once did (And have done... google Otto Beer delivery Colorado, although the police was intensively escorting it to make sure none of the cars around it messed with it...) who needs humans anymore?

Companies persist in paying immigrants .30 a mile. You cannot survive on that money considering the cost of retail food etc. They would rather avoid paying experienced company drivers .75 if they can hand out .50 instead. Again the mileage model of feast and famine needs to be discarded in favor of a straight salary without limitations or restrictions etc. IF fleets can handle truck payments each month for years, they can also handle a minimum salary per driver.

With the increasing number of states permitting recreational or medical pot (Which is still a federally banned schedule one drug, which itself as of Schedule one medicines are also a automatic ban against any one with a CDL from driving at all...) are burning up hot tests, failing these and then complaining here that it's not their fault... silly. Go back and review the federal rules on schedule one drugs vs CDL. Pot is in there.

Bigger, fancier, plushier cabs more and more costly. Pending Elogs that prevent you from driving 10 feet theoratically until you have met your hours in the sleeper or off duty. If you told a customer no, you are not getting this trailer anywhere near your dock until (8 hours later tonight or 34 hours reset is over in two days...) they will work hard to fire you.

Truckstops draining even more money for paid enforced parking when it was previously free since basically the end of world war one... there is no more point in going to truckstops. Or even enduring this lifestyle on the road.

I can go on. But all the laws in the world will not solve trucking problems. What the industry needs now is less regulation and less laws. basically the Governments need to back. off. the truckers and trucking companies. They are killing the golden goose with laws designed to destroy freedom of movement, self time keeping etc.

And they gag large truckers with suspected sleep apnea? HA. all they are doing is killing that driver's future in the industry. Let's hire 5 foot 90 pound people who cannot meet any benchmark for suspected apnea.... and also cannot be educated enough to drive properly.

I can go on even more if you like. But I think this is enough for today. You can keep your precious laws. But I rather burn it so that the industry has some freedom to actually get some work done.

 

what??

 

Tell that to the cut rate guys that haul oversize for 3.00 a mile all in. Permits are not cheap, but they do it...

 

I hate the no detention payers, etc. I will add however that when Schneider lost the wage lawsuit in California, it changed the way Schneider pays California employees, and it is not in the employees favor. Schneider lowered the com for Cali based drivers to .28 cpm, and they pay a whopping $13 for your daily breaks, and $11 to fuel and pretrip the truck and trailer. The question is, will Schneider be able to hire the number of drivers they need without raising pay?

 

Just a little criticism of this in the way it is presented, where are the bill numbers and the links to the amendments. When you guys write or call, don't use just the tag lines of the amendments - like this amendment or that, you have to put in the name and docket number of the bill. A superficial google search brought up 300 different articles and posts about the amendments but not one name of a bill in either the house or the senate.