8 hours a day?

Well now hello to anyone that finds this and reads it. Thank You. Now to the point of this post.
I am a truck driver. I realize that and about $3.00 might get me a cup of coffee, but it is what I am. Those that drive know that there is a controversy over the hours that drivers are allowed to drive, and it is getting pretty ugly. Now a group of groups including the Teamsters Union, has filed suit demanding that truck drivers only be allowed to drive 8 hours a day, and work only a total of 12 hours a day. This suit also calls for limiting hours worked in an 8 day period to 40 hours. As a truck driver I think this is pretty much insane. Right now I am allowed to drive 11 hours a day, and only 70 hours in 8 days. The daily driving hours must be completed in 14 hours from the start of my day. This means that if I stop during the day for a break, or to inspect my truck, or get fuel, or anything it counts against my 14 hour work clock. Even if I stop and take a nap it counts against my 14 hour clock. Normally I just do not stop. These rules were described by the venerable Senator from New Jersey,
Frank Lautenburg as unsafe. Mr. Lautenburg is absolutely correct, forcing drivers to drive even when they feel that they should take a break is horrible. The new rules whatever they turn out to be will be worse, and of course there will now be electronic on board monitors to insure that drivers park the truck after driving for 8 hours.
The down side is that there will be more accidents, lots more, and less drivers lots less. At an average speed of 57 miles per hour a driver will be able to get about 450 to 460 miles a day down the road with these rules. That means that lettuce and other produce from California will require about 6 days to get from California to say Washington D.C. Currently the same trip is done in 5 days. What does one extra day mean? Lets see the lettuce which is perishable will only be able to be on the shelf 2 days instead of 3 or 4. But that is OK because Mr. Lautenburg feels that the food you buy is already too cheap, and too plentiful. Besides produce grows at the back of the Whole Foods store, it isn't shipped all the way across the country.

After reading the article on the suit I did a little math. Currently under the 70 hours in 8 days rule in order to keep moving and make a living most drivers only drive about 8 hours a day, with the occasional longer day to get the product to the receiver on time, but by in large 8.75 hours a day (this is figuring on .25 hrs a day for fueling and .50 hours a day for a post trip inspection) is the only way that a driver can make a living. You see at 8.75 hours a day a driver never runs out of hours. So lets change the rules to 8 hours a day driving go ahead. That means in order to keep rolling the average driver will drive about 5 hours a day so that he can keep going. It also means that the current driver shortage will increase because people have to make a living and at 250 miles a day times the industry standard of about $.35 a mile most folks could make more money flipping burgers for minimum wage. So the Teamsters will get to hall all the freight, but there won't be much of that either because of time sensitivity most freight will end up on the rail. I for one will find something else to do for a living if these proposed hours go into effect. It is already hard to find a safe secure place to park after my hours are up. I spend almost two hours every trip planning on where to park and how far to drive each day, and parking is at a premium right now. Take away the night time hours, and force trucks to park after 8 hours of driving and the wrecker companies will get rich.
All of this does not address the fact that good old "Joe sixpack the factory worker" can work 80 hours a week, then load his family into the car and drive 16 hours to get to a vacation spot and while tired and seeing the taillights of a tractor trailer ahead he decides to follow the truck. He doesn't realize that the truck is pulled off the road because his 8 hours are up, and good old Joe drives right into the back of the truck and kills himself and his family. The truck driver was complying with the law, and was at the end of the rest area, but that doesn't change the fact that Joe and his family are dead. Lets make it so trucks can only drive from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. and make it so that if they are parked they are in an area that cars can't drive into them. But lets not make Joe and his ilk drive safer, lets just blame the nasty old truck.
If the above sounds insane, how about this question, If all the trucks have to be parked 16 hours a day, where are they going to park? If Drivers are only allowed to be on duty 12 hours a day and we do not make shippers and receivers load and unload trailers in a timely manner how is the freight going to move?

Trucking has gotten a lot safer, and a lot more dangerous at the same time. The trucks are safer, and more comfortable to drive than they were when the HOS were first implemented, we now have air ride, auto shift, air conditioning, power steering, seats that have lumbar support, and satellite radio. Drivers are not as fatigued at the end of the day because of these comforts, and the same statistics on crashes that the group sites in their court filing show that 90% of the fatal truck accidents are caused by the cars involved (inattentive driving, ignorance of the rules of the road, fatigue of the car driver, defects in the car) are just some of the reasons sighted in truck car accidents. But all that aside, all it takes is one slick trial lawyer to tell a jury "The driver of the truck involved in this horrible accident did not have to be there. If he had followed the rules 7 days earlier and not driven 45 minutes too long after his 14 hours were up that truck would not have been there, and my client might have driven off the road and wrecked his car while he was drunk, and after he had worked 90 hours in a factory and driven 17 hours simply to get his family to their vacation. But no this evil truck driver driven by the almighty dollar didn't follow the rules and murdered my client and his family!"
That is an exaggeration, but you get the drift.
So in short I sure do hope the grocery stores figure out how to grow food in the back room because the way things are going there won't be anyone interested in driving trucks to get them from the farm to the market.

