DRIVE Safe - not.

US Senate Bill S.659 introduced in the US Senate March 10, 2021.

AKA: the DRIVE Safe Act (Developing Responsible Individuals for a Vibrant Economy Act).

And, as usual, the bill does the exact opposite of what the title purports.

In essence, S.659 is a bill to lower the legal Interstate CDL age from 21 to 18, using an apprentice program. That sounds sorta OK on the surface, but dig a little deeper like I did this morning, and it all starts to unravel. Now, let me add here at the beginning that I know I'm a little late on this, but most news just sickens me now-a-days. I'd much rather watch re-runs of the Beverly HIllbillies or Gilligan's Island. I'm re-watching Star Trek: Voyager now. No news on my TV since last November. It's 99% poppycock anyway.

Landline Now magazine (which I still get and read), which is one of the few organizations actually lobbying for the drivers, alerted me to this story. You can access it at their website, but be warned they do require a free subscription. I'll be speaking from the magazine article itself, written in ink on this thing some of you might be familiar with: it's called "paper."

Seems there has been a running complaint about a so-called driver shortage. The article in Landline mentions a story a while back about a company called Sisu Energy who was offering experienced drivers $14,000 per week. That sounds pretty much ridiculous! Trucking pays between $40 and $50k on average per year.

Well, turns out, that's not exactly true. You see, Sisu Energy doesn't even hire employee drivers. They use Owner-Ops exclusively and their ad specifies up to $14,000 per week. Now, as someone with over a million OTR miles under my belt, preventable accident free, let me clue you in on what that means: if you own your own truck and tanker trailer outright, which will set you back to the tune of a few thousand dollars a month, and if you have your own fuel permits and associated government requirements, and if you happen to have an exceptionally good week where you worked 80+ hours along with a team driver, the two of you might... might... make $14,000 that week. Chances are, you won't, though, and even if you do you will see a very low check for the week before and the week after.

That's how the industry works. Loads are paid upon delivery. Let's say Sisu pay weeks run from Sunday to Saturday. So you drove a couple days to get unloaded Sunday morning, then finished up your last load Saturday evening... that's really a week and a half of work, and yes, you get paid for that week and a half of work, but it's all considered to be one week's pay. Forget about the fact that the previous week you only got paid for three days and DOT regs will shut you down for a couple days the next week... the company still sees it as one week.

OK, with that out of the way, who is behind this? According to Landline/OOIDA (Owner-Operator's Independent Driver Association), it's the ATA (American Trucking Association), which is made up primarily of large fleet owners and retailers. Not drivers. Who would this bill help? Large fleet owners and retailers, by lowering transportation costs at the cost of public safety and the new teenage drivers.

One thing I caught looking through S.659 was that much of the apprentice program was to be implemented and managed not by any regulatory agency, but by the trucking companies themselves. Now, anyone who has spent any time as a driver knows that the most corrupt, unscrupulous aspect of the trucking industry is the trucking companies themselves. One of the reasons I left is I found out that the driver is nothing more to the companies than a steering wheel holder required by law, and their own personal safety is of little concern compared to the well-being of the equipment, loads, and customers. Many have been caught red-handed falsifying government records to get unqualified drivers a shiny new CDL. Swift in particular was caught doing this in their driver training program while I was driving, and the pattern continues.

CDL examiner and owner of trucking school sentenced for fraud scheme
Driving school owner convicted of CDL fraud
Former Owner of Lee County Truck Driving School Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Pay Bribes to CDL Examiner
Three Plead Guilty in CDL Scam

These are the people who are to administer the apprentice program for young drivers according to S.659.

Now let's get real for a minute about safety. There's a reason insurance rates drop for drivers when they turn 25 years old: the insurance companies knew long before science proved it that the human brain continues developing until about age 25. After that age, when the final sections of the brain that control foresight and anticipation mature, accident rates drop off sharply. As it is now, we allow drivers to operate that 40-ton behemoth of death 4 years earlier than that; so what could go wrong with allowing it 7 years earlier? Exactly how is that considered "safe"?

I'll also bring up the issue of the 18 year old drivers as well. Most of them in this generation can't even show up for work on time. So what happens when they have little to no supervision? Sure, an experienced driver is required to be with them, but that won't be the case 24/7 and OTR trucking is a 24/7 job. You pick up a load and you are on the road for sometimes days at a time until the load is delivered, then you have to do it all over again to get back within range of home. The better trucking jobs allow the required 34-hour break at home most weekends. The harder ones will keep you out on the road for months at a time. A few drivers I have known don't even have a home; their home is their truck. They use a friend's address for mail and stop by once every few months to pick up their mail. They literally live on the road.

