Can you please take this down? It is more than a decade old and things have changed considerably. They say your words will follow you and this is the case here. Maybe some time I'll update this, but for now it would be better to let these old opinions rest
Truck drivers are not appreciated, says writer/driver
By: Harry Rudolfs
Date: Monday, 31. March 2008
In a sense, we’re almost invisible. I drive at night for a giant Canadian bakery so the bread can be on the supermarket shelves first thing in the morning. Like my other driving colleagues, many of whom run close to 20 hours a day, we’re only noticed when the goods are late getting to the stores, or when we slow your cars as our rigs crawl up a steep grade. But we make the front page if a wheel comes loose and injures someone. And we’re certainly noticed when the border closes and ties up thousands of time sensitive deliveries triggering a continental recession, as it did after Sept. 11.
The North American economy is seriously addicted to cheap motor freight and it has been for the last ten years, since deregulation and NAFTA kicked in. A continent-wide driver shortage means medium-sized fleets can’t grow. But the law of supply and demand doesn’t apply to truckers. In an industry operating with small profit margins, freight rates have decreased and drivers’ wages have stagnated.
I’m puzzled to see owner operators working for the same $1.05 a mile they were getting 15 years ago. And company drivers haven’t fared much better. When all the paid and unpaid hours are tallied, it wouldn’t be unusual for a long distance hauler to be working for little better than minimum wage.
The public doesn’t understand that there is a massive wedge of underpaid labour supporting each highway move. If the rest of the world worked as truck drivers, everyone would be working 60 plus hours a week, without a whiff of overtime benefits. Unionized drivers do get paid overtime but they're only a small fraction of all tractor trailer operators. They’re an important factor, though, setting the wage standard and providing a stabilizing influence that keeps drivers’ salaries from tumbling further.
To be fair, salaries vary widely across the industry and have been creeping up lately. But deregulation doesn’t mean an absence of regulations. Rather, freight charges slide to the lowest common denominator, and shippers rather than the trucking companies dictate the rates. Some carriers have to run units at a loss to get them into high volume areas. The entire industry gets caught up in a race to the bottom that no one can win.
For now the shippers and suppliers are calling the shots, at unrealistic prices that can’t be maintained. But the time is fast approaching--like the next time the price of diesel fuel spikes--that consumers will have to realize that they can’t have their cheap freight and eat it, too.
Harry Rudolfs is a Toronto-based truck driver who is also a freelance writer
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Harry Rudolfs,
MJE,
I think truckers or truck drivers are
dumb because they are the work horse
of this great country!! I see what's going on, we are headed for an economic crash in 2015 or 2016 because
of fuel prices going up... thanks to the bail out they are going up again,
yes these brillant people have taken your money and put it into stocks that
are driving up the price of fuel!!!
why do you think they want to give the money back? The same crooks screwed us
again!!! why don't you just bend for the soap and get it over with!! There
are so many things wrong with this country right now that I am just burning mad!! Truck routes don't make sense when you have to go 20 blocks out of your way to make a delivery thats 2 blocks away. I also notice cops
pulling over trucks a lot more do you think it's for safety reasons or because they double or triple the fines
& get their browny points!! Truckers need to wake up!! We need to join together because we have the power to make or break this great country!! Just think if trucks don't roll money has no meaning, what will you buy at a store that's empty!!!
these dummy's that go to college didn't know anything about the economy.
what caused this is the housing prices
were out pacing what people could aford
, We had a war to pay for, didn't you love when the value of your house went up you dam fools you get to pay more
on property taxes & for that nice equity loan.
and the fuel push it over the edge taking more money out of our pockets.
what we need is a new leader like Hoffa
to stand up for truck drivers. MJE
Admin,
Harry, Please contact us re an update. This is a topic on which we would really like to keep current.
Click Contact above or
dkeegan@drivers.com
harry Rudolfs,
Notice the date on the original article. 2002. I've wanted to rework this article several times because there have been wholesale changes since then. Yes, I was and am a company driver but much of what I wrote about is very much different now...It is still interesting to see people in 2008 commenting on the same issues I wrote about in 2002
beano,
I'm a driver will be driving for an O/O.What is the going rate to be paid by percentage and by the miles.
T Bob,
standards for drivers are too low and they will hire anybody to get the trucks moving.
Mike,
I'd agree with you Free Country if getting another job was reasonably easy, but it isn't and the only jobs easy to get are mcjobs in fast food and so on.
Free Country,
This being a free country, I beleave its up to the driver themselves to start saying no to the pay rates as much as it's up to the trucking companies to say yes or no the the frieght rates. If the price of fuel or tires go up, the trucking company can"t say no to getting the tries or fuel. And that works with drivers too. Since the shortage of drivers have arise, it should be clear to all of us drivers that we're fools for continueing to get in these trucks for the rate we have. We drivers have to stop thinking that it's up to some one else to make our salary go up.
Freeloader,
Capitalism is fine, up to a point. But what it means for truckers is that the burden of cheap freight gets downloaded to the drivers. It's a lot harder to find good-paying jobs now, and sometimes hard to find any job at all, so drivers can take the load or starve.
There's another price too - safety! Poorly trained drivers, sleepy drivers, badly maintained trucks, all get paid for by those unlucky few who get killed or injured in crashes every day of every week of every year.
John,
Obviously the writer is a company driver
taking CB chatter as facts. My uncle drove 30 yrs as a teamster, he never got overtime pay for driving more than 40 hrs a week. Companies do not take cheap freight to get to a higher volume area, its in the higher volume area's that freight seems to be cheaper. Higher
volume areas do have more freight, but they also usually have alot more trucks in those areas. No company is going to stay in business long if their income is less than their expenses. Trucking companies and Independents have always been in charge of the rates they get. If shipper can't find someone to haul his load, he WILL raise the rate. No one forces anyone to take a load that the rate is too low on.
Freight prices going to lowest denominator? Ever hear of free markets ?
It is the way free markets and cpatilism
work. You can charge whatever you can get and you can pay as little as you can
get away with.