Dave Talley

Time is money except in Trucking

Truck drivers do not realize it but they work for free a lot. The rules require it, and you have to do it. A driver gets 70 hours in 8 days, and is required by law to work at least 45 minutes a day doing post trip inspections, and fueling. This time adds up to 7 and a half hours a week, or 1/10 of the 70 hours the law allows us to work in 8 days.
In addition the law requires that we only drive 11 hours a day, and not work and drive more than 14 hours a day. These rules are in the interest of safety. They do not enhance safety. In fact the end result of the 14 hour rule is that most drivers drive at least 10 hours without stopping. Some, including me, will start driving and plan to not stop until they have driven for all 11 hours. It is not safe, and it is tiring, but if I stop for a two hour nap, and to eat I cannot drive all 11 hours because of the 14 hour rule. So I, we drive without taking a break, or a nap. All in the interest of safety.
I really think that the rules should be changed. The first rule that needs to be changed is the 70 hours in 8 days. This rule was put there to make unions happy. If drivers were allowed to work every day without having to worry about going over 70 hours no one would ever cheat on their logs, and most would drive about 8 to 9 hours a day, and be able to take decent breaks too.

But as long as we allow some no driving attorney to write the rules, we will be forced to work for free, and limited in the number of hours we can work in an 8 day period. The rules were originally written when trucks were not comfortable, and were probably a lot of work to drive. Today's trucks are a lot more comfortable, and a lot safer than the trucks that were around even 20 years ago.
So time is money, unless you are a driver, the rules keep making it harder and harder to be profitable. If truck drivers wanted to get together, and they should, we could very easily get some of the rules changed. The ramifications to individual drivers would be minimal. We need to organize, not as a union, but as a single voice to demand that common sense be applied to things like, uncompensated work, driver pay, and hours of service. Right now the attorneys have gotten rich off the lack of common sense used in applying the rules. The typical tort attorney gets a jury to find against the truck driver by saying "If this driver had followed the rules his truck would not have been there to kill my client!" Never mind that his client was drunk, or that his client had driven 24 hours after working in a factory for 84 hours in seven days. Never mind that his client fell asleep at the wheel. The mere fact that the truck was there makes the truck wrong.
Almost everything costs more because attorneys have gotten rich off claiming that others caused their clients harm. Forget the fact that common sense tells you that coffee is hot, lets force stores that sell coffee to have to pay extra to print "caution hot" on the cups they sell. They of course pass that cost on to us, and the attorney made a fortune, and the poor lady that got burned by the last unlabeled cup of coffee received very little of the millions that the defendant paid out.

So any way time is money, unless you are a truck driver. Then your time is worthless. The way to get the rules changed is to comply with them. When people cannot get their groceries because the trucks that are trying to deliver them cannot legally get to the receiver because the shipper wasted 10 or 12 of the first day's 14 hours taking coffee breaks and lunch breaks instead of loading the trailer in a timely manner, things would change. But instead of logging all loading time as free work time most truck drivers show the minimum 15 minutes for loading. They do this so they can driver more, and most truck drivers do not make any money if the wheels are not rolling.
The bottom line here is that if truck drivers would just agree that the paint on the walls is one color, we could agree to follow the rules 100$ of the time. This would take about a month and the people that rely on trucks to get their products to market would start screaming. In addition if truckers would just comply with the speed limits where the states split them by 15 miles per hour between trucks and cars, those laws would be changed too. If any one has any idea how we can get truckers to decided to cooperate with each other and get stuff changed let me know.
Imagine if every truck in the country stopped for just one day, what would happen. It is scary how much of the economy truckers control. But most just want to argue that it cannot be done.
Bounce

There may be a web page replacing this blog

I am thinking about starting a web page instead of or as a replacement for this blog. As a minimum I will be setting up a discussion group for Truck Drivers soon. I would like to get some comments or inputs from folks as to what to do with it. The goal is to start getting organized. If we can agree on the color of the paint on the wall, maybe we can organize and start doing something about the way truck drivers are paid, treated, and generally disrespected.

Help me out here. Comment on what you think will help, and let me know if you have any ideas. I think that if we try we can get it so that drivers can drive at least ten hours every day, and stop having to deal with the seventy hours in eight day rule. If that change were made everyone could operate safer.

Thanks and I hope to get some input please.

Dave Talley

How to get truckers to organize

The question is how do you get truck drivers to organize? They could do it easily, and if they did they would be able to control the country. It would not take long, just 24 hours of no trucks moving anywhere and the country would realize how important truckers are. Imagine no one could get gas, milk, bread, tomatoes, potatoes, or anything else. Just 24 hours is all it would take. Or maybe if they could all agree to do the speed limit in the split speed states. Imagine California with every truck doing the speed limit. No one could ever get on the highway because the right lane would be blocked with trucks doing the speed limit. That would take about a week and they would change the law.

