The OP claims that deregulation efforts from 2016 to 2022, originally meant to address the truck driver shortage, actually led to many minimally trained drivers joining small truck fleets that pay below-market salaries and routinely run 14- to 20-hour days using tampered hardware for logging mileage. These poorly trained drivers, according to the OP, would not pass the vetting of large, compliant carriers. Freight brokers, which now "control" a third of all loads, typically award them to the lowest bidder, pushing spot rates "below the cost of legal operation." The consequences, according to the OP: legitimate carriers are barely breaking even, cargo theft is more prevalent, and roads are less safe.
Hmm... maybe? I'm not sure I agree. There's an alternate narrative that is also compelling. Could it be that the rise of freight brokers and the adoption of new technology by small fleets enables them to compete more effectively with large fleets, making this market much more competitive than it ever was? Could it be that shippers now have more viable truck-shipping options at a lower cost, thanks to less opaque freight pricing? Could it be that society as a whole benefits from less expensive truck delivery services? Won't this market, sooner or later, be dominated by self-driving trucks, bringing prices down much further, benefiting society as a whole even more?
Here's an idea: using slaves in coffee and sugar-growing plantations. This will enable slavers to compete more effectively with large non-slave plantations, and the society as a whole would benefit from less expensive coffee and sugar.
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EDIT: Link to data is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173013
It looks like crash rates jumped after the pandemic, then declined in 2022 and 2023, contradicting the OP.
Though I wonder how much that number compares to how much the trucking industry grew in that time. If it grew 200% that would actually mean a big win for safety.
Edit: some quick, AI driven research suggests it might've grown 20%. So... Still an issue
https://www.nhtsa.gov/crash-data-systems/fatality-analysis-r...
https://highways.dot.gov/safety/learn-safety/roadway-safety-...
If anything, deregulation of the trucking industry has had the exact opposite effect. There should be stringent rules on the drivers, but just as equally stringent rules on those that employ and train them. It's a horribly abusive industry, and we should regulate it.
This sounds like an echo of ride hailing, where people will now pay a bit more to ride a Waymo so they don't have to tell their financially desperate driver that they'll get a bigger tip for calming down a bit.
I was made curious about the possibility of an "intentional backdoor" in ELD (Electronic Logging Devices) that allowed truckers to misreport their hours.
I was not able to find results to directly confirm or deny that this was true, but it certainly seems like these recently-mandated ELDs come with security concerns: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/vehiclesec...
> These changes were driven by a long-standing belief—pushed hard by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)—that the U.S. faces a permanent truck-driver shortage. The ATA’s solution was to lobby Congress and FMCSA to lower every barrier to entry, convinced that new drivers would flow to large ATA-member fleets rather than small operators.
> That assumption was rooted in an old reality: twenty years ago, only the biggest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Small carriers and brokers were stuck with phone, fax, and leftover freight.
> That world no longer exists.
Coming from the software industry, I've seen similar things happen when decisions are made which turn out misplaced in the longer term.
And I've always wondered - why can't the management respond fast enough to the new scenario?
What I've noticed is that as long as the same management team is there which had made that decision, it becomes extremely difficult for them to admit and make that change. Change only happens when either things get really critical, or when the management changes.
I wonder whether something similar is involved here.
Guess what happens in capitalism.
At the same time, he says that it’s a miserable business because you’re constantly getting sued (at a level markedly higher than the admittedly poor driver performance)
> As of this morning:
> 1,164,093 motor carriers are listed as “Authorized for Hire.”
> 107,757 freight brokers are “Authorized for Hire.”
> And right now, 206 of them list 30 N Gould Street, Sheridan WY 82801 as their primary address.
Due to this my dad had to drive a higher average speed of ~65-70mph to cover the distances required and not use up his available hours.
Before he'd drive slower 55-65 ave mph for longer hours and take frequent breaks.
Regulations are fine, but when you make them too strict it makes it difficult for new drivers to join and usually it's easier to be part of a corperation than an owner-operator (my dad).
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/teamsters-call-obama-move-fo...
The effect you describe of pushing independent drivers into (union?) corporate jobs seems like it was intentional.
In many countries it's common to see freight being driven by foreign drivers simply because that's how cross-border deliveries are done.
If a truck of widgets is made in Poland and shipped to a store in Spain, a Polish driver will drive it the whole way.
Is the sort of "innovation" you often hear here about when people say "EU can't innovate because of regulations"?
Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?
* long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends,
* possibility to stretch and move your body is very limited,
* bad hyper-processed food, hence so many drivers are obese,
* the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
* plus, as mentioned here, both the drivers and their managers are incentivized to break and bend the law, resulting in unsafe driving.
All of the above would be mitigated by robots taking the wheel.
Truck driver is the most numerous blue-collar profession in the US, if I remember correctly it counts several million people. I wouldn't expect all of them to become automotive AI model trainers overnight.
Trains are most efficient when they are long. 30+ cars, ideally. Capacity of railway lines is limited and lines tend to be shared by passenger traffic as well, so freight mostly moves at night and short freight trains are economically unviable.
It might take a long time to gather enough stuff/containers to fill 30 freight cars in one particular railway head (obvious exceptions such as Port of Rotterdam apply). Which means that you may have to wait for 10 days before your shipment actually starts to move.
We aren't that patient anymore.
Calling bullshit here. If they weren't doing that work, they probably would not, in fact, get extra time with family/friends.
>the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
Team drives can cover a majority of the day if need be for long hauling. Short hauling/last mile is capped not so much by miles traveled, but cargo load and unload times.
Folks, get over robotically doing these things.
You can say that they would have collapsed over something else if they stayed at home, but this is what the people themselves told me.
Driving to Spain and back takes two weeks. After two weeks of his absence "I felt like a young widow already", said Hana, the youngest of the wives.
From Czechia (based on your name)? Why so long?
* Pauses are required.
* Some roads cannot be used by some vehicles and/or cargo, especially in the Alps. Same with tunnels.
* Some countries ban trucks from their roads on certain days and hours, so a day off whether you want it or no.
* Sometimes your employer tells you to avoid some extra expensive road even at the cost of longer driving time. (Europe has a myriad of toll systems.)
* The cargo for the return journey is usually not ready on the same day, might well take five.
I was talking to a retired trucker recently. They described a situation where one driver would get the CDL, but shared the cab with 2-3 others (no CDL, maybe family or friends). They would all rotate driving, so at any given time there was a chance the driver actually had no CDL.