Eight hours driving won’t work for long haul trucking — you can’t get there from here; long haul means long haul…
I don’t know why it’s a secret, but there is a proposal that has been sent to the White House that may cut the number of hours truck drivers can drive per day. The secret I refer to is not that a proposal has been sent but instead what the proposal actually is. But the rumor is that it might be 8 hours, down from the current 11 (and remember, it used to be 10).
I have 15 years of experience in primarily over-the-road truck driving . It’s hard enough to make money with the 11-hour drive time, or even the previous 10-hour time, but 8, I don’t see it. While it might seem like it would be nice to have an 8-hour day, that is unrealistic. Besides, how nice would it be ? You’re out there on the road. You don’t walk in the door and say: “Hi honey, I’m home.” You go into your sleeper or the truck stop and wait for your next driving round and with the severely reduced drive time it would be that much longer till you see home sweet home.
The main problem, besides a cut in pay, is that you won’t be able to get there from here. Long haul is long haul, not short haul.
It’s hard enough to make the minimum amount of miles — as we know, over-the-road or long haul is by-the-mile pay — under the current rules, let alone the maximum. If the hours were cut to 8 you really could not afford to drive, unless the companies paid more. Now if the 8-hour rule went into effect, eventually they might have to. But that would severely up the cost of shipping and have a profound effect on the whole system, with shippers possibly looking for new modes or systems of transportation as they did when that big fuel spike hit a couple of years ago. But it would not necessarily mean that shipping would become more efficient. Really, fast on-time door-to-door service which is available via long haul under today’s rules is about as efficient as you can get.
Sure there are problems with fatigued truckers, but those problems could be solved if shippers and receivers and trucking companies and their customers and even law enforcement all worked together. Unrealistic shipping schedules and unrealistic expectations by some drivers and shippers and receivers lead to most of the problem. And I will admit or contend that because all those groups did not do a good enough job in cooperating we have come to this point.
In the name of road safety and driver safety, the issue of fatigue needs to be dealt with, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water here.
The demand of economics has improved the efficiency in trucking since I started. In my own job I have nearly 100 percent no-touch freight so I do not have to waste time and energy with loading and unloading (except for wait times, and I’ll get to that in the next sentence). I’ve noticed that some shippers and receivers have speeded up their process (some) and sometimes I get one of those gadgets like you get in the restaurant that lights up to tell me when they are done, so I don’t even have to go into the warehouse and I can catch a nap during the process.
One receiver I go to frequently has cut out the unknown in wait time. While I still think the wait is far too long, I know what it will be. It’s always three hours, no matter what. At least I know and can plan accordingly — and it used to be longer.
Long haul is difficult. Please powers that be don’t make it more so.
As I mentioned in the beginning, although it is known that a proposal has been sent to the White House, details have not been released. But it is known that groups supported by, among others, the railroads, are always trying to mess with trucking. The Teamster’s Union also wants to mess things up, but it does not represent long haulers. It would like to do away with long haul and get the work for the terminal-to-terminal consolidated freight outfits it already represents. Nice for the union, but not so nice for all of us who depend upon a living from the long haul world (and long haul can’t be unionized, I suppose, because by the time they got done its whole purpose would be lost). Also it would be not so nice for the general public, already burdened by the Great Recession, who would see a substantial rise in the costs of goods from increased shipping costs.