>> continued >>

>> continued >>

One thing about living on the road is there is no one there to tell you what to do or where to go. Experienced drivers get themselves into some pretty harrowing situations. While I was with one Texas-based company, an experienced driver decided to park at an "off limits" (for good reason) truck stop in Dallas. While he was there, he invited three lot lizards (truck stop prostitutes) into his sleeper and was having a fine old time smoking crack coc aine with them. Then he decided to go inside for a shower and left them there in a running truck (trucks generally run constantly unless equipped with an auxiliary generator unit (APU) so they don't get too hot or cold inside). The three prostitutes decided it would be fun to take the truck for a joyride and when the driver returned from his shower, the truck (and the high-value load) was gone. The police found it a few hours later, wedged into the entrance to a housing development. I actually got to finish the run to Atlanta when a wrecker hauled the trailer in, since I was scheduled for home time.

That was an experienced driver. The kind that S.659 would like to see put in charge of a teenager in control of a 40-ton bullet traveling at 65 mph.

The truth is that this is not even needed. There are plenty of drivers, but so many leave so fast when they find out what life on the road really is like. The pay is a little higher than it was back when I was driving, but still not nearly high enough to cover the costs of living on the road and allow a decent lifestyle. DOT regulations have gotten so strict that they now make it impossible to have one of those good weeks... the new electronic logs will catch anyone who even thinks about violating the hours of service (HOS) regulations. Perhaps that would be a good thing, but in many states (particularly the Northeast) there are simply not nearly enough parking spots. So a driver who is in need of a rest has two choices: park illegally and get a ticket, or don't park illegally and get written up for an HOS violation. If he parks illegally, chances are he'll get both tickets, since drivers are usually forced to leave after being ticketed.

Don't get me started on shippers and receivers. I have spent 10 hours sitting in a dock. Had I had electronic logs at the time, I would have been unable to leave according to regulations, but the terminal would have forced me to leave anyway. They could have called the police to come and write me a ticket for refusing to leave, and then write me another one for leaving in violation of HOS regs!

Not to mention the other aggravating things that happen along the way: reckless 4-wheelers, bad roads, construction zones that are too narrow, inaccurate clearance signage in many states (talking to you New York!), tolls that come out of a company driver's pocket, thieves, higher prices at stores we can actually get to, lack of food options, etc., etc., etc. I can't blame anyone who leaves the industry today, and I admire anyone willing to stick with it.

There's your driver "shortage"... and it has nothing to do with anything in this bill. This is nothing more than an attempt to let trucking companies and retailers pad their pockets more on the backs of kids who have no idea what it's really like on the road.

TheRedneck

Very informative post! Thanks for posting it.

In 10 years most OTR trucks will be self driven. The industry will stop hiring new drivers but new folks will be needed to maintain them. Like the old mule trains, truckers will become history.

Don't send your kids off into this dying industry. Going the way of the blacksmith, the ice man and e!evator operator.

a reply to: Havamal

That's BS. It will take far longer than 10 years to get the infrastructure set up, and make the necessary changes, and set everything up for self driving trucks. There's far more to self driving trucks than saying they're buying self driving trucks and putting them on the road. You need people to fuel them, make minor repairs to them, and a lot of other things that drivers do on a daily basis. You might see more self driving trucks on the roads, but they're going to have drivers on board.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Disagree. See ya in 10 years

a reply to: Havamal

I sincerely hope you're mistaken. If not, we won't have to worry about the government depopulating the planet; the trucks will do it for them.

AI is not even close to anticipating the idiot driver who thinks "that truck has 18 brakes; he can stop in time." And have you ever seen what happens to a car when it is hit by a semi? Next time you see that, imagine you were sitting in what's left of the car.

I personally saw an Isuzu Rodeo wedged between my tandems when he was too drunk to see the big trailer in his flight path. The guy was hanging out of the door, which had been ripped off, limp, with blood running off his face. He never woke up.

That's scarier than letting 18 year olds handle those things. If self-driving semis are implemented, I will stop driving as much as humanly possible. The roads will become killing fields.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Havamal

Disagree all you want, but the trucking industry is all about saving money, not spending billions of dollars to completely redo infrastructure, just to remove the driver from the picture. In ten years we'll still see drivers in the seat.

This is a great write up. I only opened up the thread because I have been asking all over the net....WHY IS THERE A TRUCK DRIVER SHORTGAGE, because where I live, our gas stations are running out of gas because of a 'driver shortage', so say the gas station workers. Nobody has been able to explain it.

And you just did. Quite interesting. I am going to share this thread in various groups I am in!

a reply to: shaemac

Trucking has gone through some serious changes since the days of the CB-talkiin', gear-jammin', road knights. Most of it is caused by government, and the rest is the fault of simple apathy.

A driver, any driver, is bound by law to follow certain restrictions on the amount of time they are allowed to drive. When I left trucking, it was 11 hours maximum driving in a maximum 14-hour day on duty, followed by 10 hours in the sleeper berth. At one time, it was permissible to split those 10 hours up, as in, take a 6 hour nap here and a 4 hour nap later. The USDOT stopped that, and as a result forced more trucks into rush hour traffic. The shippers and receivers don't want to hear about DOT regs; they just want their freight there on time. Under "split-logging," a driver could take a few hours nap to try and avoid rush hour congestion, but once split logging went away they often had no choice: either handle rush hour traffic and add to the congestion or miss their deadline.