But then if every one would log legal, nothing would ever get where it was supposed to be on time, and it would have the same effect as shutting down. But truckers won't do that because they are afraid of losing their jobs, and or their income. There has to be a way to get organized and get things changed. Hopefully someone will read this blog and have an idea of how to do it.

Things that Truckers should work to CHANGE

1: Hours of Service Rules as they currently are make it harder for truck drivers to make a living.

a) 11 hours of driving allowed in a 24 hour period (this one is OK but
could stand some changing).

b) A driver can only work and or drive 14 hours in a 24 hour period (this one
is just stupid. It is one of two reasons that drivers falsify their
logs. Work is poorly defined in the rules, and drivers are not compensated
for this time in any way. Work is defined as waiting at docks, loading or
unloading trailers and post trip inspections, pre trip inspections, accident
reports, repairs on the truck, waiting on hold for dispatchers to talk to
you, and on and on).

c) 70 hour rule. This one states that a driver cannot drive and work more
than 70 hours in an 8 day period. This is the one rule that causes the most
log falsification of all of them.

Truckers should work to change these rules. For safety, and for profit. If we could drive 10 hours a day every day, and be allowed to decide when and how we did that we could all make money, and there would be no need to every falsify a log page.The rule that allows a driver to reset the 70 hour clock would not be needed. Having 10 hours a day to drive would give Company drivers 550 miles a day, and Owner Operators could get about 600 to 630 miles a day in that time. So that is the rule we should focus on. Also work should be defined as all time for which a driver is compensated. In short although Inspections, Accident Reports, Phone Reporting and Loading and Unloading time should be recorded it should not be taken away from drive time. The two different times should not be mingled. They should be exclusive of each other.

That is it for today. I will try to make this blog as interactive as possible. Comments will not be moderated here, but you will have to identify yourself to comment.
Dave Talley

First an explination of why this blog is important

OK, my profile tells you that I am a truck driver, and a biker. But it does not explain why I am writing here. The American trucker is under payed, under appreciated, and under estimated. All of these things are the fault of the American Trucker.

People do not realize that without trucks and troops this nation would be lost.* People really do believe that the things they buy come from the Grocery store, or the Hardware store. They never think about the fact that it got there on a truck. Trucks are smelly, oily, road blocks. In general trucks are a nuisance. Something that is in the way. People do not realize that without trucks they would be like stray dogs. That is to say without trucks people would be naked, hungry and homeless. Unfortunately the American Trucker also does not realize this. If they did they would do something about being under payed, under appreciated, and under estimated. I once saw a T-Shirt in California. It was on a truck driver. It read "Never Underestimate the American Homo Sexual! They Vote and they are Organized!". I laughed when I read it, but then I thought it was very very correct.

This blog is titled "What color is the paint on the wall" It is a question, but it is an answer too. The problem with the American Trucker is that they are not organized, and although they vote, no one knows it. There is an old joke about truckers that is the basis for the title of this blog. It goes something like this:
"If you put five drivers in a room painted white and gave them thirty minutes to
discuss and decide what color the paint on the wall is the results would be simple. When you came back they would all be bloody, their clothes would be torn off them, and any furniture in the room would be destroyed. The drivers would not know what happened, they would deny what happened happened, and they would all five tell you the wall was painted a different color."

Funny but true. Truckers cannot decide to organize because they are too independent. I have a friend that says we are ignorant. Not stupid just ignorant. Drivers do not realize that if they would organize and get together they could change they way they are treated, and payed, and thought of.

In the 70's truckers in this country were revered by almost everyone. They were the knights of the American Highway. They were payed well and pretty much everyone knew that without trucks America would stop.
Something changed. What it was I do not know for sure. I think it was the drivers themselves that changed. The economy got bad, and people needed work. I went into the Air Force because I could not find any other kind of work. Truckers took lower pay, and put up with just about anything to feed their families and pay the bills.

I have discussed this with many many drivers. They all agree we should do something, but they do not know what to do. I think the first step is to talk about what needs to be done. So I am starting this blog. I may open a web site, but that will come later.
There are some good Organizations that truckers should join. OOIDA (Owner Operators and Independent Drivers Association is one. Road Dogs is another (Road Dogs are just friends that listen to channel 147 and 61 on Sirius/XM radio, but they talk to each other too. That is good. Getting ideas talked about is a good start.

The next post will list some of the things that I think we as drivers should do and things that we should work to change. We can make this a better profession if we change things, and we must simply change them slowly.

Dave Talley

*This saying is something Krazy Karl says a lot in the month of May, and something he has painted on the back or his pickup truck.