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TRUCKERS' LIFE * USA: These are the people who haul our food across America
* Texas - "Trucking is not a 9 to 5 job. It's really a 24-hour operation"
-- Says Cody Blankenship, owner of 4BTrucking, which operates out of Waco, Texas. He logs about 100,000 miles a year on the road. A planned run during harvest time this year will keep him away from home, and his young daughters, for a five-week stretch... Chefs may now be celebrities, farmers our food heroes, and small-batch producers worthy of culinary canonization. Yet the workers who make up one of the largest groups in the American food system rarely get a mention: truckers... Many of the drivers who haul produce and livestock across the country every day are small-scale owner-operators. The model dates back to the 1930s, when farmers would haul their own product... These days, even the most orthodox locavores depend on farmers who depend on truckers to bring them seeds, tools, and machinery... Truckers like Cody Blankenship, owner of 4BTrucking, who operates out of Waco, Texas. He grew up in a cattle family and started off hauling animals destined for steaks and burgers...
(Photo courtesy Cody Blankenship - Blankenship says truckers like him who move food and livestock spend a lot of time "out in the country, and out in the middle of nowhere, so you've got to be prepared and a little self-sufficient.")
... The Salt caught up with Frick just after he'd finished a drop in Ohio. When I ask about his day, he begins by saying, "It started last night." He left Wausau, Wis., where his company, L&S Trucking, is based, and drove 300 miles to Chicago for two pick-ups. As we talk, he's on his way to New York, then up to Vermont, where he'll reload with cargo headed back to Wisconsin before going south just over the Massachusetts border, where he'll pick up loads to drop in New York, Ohio and Michigan... This kind of schedule means time is a problem for a long-distance trucker. Not the hours sitting alone in the cab, but the hours wasted while waiting on unprepared clients... Because owner-operators are typically paid based on a percentage or by the mile, not by the hour, "there is no financial incentive for those who ship or receive a truck to make efficient use of that driver's time," says Norita Taylor of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. So truckers, she says, "are treated like rolling warehouses" and are often kept waiting hours on end at loading docks... As a safety measure, federal regulations require drivers to work no more than 14 hours in a 24-hours period before taking a 10-hour break. And once the clock starts ticking, it doesn't stop, so sitting and waiting eats into the drive time, and that eats into the profits... For Blankenship, "Trucking is not a 9-to-5 job. It's really a 24-hour operation" ...
Waco, TXS, USA - WGBH News, by ANNE BRAMLEY - 5 Sept 2015
Labels: truckers' life
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