Back in the day, there was this thing called "loose leaf logging." That is where the logbook is a ringed binder with single log entries instead of a bound book. It was common for a driver to get through their day and then, in the safety of a truck stop parking lot, rip out the last day's log and redo it to show what should have happened. The DOT regs were understood to be there so a driver had the ability to tell dispatch "No, I can't do that; I don't have enough hours" when they were being driven too hard. The driver was in control of the log book, and dispatch was limited in how hard they could push a driver.

Then came electronic logs, with all the problems I mentioned above. The price per mile didn't go up, but suddenly with extreme scrutiny a driver could not make as many miles a week as before. Instead of the driver being able to use his logbook to defend himself against unreasonable demands from dispatch, now that logbook was a weapon against the driver. Since a single driver couldn't make as many miles as before, that immediately caused there to be a huge need for more drivers.

And the pay scale, even though it did rise when I was driving, is still nowhere near what it was at one point before all the regulations. So the actual pay has gone down, while inflation has gone up over the years.

Don't get me wrong; I loved driving and had I not already had a family and roots, might never have had one. But it has changed so much... today's driver is micromanaged by a computer while still being expected to deliver on time every time... and no one cares that the Interstate was blocked due to a wreck or the roads were iced over too bad to attempt driving or the shipper decided to keep the driver in the dock for 7 hours. The driver is expected to fix it, all at no extra charge. If there's an accident, it doesn't matter who caused it; the driver is considered a "professional" at that point so he is immediately assumed to be at fault. They stay out away from anyone they know for weeks or months at a time, are forced to eat wherever and whatever they can find to park in, have to deal with inclement weather, and are treated worse than a dog in most cases (some states have outlawed idling, meaning the driver might as well be in a tent in the weather, unless, of course, they have a dog in the truck. Then they can idle all they want so the dog doesn't get uncomfortable).

And if bills like this see the light of day, it's just going to get worse. I know of one, only one driver who is still driving. I knew about 20 when I came off the road, but one by one they all said "screw it" and got out (or died off). So what we have is a shortage of good drivers, not a shortage of drivers, and allowing teenagers behind the wheel will absolutely not fix that problem.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

It's become massively over regulated, by people that either have a grudge against trucks or who have never been closer to one than passing them on the highway. One of the so called safety groups is headed by someone who lost their son in an accident with a truck. It was their son's fault, but they hold truck drivers accountable, and want to make things "safer" for them and everyone else. It would be a miracle to find anyone in the FMCSA that's ever been near a truck, let alone driven one, but they're making the rules for us.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: shaemac



And if bills like this see the light of day, it's just going to get worse. I know of one, only one driver who is still driving. I knew about 20 when I came off the road, but one by one they all said "screw it" and got out (or died off). So what we have is a shortage of good drivers, not a shortage of drivers, and allowing teenagers behind the wheel will absolutely not fix that problem.

TheRedneck

Makes sense....appreciate your time and explanation into this obvious crisis!

a reply to: Zaphod58

I seem to recall something about the reason for the 55 mph truck speed limit in Slow-hio being the result of the Governor's daughter dying in a similar incident? Split speed limits are another of the crazy regulations that actually make things less safe while claiming to make things safer.

There's an area of I-24 just outside Chattanooga, TN that is a perfect example of that. It's very hilly and the speed limit is 55 for trucks and 70 for cars, rigidly enforced. The traffic is horrendous! The trucks are trying desperately to climb those hills loaded without getting a running start (many times getting down as low as 30 mph before topping them) and the cars are zipping around them willy-nilly because they're in the way. There's been quite a few times I pulled over in a rest stop after making it through just to remove a few yards of seat cover from my butt hole. The place is well-known for accidents.

Tennessee's reasoning for this? Believe it or not, it's all over Global Warming! The EPA got a law passed in Tennessee that allows larger municipalities to pass the split speed limits in their general areas, and those who do get kickbacks from the fines imposed by the EPA. Get stopped in a truck for speeding, and you get two tickets: one for speeding, and another for polluting. I hear the one for polluting is quite expensive, too.

In the meantime, trucks are staying in the area longer because the speed limit is less and pumping a lot more fuel because it takes it to struggle up those hills without a good running start. So in order to save pollution, they require more pollution while endangering more lives.

I also remember one night I drove through the Ann Arbor region of Michigan. I made it almost all the way through and finally pulled into a truck stop. I wasn't tired, but for some reason the traffic was terrible! The Interstate wasn't that crowded, but it seemed like I had a car magnet under my steer tires, and with the split speed limits (55 trucks/65 cars) driving was becoming too much like dodge ball. Turns out, it was prom night and every teenager around was out having a fine old time, making it almost impossible to not squish a few. And these are the drivers this bill wants to put in the trucks?

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

The mountain speed limits in Tennessee and California are accidents waiting to happen. Especially Eagle and Grapevine, where they drop you down to 35 downhill.