zlacker

My dad retired from truck driving right before the covid lockdowns (2020). The regulations were a massive painpoint. During the Obama's last term they passed in strict time tracking regulations and forced everyone to have GPS trackers on their trucks to enforce the time tracking.

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).

>>mrmcki+(OP)
This is some relatively neutral contemporary coverage of the Obama regulations:

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.

>>mrmcki+(OP)
You are drawing a picture of where individual decisions are ineffective in a deregulated environment. Either collective action through a union, or state action through regulation, are needed to induce a safe and sustainable work environment.

>>mrmcki+(OP)
> 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.

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.

>>Zigurd+b2
I knew a driver that quit at the same time, exactly because of these regulations. She was very upset about them.

She was fine with things before they came into effect, though.