Trucks- John Oliver

So much of that is true, but it is also true that the driver has to fall for it in the first place.

What would happen if NO drivers chose the lease option, and simply remained a company driver?
What if no driver drove for Amazon if they were not an actual employee?
Those companies would have no choice but to accept the responsibility.

How many threads are there on this forum that warn about these things?
But, there is a sucker born every minute.


As for hours of service and being 'made' to drive at unreasonable hours or in bad conditions... I simply don't.
Never have.

Sorry, but you can not MAKE me do anything, because I always have a choice.
It is not only a God given right, it is the God given ability to choose.

 

He made many great points

 

Video Says blocked in Canada.

 

Probably not from a Sparkle Socks approved propaganda dispenser.

 

Pretty accurate.
That said, glad I work for a company that doesn't give me any push back if I stop because I'm tired or think that weather and road conditions aren't safe for me. One of the advantages about a mega I think. They do so many loads, it's easier, as a company, to absorb late loads. I like the way one of my driver leaders framed it, she said, it's easier for us to deal with a late load than to deal with an accident, property damage, injury, fatality and lawsuit. We'd rather you be safe and late than unsafe and wrecked.
Number 1 reason (not the only one) I've stayed with Swift. It means alot to me to know that I am ultimately the judge of if things are safe for me to go down the road or not. If I honestly don't think they are, I can park it, let them know and I don't get push back or retaliation.

 

This may be one of the best pieces on trucking I've ever seen.

He treated us very fairly and made many great points.

And yeah, a driver does need to fall for it. But when standards fall so far across the entire industry, it eventually becomes a question of where are you going to go to be treated fairly, when so few companies treat us fairly?

 

I'm watching it again.

This is masterfully researched.

 

Probably one of the better pieces I’ve seen. I don’t agree with the government getting involved with detention pay unless it is strictly on the employer/employee level. They shouldn’t have their hands in it otherwise. As far as looking into lease purchase programs, the government will never be able to regulate away people’s poor choices no matter how hard they try. If it’s not a lease purchase, they’ll find some other way to squander away their money thinking they’re gonna get rich easily. There’s a reason they have bad credit and why they’re so eager to jump into a lease purchase.

 

I’ve been watching people fall for that never,never plan thing my whole life, and still don’t know how it happens. Don’t know how Megas get drivers either. I though JB and Punkin’ had farms somewhere they were breeding them at.

 

There is no truck driver shortage. Every year 400,000 new CDL drivers get their license. 80%+ quit the before their 1 year anniversary.
According to OOIDA 40% of an average truck driver's hours are wasted by customer delays, traffic, bad weather.
Lease-Purchase programs are nothing but modern day share-cropping. Newbies flock to these programs because THEY WILL NOT do any research, and they will not take "you will be bankrupt" for an answer. Imagine a loved one dismissing your warning not to sell drugs with "but my supplier says I will get rich, and cops don't enforce drug trafficking laws." You cannot talk a newbie out of giving up a company driver job to pay all expenses for the truck and being at the mercy of his company's dispatchers. Western Express was rightly ridiculed in the video, and every single day another newbie on this message board says "we'll you have to start somewhere, so how bad could WE be?"

While the video was a fair and accurate picture of parts of this industry, the government is not going to fix these issues. The IRS and their agencies may put restrictions on how Lease-Purchase agreements are used and they may require hundreds of more pages of disclosures before a newbie swallows the bait, the newbie will still swallow the bait. The newbie is ignoring the info available NOW and will keep doing so afterwards. Nothing makes a bad deal more attractive to "fresh meat" like saying "I'm not supposed to tell you this..." followed by "now sign here." Many of the people entering trucking are people with big problems, no financial education, and lots of desperation. Cash advance and furniture rental stores are not n business in every town because they are helping customers. They are everywhere because their customers want want they want and nothing will stop them from wanting it.

Lastly, most trucking companies already "pay detention pay". That's to say the company puts detention pay on their web site and pamphlet, and some drivers will get SOME of the pay for SOME of the hours customers make them wait. When the government gets involved the most likely outcome is a fuster cluck of such epic proportions only a nationwide full-time mistake-making machine could have produced that result. My best guess is that the govt's attempt to force all customers to pay detention pay will cause the truck parking problem to explode. NO customer is going to allow any truck to be on their property 1 second before their appointment time. Customers with problems loading/unloading trucks on-time will simply change appointment times to "don't call us, we'll call you" and you won't be allowed to be on the customer property while you wait.

Nobody cures problems, especially the government. EVERY solution is trading one set of problems for someone to another person or another set of problems for someone else. The fundamental issue that will keep trucking a blue-collar, disorganized collection of problems for the foreseeable future is there are too many trucking companies with not enough market power. There is no Ford, GM, Dodge, Toyota, Honda of trucking. Even the very biggest trucking company is too small to dictate any demands on customers. If Knight/Swift were to tell Walmart "nope, were're not going to do that. This is how our deliveries will happen at Walmart DCs..." Walmart will fire Knight/Swift and replace them with a few other "mega" trucking companies that can supply enough trucks, trailers, and drivers to make Walmart happy. The biggest mega-fleets in trucking only control maybe 20% of all truck movements. Until someone creates a Walmart or Amazon or GM of trucking EVERY trucking company will have working conditions and economics dictated to them by the big shipping/receiving customers. In many other industries the 5-10 biggest companies control 50-90% of activity in the industry. You need dozens of the biggest trucking companies to account for 50% of trucking activity. Because anyone can start a trucking company in 3 months to undercut any other trucking company, no trucking company has the market power needed to enforce changes. The govt doesn't know the industry and listens almost entirely to the big companies in the industry. Just as the trucking companies have no power to change the industry, no driver has the power to change his company. You can take any civilian and turn him into a truck driver in 3 weeks. If you can be replaced in 3 weeks your demands will be ignored. Every trucking company, driver, newbie can improve their situation by putting in the effort and time to find the better deal for them. That's the only power anyone really has. Newbies will keep taking the bait, companies will keep taking advantage of drivers if they can, and other trucking companies will keep undercutting the next trucking company to get a customer. When people get tired of being taken advantage of they will change what they are doing or leave the industry. Every driver that leaves and every trucking company that folds improves the power of those that remain.