The more things change in trucking …

My friend and ace gearjammer Rufus Sideswipe dropped by the other day in his vintage Cornbinder to catch up. I hadn’t seen him in a while. I parked my truck writing pen a few years ago and went on to other things, while he kept running the roads.

We sat down at the kitchen table, and I poured us some coffee. I could tell Rufus was eager to vent.

“Wondered if you saw this Land Line story?” he asked, pulling out a much-creased piece of paper. “They had Lewie Pugh from OOIDA saying, and I quote: ‘Long-haul truckers are typically paid by the mile and are away from home for weeks at a time. To make matters worse, truckers must cope with a nationwide shortage of truck parking and are often denied restroom access at shipper and receiver facilities.’ Does that sound familiar?”

Boy, did it ever. These were all issues when I first got involved with trucking in 1993. Shoot, these were things OOIDA had been fighting to fix since it started 52 years ago. All that time, and the shippers are still telling drivers they can’t go potty?

Trucking has changed constantly over the past 30-some years – and sometimes for the better. Back then, cellphones were new, expensive and clunky, and few drivers had them. Truck stops made some nice change from phone banks and restaurant booth phones. The common wisdom was that cellphones were too expensive and too complex for most drivers to use.

The same conventional wisdom applied to computers and the internet, and once again, you drivers upended the naysayers. Some longtime drivers may remember Park ‘N’ View and IdleAire. These were setups in truck stop parking lots that allowed drivers to park, plug in laptops and phones, and hook up to electricity and even AC so they didn’t have to idle.

Cellphones and Wi-Fi mooted communications issues, but like low pay, inadequate home time, tough working conditions and parking, idling seems to be a problem with no good solution.

Still?

Every time truck builders introduce a new-and-improved model, they emphasize driver comfort – “more belly room,” “2 additional inches of bunk space,” etc. At Mid-America one year, I wanted to cheer when a fellow Truck Writers of North America member observed, “You’re making the trucks more comfortable so you can keep the drivers out on the road longer.” The PR guy didn’t deny it.

That was more than 20 years ago, and as Pugh pointed out, not much has changed.

“As an industry, we have to admit our problems to truly make the job attractive,” he said. “Who wants to come out here and give away 20 hours of free labor every week, try to find a safe place to park every night, not get paid overtime despite working 70 hours a week and missing your family?”

“Lots of people come into the industry every year,” Pugh added. “The problem is that they don’t stay … Our industry needs to do a lot of self-reflection and self-repair.”

“He put his finger right on it when he said there’s no driver shortage; the problem is retention,” Rufus said. “Always has been, always will be unless the companies own up to it.” LL