Be careful what you wish for
It’s been two long years that phrases like “unprecedented times” started infiltrating our conversations when our lives changed drastically, almost overnight. Panicked buying cleared shelves. Cities looked like ghost towns with the shutdowns. The roads were wide open. It was all surreal.
As time marched on and adjustments were made, we started talking about “getting back to normal.” That morphed into people pondering if we would just live a “new normal.”
Truckers got a taste of normal again with the 50th anniversary of the Mid-America Trucking Show returning. The in-person event was the salve many weary souls needed to fill that need for normal.
The thing is, as great as returning to normal is and enjoying those things in life that did not exist for the better part of two years, should truckers really be craving a return to normal in a business sense?
What does that look like? Crappy pay for company drivers. Excuses about poor driver retention and false claims of a driver shortage. Let’s not forget long, unpaid wait times. That list is long and, frankly, depressing.
Maybe, we really don’t want things to go back to normal. Business as usual wasn’t really great business. We need to start thinking about pre-pandemic normal as a status quo that trucking can do without.
One thing the past two years did very well for truckers was it put a very bright spotlight on the problems in the supply chain, specifically what truckers faced. Maybe those empty shelves and people with nothing but time on their hands wasn’t such a bad thing. The collective eyes opened, they started listening, they even started understanding. And that “they” includes high-level regulators and lawmakers.
Senior Editor Mark Schremmer breaks down the current amount of attention that core issues like driver compensation, detention time and truck parking are getting at the federal level.
For once there is a plan and not just more studies – for the moment anyway. The Trucking Action Plan isn’t long on details on how problems will get fixed, but at least there is a plan. Check out Schremmer’s analysis starting on Page 16.
I can’t help but have the line “Show me the money!” from “Jerry Maguire” run through my head when we talk about driver pay.
Trucking has not been a lucrative career for the masses in a very long time. Sure there are successful men and women out there, most owner-operators. But for company drivers, that’s not the case. I cannot think of any hourly employee who would take an office job after being told that they would wind up working 10 to 20 hours a week that they would not be paid for. Yet, that’s just the status quo for many truckers. And it’s got to go.
Contributing Editor at Large John Bendel takes a look at the Fair Labor Standards Act and its storied history with truckers. He even boldly predicts that changes could be on the horizon. Check it out on Page 19.
I joke about having a crystal ball on my desk, because Land Line has a history of predicting the future of things about to happen in trucking. Maybe we’ll be able to chalk another one up to the nonexistent crystal ball if Bendel turns out to be right.
We have tons of news about fuel prices (yikes!), left-lane restrictions, defending the hours-of-service regs in a lawsuit, etc. Tons of news.
But for those who are still craving that old normal or just some good old-fashioned trucker fun, we have a comprehensive wrap up of the Mid-America Trucking Show for you.
Fun enough, on Page 50, we start our coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Mid-America Trucking Show. OOIDA, Land Line and Land Line Now had boots on the ground. OOIDA was busy meeting with regulators and members alike. Land Line and Land Line Now were there to document the whole thing.
Here’s to reveling in the return of some of the better parts of the old normal and pushing hard for a new normal as well that sees truckers thriving in the not so distant future. LL