Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

OUCH, And you are mostly local. Would have to have a minimum I guess to just leave the house.

 

We run 43X72X102 Wilson's. The bosses like em cause they're easy to load. Only prob is some of the old pits are tight and the inside scales at Riceland are tight. Just gotta be sure ur straight fore you start on. We had a guy hang a crank stem on that inside scale. Luckily that 1 wasn't on me.

 

Yep, I need to have a certain amount or it's not worth starting the truck up. The rock bid was for a 230 mile trip one way. Every load going into Southwest Kansas is cheap. There are many hispanic truckers in that area and the rates reflect that. The town I grew up in Western kansas was mostly white many many years ago... today it is 70-80% hispanic.

 

70-80% hispanic.

I've travelled through SW Kansas frequently and its amazing how that region has changed. Little Mexico. Where I live here in Oceana County (W MI) our Hispanic population has doubled in just a decade. Fruit processors like Peterson Farms have brought them. Once a few families from a certain village in Mexico come in they call their friends and relatives and within a few years thousands of them come. The processors here in the states even advertise in Mexico for help. Something like ten or twenty percent of Mexico's poplulation has immigrated north. A lot of it is due to NAFTA which took away the subsidies for agriculture and wiped out the small farms in Mexico. Now the Mexican tortilla is made w/ American corn but we have their displaced farmers up here.

 

Yep. It's getting bad. About ten or so years ago, a couple of trucking company owners in western Kansas decided it would be a good idea to hire a bunch of latinos and have them haul soybean meal for Cargill from Wichita to western Kansas. It worked pretty good for them until they learned the business and eventually became their competition. Now, neither as big as they once were, and the rates heading out west and back with soybean meal are just plain pathetic. The soybean meal line in Wichita is just full of drivers who can't speak any English, and they're not shy about it, either.

 

I was quoted a rate from Guymon to Wichita that was horrible. Eventually it will get too cheap even for latinos. On the bright side there may be some grain moving locally in March.

 

How do they get to where they are going if they don't know the flippin' language? If I moved to Mexico, I would have to learn to speak & read on their terms.

Called on a trailer the other day & it was the guys dispatch office because the guy who owns the trailer is Turkish Russian who came over to the U.S. three years ago. Anyway agreed to meet them, told them which exit to go to & turn left, the truck stop is right there...Then I realized the exit I told them to go to was also a truck stop exit on the Interstate that crossed 20 miles back. (Exit 82) When I called to ask him which way he was going all he could say was "I see you exit 82 Yes?"

 

I still don't understand how they are allowed to operate when DOT will shut you down for not being able to speak and read english.

 

OH, I think they can go lower. Not so bad if you live in 1 single family house with 20 other people all paying your rent and truck payment.

Oklahoma passed some mighty tough illegal immigration laws about a year or so back. They just migrated 1 state north.