One Too Many

One too many. How many deaths and injuries must there be on our highways before the majority of the motoring public says, enough!? There are problems within the transportation indusrtry that are self inflicted by not only the drivers, but the people who own the trucking companies, shippers and receivers.

We hear about all the safety regulations the government puts on trucking. From equipment, to drivers, to the companies, there are more than enouph regulations to go around. On our nations highways there are more than 46,000 deaths every year. Countless injuries and suffering tolerated. For what? That we all may have the things that make our lives comfortable, convienient, worth living. There is a saying in the industry, if you have it, it came by truck at some point. A lot of the stuff we all have came by truck and usually several trucks were involved in the transportation of parts to assemble that car or other appliance and to get it to the store where you bought it.

So the demand is what drives it all. What? Are we supposed to give up our convienient lifestyles to make sure there are less deaths on our highways? Yeah, like that has even a smidgen of a chance of happening. Let's face it. This is the society we love and have grown used to. There are however things we can all do to help make our roads safer. There are definite conflicts of interest when it comes to the battle between the need to have on time delivery, and the rules as set forth by the government.

Those pesky rules. I strongly believe that those rules in place, governing the transportation industry, came about only after there was an accident. Someone paid the price to make our roads safer for those who came later. When you think about that number, 46,000+ do you realize that is every year. In the 4 years I have driven the nations  roads, over 184,000 people have lost thier lives.

So I return to my original question. How many deaths is one too many? How many maimings and injuries will it take before we all say enough is enough? In coming writings I will hopefully give the general public and those who oversee the safety of our roads some insight as to the way this industry called trucking really operates.

After so long a time I come back to this. I have not looked up any recent stats on injuries and deaths nationwide on our highways, however I feel safe in my educated guess that not much has changed. How does the trucking industry do more than it is already doing to make life on the road safer?

Changing one thing would go a long way to alleviating a big problem facing the trucking industry. The problem? There is on a lot of occasions, a conflict between the needs of the company and the driver and the public's safety. This conflict comes about due to a company's need to be profitable and a lot of drivers needing just to make a living.

How's that you ask? Well, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has many rules trucking must operate under. Hours of Service,(HOS) being the foremost for a driver. According to the employers I have had experience with, if you violate the rules in this area you will be put on probation and then fired if you keep doing it.

However the reality of the company's goal of profit is paramount in the actual implementation of said rules. For instance: I just finished unloading at a customer. It took say 6 hours to drive there, and 6 hours to get me unloaded due to some computer problem at the customer. 12 hours of my alloted 14 are used. According to the employer I have only been working for 6 hours though. The customer is requiring me to be present at the unloading. So there is no time spent in the sleeper berth.

My employer assumes I am lying when I tell them this, because now they need me to drive 2 hours to pick up a load. They see my truck has been off in their computer for 6 hours. Since their computer can't possibly be lying, then the driver is lying. If the driver does not go to pick up the load, he is penalized by the dispatcher and can't get any decent miles thereby not allowing the driver to make any kind of decent living.

For me to go pick up the load I would have to falsify my Logs, which is not only illegal, with very high fines, and can even lead to loss of license for the driver, but could cost the company 1,000's and a whole lot more if I get in an accident. The reality though is that most do not get caught because most are not checked on.

I ask: Would you really want me to drive knowing I have been up about 16 hours already? Yet that is what most drivers are willing and encouraged to do. Recently a glaring example of this in action was the case of a Swift Transportation driver getting in an accident where people died. Not just one death, multiple deaths. On the scene the DOT officer asked for the drivers logs.

He didn't have them. So the DOT called Swift and asked for the driver's logs which they are supposed to have. There were no logs. The driver had driven for Swift for 2 years and never turned in a log. This caused an audit of the biggest carrier in the nation by the DOT. Millions of man hours and millions in fines later, And Swift was off the hook.

This happens everyday all over this country and is practiced by most companies. Profits before safety. If a driver does not go along he is not given enough miles to make a living. The profit margin is so little in trucking, the companies have no incentive to change. If a driver is willing to play along and fudge his LOGS he can make a great living.

The solution? There is only one I can come up with, but I am not a computer engineer. Change the pay structure. So many times I told employers I would do this for a salary and meal allowance. I mean as long as I am allowed to operate in a safe manner? The reason this is not done? Most drivers will not drive for this, because the rules governing hourly wages and salary wages when it comes to overtime do not apply. Let me repeat that clearly. If you drive for a living you are not allowed to make overtime after 40 hours a week because it is assumed you are lying, since it is the driver that must record the time.

You can't pay a salary based on miles. Sometimes it is 5-10 miles after you get off a freeway to park. Miles are as the crow flies. Not actual miles. The mileage needs updating for sure. I wish someone in the trucking industry would consider doing this with a group of their drivers. Just to see if it could be profitable.