The industry hit bottom a couple of decades ago.. and kept digging. Why do you think they want 18 year olds to drive OTR now? They have resorted to using the military as an excuse.. "if the military can have 18 year olds fight wars... why can they not drive OTR?"... Well, they still cannot drink, rent cars or much of anything else at 18. The reason they want 18 year olds is that they haven't had much of a chance to ruin their lives with DWI's and Criminal records yet.. its fertile soil for the blood suckers. I still pretty much hate the industry.. so I try and fing jobs where the driving is the minimal part and Its just a necessary evil. No truck stops, no shippers, none of that nonsense. I'm about to leave for work.. have to drag the MRI out to Idabel, OK then up to Stigler, OK.. its a long day.. but pay by the hour means that they can screw me around all they want.. they still have to pay me.

Yeah, he made a left turn directly in front of me on US-19. I only had a few feet to react, and that was not nearly enough. He got two citations. One for failing to yield, and one for no valid driver's license since 2009.


I've got a couple things that have come back to haunt me, too. A few years ago, I found out what "Sciatic Nerve" is all about. I was unable to walk at all for seven months. The Navy said I'd be in a wheel chair by about age 40. I was afraid that little bugger may have finally caught up with me. I did get over it, and I've been careful not to aggravate it again. Even the head-on didn't bring it back. I don't miss it.

The insurance industry has been dictating too many things. Back when I was training, I had school grads, with their CDLs, that didn't even know where reverse was on the shifter. You've got the guys that finished their training with the trainer in the sleeper. That is NOT TRAINING, but it's accepted. A few years ago (if you check my previous posts), I was kind of outspoken against that, and still am. Both the trainer and the company need to get a good, stiff fine for that.


Bet you've got more and more guys that are hitting their high beams when they're going to pass you, or after you pass them. Blind you through your own mirrors. Oh, yeah... That's training, that is.

All of this is pretty true.. I am here to tell you that the issue with trucking companies is that..... there are no truckers in it. The companies that I have worked for in the last two decades seem to love to fill the ranks of their management with people who have never seen the inside of a truck. I have watched this happen and it just boggles the mind. Why is trucking not like it used to be? Empathy and knowledge. There can be no empathy with someone who's never been on the working end of a truck. They started off as driver companies... but when the old lion gets older, he hands the company off to his kids. Most of the time these lions have purposely kept their kids out of trucks (wonder why?) and send them off to become suits... They become suits, get handed the company and end up lonely in an office full of people who HAVE worked in the trucking world.. they get rid of everyone and hire people like themselves.. then they feel better and empowered. They get rid of anyone with real knowledge and start working the numbers.. the drivers become numbers.. its horrid.

Definitely wasn't like that for me but I was on a dedicated account. 1 night dispatcher was a former driver on the account until he could no longer obtain his medical card. 2 of the 3 DMs were former drivers on the account. The safety guys were current drivers on the account. 1 of the day dispatchers grew up with a father who was a truck driver and her brother was a safety guy for us. Our office got IT. They understood we get sick or tired, just be up front with them and say hey, I'm under the weather. They would either tell you to stay shutdown until you felt better or ask what you thought you could give them, 1 run, 2 runs, 1 long run? You could walk in and ask a question, get an answer immediately.

I was on a dedicated account.. the safety representative.. I knew too much.. but mainly I knew that they had not desire or ability to work on the root cause of their accident issues. Some months we would have more accidents that days of the month. Within a year all of the management was changed above my supervisor and NONE of them had any trucking or training experience. They came up with some of the dumbest ideas I have ever seen. They cut the training time, the gutted the assessments, they refused to spec trucks for the job the drivers were doing and they flat out made drivers expendable... unless they needed them to haul freight.. then they would allow the driver to stay.. until they caught up, then found a reason to fire them. They took my safety coaches away (I had five trainers/coaches that I hand picked and trained to work with new drivers and prospective drivers) No warning. they just demoted them all and sent them back to driver status. They sent me a new safety man.. who also didn't have a CDL.. I trained him over 9 weekends to get a CDL and took him down to test out.. He got his CDL and I became someone he didn't want to associate with. Around December, my boss told me "you know at some point they're going to hold you responsible for the accident numbers?).. July I got a call from his boss... He fired me. I have never been fired in my life.. It was a bit of relief at that point.. even though it really depressed me. It was like having your limbs bound, tossed into the sea.. and then ran over by a speed boat driven by your peers..

That is some serious bull Fozzy! Then the same people complain of a good driver shortage or wonder why their authority suddenly gets revoked by the Feds! Sucks to be fired but it kills the stress you had to be feeling.

Publicly and in the press these companies say lots of stuff.. privately, they don't give two sh*ts about anything buy their salaries and stock options. They don't have any experience to know why the drivers are having the accidents and honestly, there has to be something going on with the insurance or maybe even the truck repair facilities. Worse yet, they have no empathy at all. There is absolutely no way for me to understand how these companies can stay profitable for anyone while choking on millions and millions of dollars of completely preventable accidents. I don't know what the real answer is.. and I'm really done trying. Logic sure isn't working. When I would get frustrated to the point of suggesting that I would resign.. the line was "You can only give these drivers the tools, you cannot drive the truck for them"... When I was told that eventually these accident numbers would be my fault... the whole environment changed.. They also fought unemployment.. which i was forced to go through a "tribunal" on the phone with a judge, the person who fired me and the company lawyer... needless to say, I just stated what exactly happened, The person who fired me LIED and the company lawyer tried to imply some stuff that I stuck violently into his arse... and the judge found that they had no legal reason to terminate me.. So I "won".. but the damage to me was done.. add to the fact that I'm now a "graybeard".. its impossible to work in the field anymore

I can't understand the thought process some companies have either. But it's not just trucking, when I did auto body work many of the insurance co. wouldn't hire a body man as an estimator instead they wanted a green collage grad, didn't matter what the degree was in. I can see some terminal jobs where you don't need driving experience like permits and the lawn guy but that's about it.

It's good to see Fozzy and Windwalker posting again.