How to fix the trucking industry, quickly

Deregulation kills almost every industry, because a lot of companies are run by bad people.

 

@mitmaks
1) What about Canadian truck drivers who deliver freight into the U.S.A. from Canada? Keep in mind that Americans go into Canada to also deliver freight.
2) Also, what about Mexican truck drivers who deliver freight into the U.S.A., & have been doing so for many years?

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

Wall….

cross dock or it doesn’t come in

 

DOT does this several times a year, it called a blitz, it is usually 3 or 4 days and each time they focus on something different. The drivers with faulty equipment, just park their trucks during the blitz.

 

Beyond the folks that just park during it, the blitz has an outsized impact. Say a one truck, one trailer company knows he has an airbag with a minor leak that he has to replace inside 4 months. The blitz might encourage him to get it replaced sooner than later. Now take the same idea to a 1,000 truck company - in the three months before the blitz they're going to avoid pushing off problems 'until they're a dot defect'. Despite that OOS violations jump during the blitz. Now imagine if DOT made the same level of enforcement year round for 3 years before dropping it to current levels - how many fly by night companies would still be operating? How many mega drivers would be dropping bad equipment for the next guy? Moreover, how many mega bean counters are going to quibble about changing out brake pads at 3/8 inch.

Lenny's idea was floated 2 decades ago with CSA. It sorta worked for a couple of years until everyone recognized 1) the score card was meaningless to compare carriers and 2) enforcement was localized and sporadic. As long as you're not more than 500 pounds over axle (or just blow by the scale) you're never getting inspected in NE WI. Heck, the only times they open the Wrightstown scale they don't care one iota about anyone who pulls in, but have 2-4 cruisers sitting on the ramp ready to chase down anyone not paying attention to the 'open' sign. Same thing for Manitowoc. It's easy to run substandard for years until the carrier eventually gets nailed to the wall. At which point they either take the money and run or shut everything down and open up under a new name.

It's been 4 years since my last inspection. Over my 14 years of driving I've been inspected maybe 7 times and two of those were because I was an 'easy inspection'. One I was bobtail at 1600 and got hit with a random roadside - dude needed one more inspection to hit his quota. The other said "I'm inspecting y'all because I know you're in training and I want your trainer to help you through your first inspection".

Imagine if DOT started inspecting 1 out of 5 trucks outgating Walmart or Target. Or rolling up to carrier yards and saying "give me a list of your OOS units, we're inspecting the rest".

 

This is a really bad theory that needs to be done away with.

A better idea would be to punish the people who knowingly caused or knowingly allowed to occur the employee's misconduct.

 

So, all those Canadian drivers with Mantoulin, St Germaine, Bison, etc will be banned? Which of course will mean banning all US drivers in Canada? You know, when I WAS driving, taking Canadian freight guaranteed that I'd get home more often. Living close to the border, US-only freight kept me closer to the midwest most of the time.

Also, the comment about ship captains is just plain dumb. Ships travel in INTERNATIONAL WATERS. What cruise ship today would guarantee you an American captain? Norwegian??? Mediterranean???

As for airlines, a LOT of international airlines use American and European pilots; companies like Emirates, Ethihad, Ethiopian, Cathay Pacific, Singapore, etc.

Oh, brother, talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! So, who is going to pay the costs? What about the extra delivery time, or the loading damage and theft? Gee, you won't even allow trailer forwarding? That's just reactionary, man! I can safely say that nearly NOBODY thinks this is a good idea.

 

Some questions:

A trainer reports that a new hire is substandard and is not capable of safely doing the job. The operations manager overrules this and puts the new hire to work. Within 4 weeks the new hire does something which causes the company a 'legal headache'. Who is to blame - the new hire, the trainer, or the OPs manager?

What if the Division Manager was compensated in part by how many trucks had active drivers - regardless of how productive or safe those drivers are?

What if the Vice President of Safety changed the trainer's reporting process to avoid any possible record of a trainee's defect?

What if the CEO stated that 'training costs are out of line with operations and must be cut without impacting new driver hiring'? It's a paraphrase, but look at Schneider's 2018 2nd quarter earnings call.

So if we're just punishing the people who "knowingly caused or allowed the misconduct", shouldn't the CEO be charged as an accessory before the fact?

The concept of vicarious liability is what allows a company to be held liable for the actions of it's employees. To avoid this, companies contract with subcontractors who farm the work out to independent contractors. When called on their objectively execrable actions the company says "I just hired these guys, I had no idea". I have no objection to a 'good faith' defense but building a liability shield through corporate structures and subcontractors is bogus. Amazon or Fedex Ground don't really care if their contractors go in the ditch - they're not liable for any of it. Not the truck, not the clean up, just the trailer and the products in it (if that). They can pressure their contractors to run unsafe free from any real liability. Change the liability structure and watch how they change their business practices.

 

Whole industry needs to be gone through top to bottom…

Pilots can actually be from any country, but they need to have a grasp on the English language which is required during all safety sensitive operations, should be the same in the truck, even most of the French Canadia can understand basic English, cross boarder needs to go back to in/out only, no in country loads, MC numbers should be for citizens only WITH a valid CDL

speaking of MC numbers, carriers and brokers have them, shippers should be have them as well, and have each listed on the BOL, no more blind shipments, no more triple co brokering, no more third world dispatchers from ####headistan, Shipper, broker (if applicable) and carrier.

Carriers need to understand drivers are not property, no reason to hold them out for months at a time, without the guys to make the money the rest of the house of cards doesn’t really stand, same old story when the market turns, screw the drivers and screw the equipment, yet DOT would rather hold me up for 2 hours to tell me “this air line MIGHT chafe” instead of dealing with the rolling dumpster that is dog tailing half a tandem off because the bushing were wiped out 6 months ago and the cords rubbing on the dry rotted air bags that are leaking so much air the truck won’t even hold 100psi, higher fines for the drivers that don’t anything about it and the owner of the company should also get one

EPA is good in theory, I like clean air, but they are way out of touch with what they need to be doing, kind of the the driver training rule, good In theory, but these guys need to actually be trained, back when I was a company guy it would irritate the hell out of me when a new hire would have potential to be a really good driver yet they wouldn’t allow a little extra training to get them to that point and would rather berate them for the #### ups then show them how to do it correctly