Reading Mark Twain, comparing truckers to steamboat pilots
I often read late at night. Right now I am reading about Mark Twain’s career as a steamboat pilot in his book “Life on the Mississippi.”
While reading this book, it seems natural for people associated with trucking to ponder correlations between the steamboat pilots of the 1800s and the trucking industry today.
Perhaps largely thanks to Twain, the magic of the steamboat era has long outlasted the era itself. In a mere 60 years or so, steamboats came into being, became transcendent and seemingly indestructible, and then abruptly ended.
Here are the reasons that Twain lists, distilled to bullet points:
- Specialized knowledge of the river was required of steamboat pilots.
- High rates charged by steamboat pilots, who were protected by a pilot’s association, and the companies that hired them.
- The growth of rail, also powered by steam but requiring less specialized knowledge of the route.
- The advent of towboats pushing several cargo barges at a time.
- The Civil War, which abruptly curtailed traffic.
- Theft and scandal in the steamboat pilots’ association by its treasurer.
The first bullet point, about the specialized knowledge of the steamboat pilots, is echoed by the knowledge truck drivers need. I won’t dwell on that here, however.
The second bullet point is not much echoed in today’s trucking business, but maybe it once was.
With the steamboat pilots, the association helped bolster pay rates. At first the shipping companies balked. However, they found they could pass the costs on to the farmers and tack on more for themselves. It made for a happy time for both parties.
The pilots’ association also helped devise a method of communicating the ever-changing location of snags in the river and other ways that the river kept transforming.
In trucking today, we don’t have the monopolistic hold enjoyed by the steamboat pilots’ association. As a result, not as much money comes to drivers percentagewise.
However, once upon a time, things were different. Now I draw from a Land Line article by John Bendel, contributing editor-at-large, the trucking sage of New Jersey. In December 2018, he wrote a commentary titled “The driver pay problem – how we got here.” You need to read it and maybe re-read it. It is clear, concise and thought-provoking.
In 1964, Teamster chief Jimmy Hoffa engineered the first national labor contract. For 15 years or so, driver pay was good.
It resembles the steamboat pilot’s association that Twain described, I think. The trucking industry changed greatly when Congress passed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. That wiped out the trucking industry’s exemption from antitrust laws. It stoked competition among carriers. Driver pay has suffered.
The third and fourth bullet points might relate to trucking today. Self-driving trucks and platooning might be the trains and towboats of the trucking industry.
Some fortune tellers are bleak about the prospects for truckers. Others say it isn’t coming soon. In any case, it is clear that manufacturers are keyed up about the prospects.
The fifth and sixth bullet point aren’t applicable to today.
Historical distance rounds the edges of events and anguish. Twain’s prose also is comforting. However, the steamboat pilot’s life provides depth to the history-making pressures on truckers today. We are at a crossroads. Big changes are afoot. It is more important now than ever for truckers to work together to guide and inform the debate about regulatory reform and the many issues affecting the trucking industry. Our era is not at an end. LL