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HOS' Opinion - USA - The View From the Road
USA -TTNews, by Dan Schobert Co-Owner Pointours LLC (*) -30 Dec 2005: -- With 20 years of over-the-road employment -including some 2 million miles of safe driving- I have assessed the truck driver shortage, and several thoughts come to mind... Consider that:• Despite the hours-of-service rules, drivers often find they are expected to log incorrectly to get more driving time. When I was an OTR driver, I often logged 15 minutes for unloading 40,000 pounds of product from my trailer. This is, of course, impossible, but it seemed to pass inspection when logs were checked.• Drivers often find they are expected to participate in loading and unloading. Food warehouses in particular expect drivers to unload their trucks or pay out of their own pockets for lumpers, or dock workers, to do the work for them. • The phrase “off duty” is meaningless for many OTR drivers. Even while resting in the truck’s sleeper berth, the driver is, in effect, the guardian of the truck and its cargo. He would be expected to wake up and go into action if someone tried to break into the trailer... What does this have to do with the driver shortage? The simple truth is that potential drivers can see these things happening early on and be discouraged from becoming career drivers — a job where the money is good, but not commensurate with the time actually put in, and where there are no real opportunities to climb the ladder to positions with a better ratio of hours to pay... (*) The writer is a former longhaul truck driver who now operates a bus company in Plover, Wis., with his wife.
posted by Unknown @ 12:32 PM
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