Off The Beaten Path

The turnover rate at the major trucking companies has been holding steady at +/- 100% and with new students making it through pathetic 2-week training schools and hitting the highway with little-to-no real real life experience, we have a lot of people out here doing the obvious when it comes to taking breaks.  And this new 30-minute break (not new to veterans, as we've always been taking 30-minutes, just not logging it!) is causing many people to flock to truck stops that they know and trust.

Flying J, Pilot, Travel Centers Of America, Petro, and Love's are the usual hangouts for most truckers.  And they're packed.  But there are many truck stops and parking lots that allow truckers to stay overnight and for several days if need be, you just have to know where they are.  Since they're not major chains, the new drivers don't know to go there, but these places are all over the country.  

It's interesting to see how an old fuel stop with no recognized brand name will be bought by one of the major truck stops and then fill with drivers working for one of the major trucking companies as if they sprung out of the ground brand new.  Every veteran driver knows of a stop off the beaten path with plenty of parking (or a few spots that are never used), good food, and easy access to major highways.

Perhaps the new guys don't know about the other options because they lack good training.  Perhaps the trainers didn't want to give up their secrets.  I know my own experience with numerous trainers turned out to be a huge disappointment.  I didn't really learn until I got out here on my own. 

Our system is set up to control drivers and keep them under the thumb of a company, not to encourage, train, and help them succeed on their own.  Even the insurance companies require several years of experience before they will let a driver buy a truck and go out on their own.  In order to achieve this level of experience, there's basically one route to take:  go to a trucking school and then drive for a carrier who is self-insured for your first two or three years.  This is the only way to get the experience you need in order to obtain your own insurance.  

It's one way to beat the system.  The large, self-insured carriers like to have a steady flow of cheap new-hires flowing through their doors.  It keeps their turnover rate high so drivers can't plan on working at the carrier until retirement, and it ensures that a driver isn't trained well enough to become empowered to go out on their own.

There is a constant stream of misinformation about how large carriers will prevail and the owner-operators will all suffer and die out.  You hear it on the trucking radio shows, read it in the corporate sponsored trucking magazines, and see it on the fuel islands and docks. Despite this negative false rhetoric, owner-operators make up 80% of the trucking industry.  Company drivers, only 20%.  

And it's these 20% of drivers who clog the truck stops during break times and overnight stops.  If you're one of the mass groups of drivers who've eked their way through a 2-week trucking school to be called a "professional" truck driver, only to be stuck relying on your GPS which will guide you under low bridges and through non-trucking approved routes, and you can only park at the major truck stops because you weren't taught any better, then you owe it to yourself to become educated and stop listening anyone who will tell you that learning about trucking is a waste of time.

Sadly, I don't see this changing anytime soon.  Because it doesn't benefit the powers that be who are disseminating the information.  I don't agree with it, but everything's about money and if it doesn't make someone money, it just isn't worth doing.  Even if it means that lives are lost in the process.  What trucking needs is real training, and for the operators of these large trucks to be considered professionals who have a skill.  But you see, if this happens it will cost the people who rely on trucks billions of dollars.  The major carriers have figured all of this out.  And that's why they don't provide adequate training.

Until they do, truck stops will be full of trucks, accidents will continue to occur, and the HOS will be designed and crafted by the corporations and the government, instead of the drivers. 

It takes years of trial and error, common sense, and the ability to maneuver a 40-ton vehicle around this nation's dilapidated infrastructure and among the growing population of our nation, to successfully operate a semi truck.  

And training from a 2-week school trucking school just isn't enough to achieve it.