Free time at shippers!!!!

Right, that's why even the biggest fleets, as well as owner-operators like me, are #####'n about CARB and DOT safety stuff. The really big money is medical and quality life stuff, and the government don't want to pay for it. Lawsuits are too expensive. So, that's why CARB is required by law to clean up the air, and DOT is clamping down on driver logbook hours, at the expense of smaller less well financed companies like Swift and Werner. The owner-operators are mostly innocent bystanders with some lobbying power by OOIDA. But, there are still a lot of owner-operators out there.

 

No, not the feds but from the old 'regulated days' when each carrier has a Rules Tariff that laid out these things. Most Tank carriers had 2 hours free on each end, X feet of hose free, how much for the pump or compressor and the cost for extras like forced layovers, etc.

Most of the freight & flatbed people I introduced to tankers at Matlack were surprised to hear that they would be paid detention. Mightleak would take it to collection if it was legitimate detention. They didn't pay until they collected it. I knew one O/O who was around $1,200 in the hole when he quit and I ran into him a little over a year later and he was getting checks every so often since the incoming detention had wiped out his 'debt'...

Hard to believe they went bankrupt!