How to fix the trucking industry, quickly

I would hope God does not pander to the boundaries of a country.

 

I will keep it simple.
Remove these agencies and the industry will get better in my opinion:
EPA definitely has to go!
FMCSA needs and overhaul more than an old CAT.
DMV needs not be in control of scales.
ATA can just dissolve.
.....and lastly keep the politicians out of my pocket by doing NOT what the people want like insurance hikes and scams.

 

Under the concept of 'vicarious liability', if I hire a contractor to do work on my home, and in the process the contractor damages my neighbor's property, the neighbor would be able to sue both me and the contractor for the damages.

The shipper is employing the carrier, and thus could be held just as liable as the carrier for the actions of the driver - particularly if a pattern of poor driving can be shown.

When I say 'criminaly liable', I mean labeling them as an 'accessory before the fact' which allows for the same criminal penalties as the perpetrator AND a path for a civil suit even if no criminal charges are filled.

In this incident, Schneider hired and retained a substandard driver who caused an accident that resulted in a fatality. Starting from the beginning, would his trainer sign off on the driver if he could be held liable for the driver's actions? Would the Driver Manager say "Schneider’s predictive analytics software sensed that he would be crashing soon.” and NOT fire him? Would the OPs manager? Would the VP of Safety? I guarantee that "Safety First and Always" would quickly go from a cliche watchword to a truism. Marginal guys wouldn't be given the keys and screw ups would quickly get bounced out.

Now extend this idea to JC Penny, who was the account he was driving for. If JC Penny could face at least civil charges, do you think they might start demanding a better quality of driver? Or maybe be more accommodating of drivers shutting down for weather? You think any shipper is going to load a driver that can't speak english? Or a truck being held together with zip ties and jb weld? Companies will use the cheapest option they can, the only way to get companies make safer decisions is by changing the risk/reward math.

 

OK here is what I am seeing, we need to change everything from the way drivers are recuirted and trained to have stiff liabilities attached to everything involved.

We don't have real shortages in other industries as we do here.

We have an appearance of a shortage of drivers, which is created by the revolving door of the Megas.

Drivers are considered labor; they are not professionals by any means, and this has to change.

It needs to change to a professional status by the government and by the other entities involved.

We need to start with better education.

Start with pre-apprenticeship.

Then apprenticeship program that doesn't have to be as long as those in say the Electrical profession.

Then journeyman program to graduate them to professional status.

This will help but until this work is considered a profession, we are stuck with what we have and nothing will change.

 

Have to wonder if some large private fleets such as Walmart have similar issues faced by say Schneider or Swift.

I would guess Walmart does not based on their longer driver tenure vs other large fleets.

 

So, like most "quick fixes", the fallout from drastic action is a drastic re-action a few months later when everybody realizes what a dumb idea it was in the first place (I'd give a couple examples, but that little banner on top made me consider that there were political issues each one, so I can't). And, of course that re-action will come with problems which will fester for years, leading to people looking for another quick fix, yadda, yadda, yadda. Rinse and repeat several more times.

So, the issue as I see it is that 'trucking' as a whole has become the employer of last resort for anybody still trying to make a decent salary, but living in a depressed area. Too many of these people do not want to be doing this job, and their attitudes show. Quite a few are just plain poor drivers. Public perception of the industry goes down, discouraging the better potential drivers from even entering the profession, etc. While all this is going on, companies are also competing against each other in an overpopulated shark-tank of an industry.

In the end, there are no "quick fixes" to complex problems. Anybody who says there are is either short-sighted or has an axe to grind. Problems which took YEARS to happen will take years to fix. No way around that.

So, a massive and continued DOT enforcement action will help a bit, but it ain't gonna work miracles. It's just step 1 on a long, LONG path to reform.

 

You have my vote

 

No English -no CDL
No US citizenship -no CDL
No work visas, temp work cards etc, only a citizen should be allowed to drive the truck. You wouldn't fly a plane if it was piloted by Pakistani pilot, would you want to ride train with foreigner engineer? Maybe take vacation on cruise ship with Somali captain? Hell, your mail is delivered by US citizen, now why would anyone give 40 ton missile to non English speaking drivers is beyond me. Worst case scenario is they'll end up in jail, after they kill and name people like that Cuban dude did.

 

Keep dreaming. Autonomous is already here.

 

Because the powers that be don’t care about you. Speaking of that Colorado event. Notice how it got political and certain interests group got involved and his sentence got reduced. If he wouldn’t have been a foreigner no one would have gotten involved to reduce his sentence to only 10 years. (4 dead and 23+ injured if my
Memory serves me right).