Is the sort of "innovation" you often hear here about when people say "EU can't innovate because of regulations"?
Guess what happens in capitalism.
In many countries it's common to see freight being driven by foreign drivers simply because that's how cross-border deliveries are done.
If a truck of widgets is made in Poland and shipped to a store in Spain, a Polish driver will drive it the whole way.
The OP claims that deregulation efforts from 2016 to 2022, originally meant to address the truck driver shortage, actually led to many minimally trained drivers joining small truck fleets that pay below-market salaries and routinely run 14- to 20-hour days using tampered hardware for logging mileage. These poorly trained drivers, according to the OP, would not pass the vetting of large, compliant carriers. Freight brokers, which now "control" a third of all loads, typically award them to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates "below the cost of legal operation." The consequences, according to the OP: legitimate carriers are barely breaking even, cargo theft is more prevalent, and roads are less safe.
Hmm... maybe? I'm not sure I agree. There's an alternate narrative that is also compelling. Could it be that the rise of freight brokers and the adoption of new technology by small fleets enables them to compete more effectively with large fleets, making this market much more competitive than it ever was? Could it be that shippers now have more viable truck-shipping options at a lower cost, thanks to less opaque freight pricing? Could it be that society as a whole benefits from less expensive truck delivery services? Won't this market, sooner or later, be dominated by self-driving trucks, bringing prices down much further, benefiting society as a whole even more?
I was made curious about the possibility of an "intentional backdoor" in ELD (Electronic Logging Devices) that allowed truckers to misreport their hours.
I was not able to find results to directly confirm or deny that this was true, but it certainly seems like these recently-mandated ELDs come with security concerns: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/vehiclesec...
Here's an idea: using slaves in coffee and sugar-growing plantations. This will enable slavers to compete more effectively with large non-slave plantations, and the society as a whole would benefit from less expensive coffee and sugar.
Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?
* long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends,
* possibility to stretch and move your body is very limited,
* bad hyper-processed food, hence so many drivers are obese,
* the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
* plus, as mentioned here, both the drivers and their managers are incentivized to break and bend the law, resulting in unsafe driving.
All of the above would be mitigated by robots taking the wheel.
> These changes were driven by a long-standing belief—pushed hard by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)—that the U.S. faces a permanent truck-driver shortage. The ATA’s solution was to lobby Congress and FMCSA to lower every barrier to entry, convinced that new drivers would flow to large ATA-member fleets rather than small operators.
> That assumption was rooted in an old reality: twenty years ago, only the biggest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Small carriers and brokers were stuck with phone, fax, and leftover freight.
> That world no longer exists.
Coming from the software industry, I've seen similar things happen when decisions are made which turn out misplaced in the longer term.
And I've always wondered - why can't the management respond fast enough to the new scenario?
What I've noticed is that as long as the same management team is there which had made that decision, it becomes extremely difficult for them to admit and make that change. Change only happens when either things get really critical, or when the management changes.
I wonder whether something similar is involved here.
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EDIT: Link to data is at >>46173013
It looks like crash rates jumped after the pandemic, then declined in 2022 and 2023, contradicting the OP.
I was talking to a retired trucker recently. They described a situation where one driver would get the CDL, but shared the cab with 2-3 others (no CDL, maybe family or friends). They would all rotate driving, so at any given time there was a chance the driver actually had no CDL.
At the same time, he says that it’s a miserable business because you’re constantly getting sued (at a level markedly higher than the admittedly poor driver performance)
Calling bullshit here. If they weren't doing that work, they probably would not, in fact, get extra time with family/friends.
>the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
Team drives can cover a majority of the day if need be for long hauling. Short hauling/last mile is capped not so much by miles traveled, but cargo load and unload times.
Folks, get over robotically doing these things.
If anything, deregulation of the trucking industry has had the exact opposite effect. There should be stringent rules on the drivers, but just as equally stringent rules on those that employ and train them. It's a horribly abusive industry, and we should regulate it.
Truck driver is the most numerous blue-collar profession in the US, if I remember correctly it counts several million people. I wouldn't expect all of them to become automotive AI model trainers overnight.
Though I wonder how much that number compares to how much the trucking industry grew in that time. If it grew 200% that would actually mean a big win for safety.
Edit: some quick, AI driven research suggests it might've grown 20%. So... Still an issue
You can say that they would have collapsed over something else if they stayed at home, but this is what the people themselves told me.
Driving to Spain and back takes two weeks. After two weeks of his absence "I felt like a young widow already", said Hana, the youngest of the wives.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/crash-data-systems/fatality-analysis-r...
https://highways.dot.gov/safety/learn-safety/roadway-safety-...
Due to this my dad had to drive a higher average speed of ~65-70mph to cover the distances required and not use up his available hours.
Before he'd drive slower 55-65 ave mph for longer hours and take frequent breaks.
Regulations are fine, but when you make them too strict it makes it difficult for new drivers to join and usually it's easier to be part of a corperation than an owner-operator (my dad).
Trains are most efficient when they are long. 30+ cars, ideally. Capacity of railway lines is limited and lines tend to be shared by passenger traffic as well, so freight mostly moves at night and short freight trains are economically unviable.
It might take a long time to gather enough stuff/containers to fill 30 freight cars in one particular railway head (obvious exceptions such as Port of Rotterdam apply). Which means that you may have to wait for 10 days before your shipment actually starts to move.
