Who Represents Us???

I made a disturbing discovery this morning.

Correct me if I am wrong, but, it seems that the three million Commercial Drivers or so here in the good ol' USA are being regulated without due representation.

There seems to be only a few players that have been showing up at the public hearings and that are being heard by the FMCSA and non of them have the company drivers intrest at heart.

Those players are the OOIDA, (Owner/Operator Independent Driver Association) and the ATA, (American Trucking Association).

The OOIDA has a membership of approximately 150,000 or about 15% of all drivers and most of those are small company owners. The ATA has 37000 members who are all corporate size truck company owners. I didn't check any of the roll calls on the various regulatory hearings held by the FMCSA but did do a search for truck driver associations and didn't really find any that appeared to represent the company driver. Of course there is the Teamster who have branched out into other industrial divisions and boasts 1.5 million members but who really believes they are interested in the company driver.

You could say that the OOIDA members interest are similar to ours and in many respects you would be right but, it's still all about profit for their members. Of course the ATA is worse. They don't care about us company drivers trying to make a living, I do believe they are the ones promoting the lie that there is a driver shortage, there is actually far more drivers than the market can support which is part of the reason wages have fallen so far behind inflation.

Non of these organizations as far as I know have ever considered trying to get us reclassified by the government into our own labor class, consequently we are still treated as day labors as far as the labor law is concerned.

Meanwhile our wages have not kept up with inflation and now we are being saddled with Government regulations that makes it even harder for us to meet the demands of our jobs and the needs of our families.

I got no answers.

Wish I could retire.

Please visit my site and consider buying my book by clicking HERE

Screwed

Last night I had spent just about an hour reading posts on an article about a report submitted to congress concerning updates on the HOS made last July. Congress wanted to know if the changes had any effect in improving safety and reducing drowsy driving. The report congress wanted and the report they got where two different things.

The sample of drivers was way to small to indicate anything except what the FMCSA wanted and less than 33% of the sample where over-the-road drivers.

The goverment will never be able to legislate away drowsy driving for the professional as long as they want to deal with only one small part of the whole picture. Here are some more factors for them to legislate if they can:

1. Shippers and Recivers.
This is an area that needs the most legislation. When you arrive for an appointment an hour early and six hours later your finally loaded, that's a problem. It's a problem because you can't rest or sleep during your wait because if you miss your call you won't get loaded until much later, then everyone is pissed at you, so you start your trip tired and angry.

2. Safe and Accessible parking
This is a huge problem and getting worse every year. More and more townships are outlawing truck parking.

3. Drivers Diet
I am not saying they need to legislate what we eat, that would be crossing the line far more than what they already have.

Take a look at the photo that is with this blog, this one shelf is the entire selection of groceries in a popular chain truck stop.

It is a well known fact that a diet rich in fat, sugar and flower adds to poor health and a state of perpetual drowsiness.

The other choices in this truck stop are preprepared foods that are several times reasonable cost and very few of those choices have any nutritional value. Or you could choose from one of the 3 fast food resturants.

We have to eat and the Corperate desire for profit has crossed into the area of greed and is out of control. The truck stops know they have a captive audience and they abuse it.

So, as usual, our wonderful goverment has once again screwed the working man by blaming him and burdening him with more regulation that restricts his income and the choices he can make while ignoring all the other factors that go into the problem they are trying to solve.

If you know some young person considering becoming a truck driver, buy them a copy of my book,"So, You Want To Be A Truck Driver" if I can't scare em off no one can. Get it here:

http://augerles.wix.com4/be-a-truck-driver