USA today article on trucking lease scams

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm "Truckers News"

 

I don't get why the efforts seem to be focused on only portraying the large retail corporations as the "main problem". Why do they not call a spade a spade and make the various carriers in the chain guilty of lease abuses? Rather, the writer wants to make the carriers the "helpless victim" of big retail. Give me a break.

I hold the bosses at "Port Express Trucking" directly and exclusively responsible for these problems, NOT Walmart or Samsung and the other large retail corporations who are not even remotely directly responsible for the abuses noted.

This is a trucking company (carrier) is the villain problem, not a retail giant is the villain problem. The retail end pays the carrier to move the goods. How or if the carrier disburses the money to it's own subcontractors is not retail giant's problem.

 

But in the end, where the problems of these truckers (excuse me - "business men") who don't have sense enough to come in out of the rain, and could be sold these worthless lease contracts are concerned



Figure it out already, drivers. Don't come looking to me for sympathy as you try and survive in the anti-business state you built with your voting history.

 

Interesting read. A couple of paragraphs worth noting...

"In 2008, California sparked the labor problems at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by banning older trucks from entering the harbor.

Companies suddenly faced the prospect of replacing 16,000 aging big rigs with newer, cleaner trucks.

To avoid the $2.5 billion price tag, the port trucking industry launched a lease-to-own program that pushed the cost onto truckers, most of them independent contractors who had to cover their own expenses. Trucking companies arranged to finance their fleet, then passed on the cost of each truck to an individual driver.

It didn’t take long for retailers to embrace the extraordinary solution and then tout it publicly."




"In October 2013, Total Transportation, one of the busiest trucking companies working the Los Angeles ports, threw a party to celebrate the success of its lease-purchase program. A driver and his father had recently completed the program by working double shifts for four years.

Local politicians and other trucking executives huddled under white tents and ate sandwiches."

 

I kinda agree, but I do not hold the trucking company 100% responsible. The "poor" truck driver that signed the lease is also responsible up to the point the trucking company broke the contract.
What I mean by that, is if the trucking company did 100% of what was required by contract then the truck driver is 100% at fault, and the fault shifts to trucking company only if they broke the contract.

If it was simply a very, very poor business decision on the truckers part, well... they should read the contract and get legal advice before signing it.

This whole portrayal of the "poor, abused trucker" the article tries to spin is crap in my mind. Leasing is starting a business, it need to be treated as such. If the business cannot survive, then it needs to dissolve before it puts the business owner (trucker) in so much debt there is no way out.

 

I read the article and from what I could tell these companies took advantage of a bunch of poor immigrants who didn't know what they were getting into due to their inability to understand English to know what they were signing. Whatever happened to the requirement to be fluent in English to get a CDL? Isn't this supposed to be a requirement for a CDL, or am I just getting old and senile? Maybe these so-called investigative journalists should have dug a little bit deeper and seen that they weren't supposed to be driving a truck at all.

 

In California it's called 'Equal Opportunity Discrimination'. That's a nice spin for political correctness! Makes the Gap, Uber, (read many more sweat shop labor outfits), identity politics, fake left crowd feel good while their bosses rack up millions in profits.
People like Mr. Bezos (Amazon) can buy more vacation homes and yachts, while their workers get worked to death.