We aren't that patient anymore.
This sounds like an echo of ride hailing, where people will now pay a bit more to ride a Waymo so they don't have to tell their financially desperate driver that they'll get a bigger tip for calming down a bit.
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/teamsters-call-obama-move-fo...
The effect you describe of pushing independent drivers into (union?) corporate jobs seems like it was intentional.
From Czechia (based on your name)? Why so long?
* Pauses are required.
* Some roads cannot be used by some vehicles and/or cargo, especially in the Alps. Same with tunnels.
* Some countries ban trucks from their roads on certain days and hours, so a day off whether you want it or no.
* Sometimes your employer tells you to avoid some extra expensive road even at the cost of longer driving time. (Europe has a myriad of toll systems.)
* The cargo for the return journey is usually not ready on the same day, might well take five.
> As of this morning:
> 1,164,093 motor carriers are listed as “Authorized for Hire.”
> 107,757 freight brokers are “Authorized for Hire.”
> And right now, 206 of them list 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY 82801 as their primary address.
[0] https://cdan.dot.gov/files/files/e2451bc7-e1c3-4942-93f2-af6...
> Before he'd drive slower 55-65 ave mph for longer hours and take frequent breaks.
The hours pre- and post-strictness changes were the same, it's just with electronic logbooks it's harder to fudge the numbers than the older paper charts.
This would imply he was worker longer hours than was strictly allowed (at a slower pace/speed). After hours could not be fudged, it meant that the pace had to go up to cover the same distance.
What should have happened was that the expectations of what was possible in a work-rest cycle should have been adjusted.
Further, one big issue with trucking (often came up in Bloomberg's Odd Losts podcasts on this topic) is that drivers are paid per load, rather than (say) per hour. Often what happens is that they're stuck at a warehouse waiting to un/load for potentially hours, which they're not paid for. The source/destination doesn't care because whether the driver is waiting for 30 or 300 minutes the fee is the same: they have no motivation to be efficient. This kills what the driver can earn in a day/week if warehouse folks lollygag.
There are lots of people that do not have the capacity to move up the 'value chain'. All they are capable of doing are 'simple' jobs:
> To enlist in the Army, aspiring recruits typically must take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test and earn a passing score. The ASVAB, with a maximum score of 99, requires a minimum score of 31 for Army enlistment.
> The ASVAB test encompasses various subject areas or subtests, including general science (GS), arithmetic reasoning (AR), word knowledge (WK), paragraph comprehension (PC), mathematics knowledge (MK), electronics information (EI), auto and shop information (AS), mechanical comprehension (MC), and assembling objects (AO).
* https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab/asvab-and-a...
If all/many of those jobs are automated away, how are those people supposed to make a living? It's possible to be 'too stupid' to even be in the military (or at least be in it and have a useful role).
I was driving the Gaspe coastal road once after an ice storm and we were on the road with a bunch of semis early in the morning. The switchbacks had massive sheets of ice coming off them over the sides. It was wild.
It wasn't so thick that driving over the shattered pieces was an issue but it was a sight to behold and turned a white knuckle drive into a real jaw clencher.
Was there for a family issue and had to be somewhere otherwise I wouldn't have been on the road that day at all, let alone first thing.
For execs they are responsible for monitoring key indicators and deciding on what to do.
When things go wrong it could be they weren't monitoring the right things and missed it or the direction the took initially was wrong (either right away or as things changed and they didn't see it).
That's their entire job, more or less. Not trivializing it. The stakes are high pretty often.
People are no longer desperate to get into just any job. They get out of college expecting to get into an "office" work job, be it in marketing, front office, backoffice or middle-office (it does officially exist).
She was fine with things before they came into effect, though.
Check the previous FW [0] article regarding undercover DOT officers, uncovering real-time manipulation of ELDs, and the blatant freight theft, mostly with corporate identity theft on top of that.
Paper logs - as known back then - were literally written out daily. To rewrite, you would just tear it out, and redo 7-10 days worth, right?
Well electronic manipulation is even easier, especially when outsourced to Eastern European countries with teams who work 24/7 in providing that service.
USDOT announces which ELDs aren’t allowed to be used - regularly. Usually because of backdoors, but in other times, the sucky software.
[0] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/english-language-crackdown...
The difference is that Canadian drivers are vetted in Canada, and drive in the US. Where as Eastern European/Asian(Indian) drivers who are NOT here on a visa/temporary residence(green card)/citizen status, are able to get privileged driving status.
They work 3/4 months, make so much money (in comparison to back home), live there a few months, then come back for more earnings.
All the while, their freight pay, doesn’t even cover the cost of running that truck. Example: $1.60ish per mile, is required to run a truck/trailer to break even: equipment payment, insurance, tires, diesel, taxes (!!!!), payroll, etc. Normally, a truck wouldn’t take that freight, unless they are in a tough spot, something got cancelled or whatever, they will only take it as a last ditch effort to make it to the next trip. But consistently the freight being covered, is paying sub-$1. Literally barely covering FUEL expenses only. How do I know? Cuz the brokers giving out these freight contracts tell us the price they got it covered when you ask why the price is so low.
Anyway, this was a tangent sorry lol
Directionally this still looks accurate, and give thousands of truck driver deaths per year, its significant.
Unfortunately I don't have time to go beyond an imgur link, or asking you to generate the table yourself :/