Tracy Morgan -- Sues Walmart Over Crash ... You Overwork Your Drivers

Agree completely - and I too see both sides.

The employer used their judgement to hire that employee. They are the ones who make the money off that employees efforts. That employee wouldn't have been there if he didn't work for his employer.

On the other hand, this "employer pays not matter what" mentality is very hard on the economy. Everybody is going after business - lawyers, insurance companies, and government. Lots of businesses have changed their models to reduce employees, because of the target on their backs (I'm one of them).

I'll bet this will mean further rules and oversight for the existing Walmart drivers. I don't know their business model, but they may even consider further outsourcing of the driving. It's unfair that other innocent drivers will have to suffer the ramifications.

 

The biggest problem is that this is already heading beyond Walmart to the rest of us. HOS are once again being called into question if we work too much. I listened to someone from PATT on the Lawrence O'Donnell show on msnbc last night. With a literal vendetta against trucking. It's things like this that make the industry as a whole look bad and hurt us.

 

ahhhh. so you are one of the elusive six viewers that network has. I feel as if I've just seen a red billed blue bird.

I just can't get over how truck drivers are perceived by the public. Imagine the regulations that would be imposed on 4 wheelers if they used this same logic! The list of new laws would be endless.

 

Walmart has significant responsibilty for this accident, if they hired a driver who lives 700 miles from his assigned workplace. Any responsible company would require drivers to live within a reasonable distance of the assigned terminal. When I hired drivers at several Penske Logistics locations that was one of the first qualifying questions, mostly because if we needed him on an unscheduled run (another driver calls in sick) if he had the hours he could cover the run. But that also meant we had to pay him high enough prevailing wage to live in that geographic area.
Walmart's current policy will change because of the cost of this settlement.

 

Do we actually know that he lives 700 miles from his work? Perhaps he had been off with friends/relatives for a few days, and did not have the sense to get his butt home in time to be rested before going to work. Perhaps his car broke down on him. We really don't know. But no matter how you cut it, he should have had enough brains to not try to make a run if he actually had already been up for 24 hours.

 

Ha ha ha. There's certainly more than 6. Faux Noise watcher. Lol. But seriously, truck drivers are the reason for the public perception. We used to be looked up to. The Knights of the Road. Not anymore. Tailgating, fat slobs, the situation in Chicago, the piss bottles, that changed everything. The "Walmartting" of the trucking industry destroyed it. Too many entitlement drivers out here. Too many slobs.

 

I'd still like to see the data on the ECM of the Sprinter.

 

As you were...