Supreme Court considers a trucking case.

The truck is nothing but a mule in the grand scheme of things. Just like a donkey, it's a tool that gets the real money made for others. That will never change. One must see the entire picture to fully understand this.

 

I disagree that they are not schemes.

Misclassification of employees. Predatory advertising, possibly could be considered fraudulent when they claim to offer help when in fact they know they are using a system weighted against any profit. The fact they have created these programs to shift their employee and equipment costs off on to their employees should be considered criminal.

I hope Prime gets sent to court instead of arbitration. I hope a jury bankrupts their ###.

 

The problem with this line of thinking is that everyone doesn’t fail. Some people make it work and are successful at leasing trucks. They are the minority, but it happens.

I’d be willing to bet that if Prime loses and it forces the megas to redo or stop their leases it will cause employee driver pay to remain the same or they will actually make cuts. They will have to regain their profitability somewhere else in their operation.

When someone willfully enters into a contract to lease purchase a truck from anyone it does not make them an employee anymore than they would be an employee of Lone Mtn if they entered into a lease purchase agreement with them. Nobody has a gun to their head forcing them to do it.

When I owned trucks unless I wanted to go home I was pretty much under forced dispatch. I worked with a couple guys that told me when and where to be and where it was going. I don’t see that as being any different than a forced dispatch mega other than my name was on the title of the truck.

 

Don't get me wrong Inhave no sympathy for the idiots in a fleece deal. And those "successful" completions could be debated. In general they made no more than a high company driver. They just have a soon out of warranty time bomb in their possession.

Not my point to argue about fleece programs though. My point is these companies use them to shore up their marginal profits to stay low ball carriers. The keep driver pay down by saying to earn a living you need a fleece deal.

That suppression moves through the industry.

 

As I have said before, anyone who buys a truck through a company gets what they deserve.
And if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is!

 

That is not what this lawsuit is about. It is the underlying question, but the Supreme Court is not ruling on his classification. It is ruling if Independant Contractors can be bound to arbitration clauses.

When the company they purchase the truck through forces them to buy insurance through their insurance company, dictates and controls where and when maintence gets done, controls where, when, and how the truck operates, the truck owner ceases to be "independent ".

Over the last 2 decades (or more), the category of IC has been used by employers across a range of industries to push employment costs to the employee and to avoid employment law. Back in 2002 Cheveron systematically "laid off" large groups of employees, then rehired most as "contractors" at a slightly higher pay scale, but with no benifits and no employment protections.

 

They almost all do and they are under contract and they make their own decisions. I give them assignments to complete per the contract with those under the authorities and some will refuse the work while most don't.

 

You are close to what many of us think will happen, Prime and other companies will re-write their lease agreements to reflect the issues that they will face with the court decision and that any other problems related to it will go away but the employment resources will have to be adjusted to keep the same margins that they have now.

 

when a company leases a truck to you and your exclusive to haul there frieght under there dispatch and follow there maitanance program where they tell you to do it and get there insurance through them ... I don't think you're an independent contractor. there are some people that make that work for them but I am thinking that is going to change now after the courts are done .

 

A couple small changes and they can get around it simple enough. I’m sure most are already set up as a separate leasing company, so technically you’re leasing a truck from them and following their maintenance requirements. However you only have one option as far as where to put the truck to work when you lease from that company.

I think everyone is trying to make a bigger deal out of it than it is because so many people make the poor choice to do it. But it’s their choice, and then when it goes bad they don’t want to accept the consequences of their poor decisions.

If you own your truck you can lease onto a forced dispatch company and buy your insurance through them, so at that point the only differences are the name on the title and the maintenance for the truck.