Truckers, Beware — CA Wants You Gone

Well......this thread is good. I guess the law wants to get rid of the glorified company driver. For drivers who take their trucks to a company and lease on it's a slippery slope. I don't really know what to make of that. Then I had a thought: drivers that have their own truck but lease on to a company have to pay a certain amount of every load to the company. Is that a loophole that doesn't make them a full blown owner operator? They don't exactly run their own show totally. Each driver still has to follow company guidelines and such, so in a way California is on to something here.

 

Go buy a truck and then tell me if you feel like you’re an employee when you’re leased to a carrier. I know I don’t. I responsible for my truck and all expenses and I’m responsible for all of my taxes.

 

Exactly. You could be the most beautiful girl in your home town with looks that could tame a dragon but working at a Speedway store in Indiana wont get you far. The kids that you see here in West Hollywood look like they were the prom queens and the football stars of middle america. They look like they stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Unfortunately the whole world is here looking for the same thing. My point is that they come here looking for their dream instead of staying at home where there is none.

 

73% of the line haul, 100% of fuel surcharge and any detention pay. Why?

 

And to point out just how stupid AB5 is...the guy I pull for isn’t the guy that has the authority I use. The guy with the authority has no idea what I do during the week and has zero say in how I’m dispatched, yet under AB5 (if similar regulations spread across the US) I would be considered his employee. So I would end up spending extra money on insurance and cutting into my profit for the first couple years just to get my own authority so I can carry on and keep doing exactly what I’m currently doing.

 

If I got my own authority I would still be able to pull for the same percentages, pulling the same trailer I am right now (that doesn’t belong to me), hauling the exact same product. That’s the point I was trying to make, I’m running a friends authority because it’s a way for me to save money, plus his wife takes care of licensing, IFTA, and gets my mail. It’s asinine to take away a business model that has been around since the beginning of operating authority.

 

Yes that's exactly what I saying. If you have to buy the fuel, take care of repairs, etc, why does the company get any of the revenue?