I was looking on an American Tractor forum,A guy was complaining about the freight costs to move his dozer ..Anyway one guy said ,Well the Government has brought in all these rules and Regulations, So cost gets passed down{to every one Bar the drivers }
Anyway , a truck driver posted this on electronic log books .
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Back in the ninety's I was running a dedicated route, making good money. The new laws keeping me from running that same route legally, as it won't fit under the 14 hour rule. It takes 15 hours to do it. So... you have to factor in another truck to do it the next day, while not making anymore money as far as the truck owner is concerned.
I came out of NC last week, turned into the yard with less than a minute left on my electronic logs. Ran the exact same trip this week and didn't make it, due to excessive traffic and had to spend 10 hours less than 5 minutes from the terminal. In the old days of paper logs, that would not have been a problem because anything less than 7 minutes got rounded to the nearest 15 minute entry.
Think about what it is going to be when ALL DRIVERS are required to be on electronic logs in the next year! Things are going to get worse, very soon with the guberment sticking their noses into private industry.
Why can I drive 650 miles and have to stop, but yet I could run twice that if I am in a personal vehicle? The fact that I am in a big rig doesn't have a darn thing to do with how far or how long I can drive. It isn't about safety, or they wouldn't have put that 14 hour rule into effect. If I get sleepy...with this new rule, I can't stop and take a nap because there is no way to stop the 14 hour clock...even if I have excess hours to make my appointment. It is just stupid what the guberment is doing to this industry. How many of you work in excess of 14 hours a day when you have a job to do? I know I have when not in the trucking industry...
As far as wages, there have been trucking companies that pay what i make since the early 80's. The overall wages for drivers is going down, either by owners shaving a little off the cost by cutting the amount they pay the driver, or by the simple reduction of the amount the driver can earn due to new laws.
David from jax
