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I just read an article about a safety advocacy group pushing to limit your total driving time during the day to just 8 hours. You must be in the sleeper minimum 12 hours.The other 4 hours is dedicated to on duty working time or waiting for load/unload at shippers/receivers.

This is wonderful news for the industry. What'll happen is that they will have to hire waaay more drivers and put waaay more trucks on the road to make up for that lost productivity that the current trucking fleet provides.

With even more trucks on the road driven by even more inexperienced underpaid drivers (and older drivers pushed out of their trucks by lower wages) with fewer places to park safety can only go up.

But I propose we don't have to add more trucks to the road to make up for loss of capacity due to fewer hours driven. We can make all trucks out there team trucks. Well that's only 16 hours a day you say? Let's put 3 drivers in each truck, each guy runs 8 hours- problem solved. Yeah but how do you get 12 hours for each guy in the sleeper you ask? Well 2 guys will have to share the bottom bunk for only 4 hours a day- problem solved.

 

might have?

There are trucks with bunk restraints on the top bunk, and there are even triple bunk trucks. Just ask Covenant about the "family training plan", where two students train with one trainer!

 

Can you imagine staying in a sleeper for 12 hours? I would rather be stranded in an airplane . . . How about this: Every driver wears a helmet, safety glasses, hearing protection, reflective vest, and a fire-retardant suit, drives two hours, gets a four-hour break (unpaid), then "rests" for 12 hours (camera in berth), maybe limits the speed to 50 mph . . . just wait a few years . . .