For All You Truckers, What would You Like?

First, I'd like to see the transportation wage exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act abolished. This is exhibit 1A proving how the government and trucking companies have always been in open collusion against drivers.

Second, the schooling, training and testing of drivers has to be much more rigorous. The bar is much too low for entry into the industry, driving down wages and safety. I have the obsolete notion that commercial driving is a trade, and we should be tradespeople on the order of plumbers and electricians- Not short order cooks.

Again, I am not placing any fault on new drivers, they are just as much victims of the system as the rest of us were when we started out.

 

idling laws, if I cannot stay warm/cool to sleep how can I be safe? If I cannot run the truck then I should have a APU as on all trucks from the factory.

 

What would I like or like to see changed.

1) I would like the HOS rules to go away, because I am not you and you are not me, and each of our individual bodies need different amounts of things, sleep included. I do fine on 6HR of sleep where someone else does fine on less or more. And the times I may need to sleep may not be
when you need to. Example after 11HR of driving I may not be tired, when you may be, Therefore it should be the responsability of each indiviual driver when to sleep and when to drive.
2) I would like all brokers and dispatchers to have at least X number of years 48 state driving experience before they can become a broker or a dispatcher. That way you have someone that actually knows what they are talking about. Example they can understand when a driver is running
late because of weather, traffic, sitting for hrs to unload/load ect.
3) I would like Qualcom to be banned from trucking. There is nothing like a person to person phone call. Example with a phone call you feel the attitude of who you are talking to, are they happy, sad, or mad. You feel more human, and dispatchers all know you are human when they hear a voice on the other end, unlike Qualcom. Qualcom gives the dispatchers/drivers a feeling as if they are mechanical
robots, or worse a chimpanzee, because there are no emotions tied to computers. Even with the LOL, LMOA and smiley faces they still lack what a human voice can give, and thats true genuine feelings.
4) I would like trucking to be seen as a SKILLED TRADE, not just some last resort JOB, or this will pay for college type of JOB, or if you can do it I can do it type of JOB. It sould be a skilled trade that requires at least 6 month to 2 years of training before you are allowed on your own. It should be required that the new driver cannot be taught by a newbee, but has to be taught by a driver with at least X number of years of driving experiance.
5) there should be some UNITY in trucking, such as freight rates and graduated rates for specialty freight or haz mat freight. I would like the cut throat attitude to be gone, and UNITY for better fair rates put in place.
6) I would like there to be more respect for truckers from all walks of life, but then again respect is earned and not given, and that is why trucking has lost its respect. We have allowed trucking to become degraded
from what it was in the past, and all the hard work our fathers/mothers, and their fathers/mothers put into trucking to make it a SKILLED TRADE and a RESPECTED TRADE, our generation has squandered away and let everyone walk all over us and push us around, until you have what we have now and that is NO respect from others or for each other, and its a drivers mill market and no longer the skilled trade market.
7) I think each state should honor other states CMV laws. Example Tn
allows CMV's to have tinted windows, but other states don't. Those states that don't allow tinted windows should only apply to CMV's and drivers that live in their state.

 

Yes I agree it would be nice te treated like a human at these shippers and consignees, some of these people are so mean sometimes and act like omg another trucker what the heck. I would like there to be a commercial plastered everday on fox, abc, nbc ect on how to drive around a truck how not to drive around a truck and on an on. Would also be nice to have more truck stops and for the ones that always fill up on a nightly basis to expand and make a bigger parking lot or actually plan out the parking spots better.

 

I think in my retirement (With Swift, it's only 135 years away! lol) i'm going to open my own truck stop.
*Free Wifi
*Free coffee
*15 minute pull through parking spaces that are close (NOT the fuel island)
*$5 showers
*Doubles pull-through parking area
*Vast parking lot
*Cheap but tasty grub
*4wheeler area seperated from trucker area

Would you guys stop there?

All I want out of trucking is to be paid a fair wage. (NO SWIFT JOKES!)
Russ

 

I see you're a philanthropist...