Since this involves interstate commerce, the feds could fix it. Not really a political issue, more of an economic one and vitally important to life in rural America.
Just wondering, have you ever seen anything that the Federal Government got involved with that made things go smoother? I can give you examples of what the Feds do to make trucking a nightmare when they get involved, if needed!
A very good example is the 14 hour rule with truckers logbooks. Once a driver starts his/her day with a pretrip inspection, they have 14 hours to work before they have to be done. Nothing can stop the 14 hour clock, except a break of 10 hours. So if I drive an hour to the port, spend 4-6 hours getting the load and getting out of the port, I have wasted over half of my available time. Companies hire drivers that do only the part of getting the load off the port property and lease property nearby to stage the containers on chassis. Then a road driver comes in and picks up the trailer from the drop lot, and goes about the business of getting the load to it's destination. Some ports are better than others, but almost none have it down to where the driver isn't waiting several hours, either in line checking in, finding a roadworthy chassis, waiting on the lift to grab the container out of the stack after waiting in line again for that, then back into another line to check out. These lines are not a truck or two, they are huge waiting lines for the amount of cargo being moved. A good example is Savannah, Ga. I can run two loads a day out of Jax to Savannah, but if it is the port, then it is once a day. For this reason, many drivers who get paid by the mile don't want anything to do with hauling containers out of the port. Going into a port also requires a TWIC badge, as well as an individual port pass. When the TWIC came out, it was supposed to replace all the individual port passes, and make things go smoother but all it did was take away the money generated by the port for the individual port passes, so the ports weren't willing to give those up. So it added to what a driver needs to enter a port.
This is just a small portion of what is wrong with the trucking industry that the Federal government has failed to fix. Another is the tax increases in fuel that were passed to build more parking for trucks. The private truck stops screamed they were going to loose money if they couldn't get the truckers into their parking spaces as captive audiences. They agreed to provide space for truckers, but with more and more trucks on the road, and log book restrictions requiring 10 hour breaks rather than 8 hours, parking has become a disaster. Parking in Atlanta is
$25.00 a night at the Petro. Parking anywhere else is already filled by local drivers so the average over the road driver has to pay.
I would think a company who load and unloads trucks should provide overnight parking for either 10 hours before or after a drivers arrival for at least 80% of the trucks on any day. A lot of company's just don't want the drivers parking on their property, no matter what, and that causes issues when they take way too long to unload the trucks. I have run my 14 hour clock down to zero and they still want me to leave. I have done a complete 10 hour reset at times while trying to get unloaded.
If your going to control driver's time, at least make everyone involved account for the wasted time!
Rant off,
David from jax
losangeles.cbslocal.com
