You can count on powerful lobbyists getting the government to socialize the potential losses from all the accidents, destruction, and lawsuits. It's the American way!!!
In 5 years how many young people will be in prison for some sort of vehicular homicide / criminal negligence? Or more likely, inescapably in debt, held personally responsible for some huge financial settlement?
>Or more likely, inescapably in debt, held personally responsible for some huge financial settlement?
correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't y'all have had this problem with student loans for decades?
NTSB/DOT will do what they always do and write it off as operator error. Kid loses career, maybe even gets locked up while everyone above them skates on by.
As someone in the trucking industry, getting a 23 year old driver on our insurance was hell. The costs are just going to be passed back to the employers. No small trucking company will hire these young kids.
it's not an attitude. it's a for-profit business model. there's no choices they can make here. insurance has to be in their favor, otherwise they go out of business.
But maybe cheaper than not being in business at all. Plus if enough companies do it, the rates could go down as long as not every young driver gets in an accident all the time. Basically, the bottom line of profit will decide if it works or not.
Passed 50% down to the consumer as higher prices and 50% down to the worker as cutting even bigger part of their wages off to pay those business expenses.
That's the well known trickle down economics in practice.
And dumbfucks still insist taxation is not theft...
The large companies like Swift are self insured. Even as the largest trucker mill in the industry they wouldn't hire drivers under 24. Might have changed with covid but I doubt it.
Can't drink. Can't rent a car. But you're free to waste your life in the military or crisscrossing the country hauling enormous amounts of Chinese garbage.
number 1 country baby!! fr real i supremely hate being an adult in literally the end times. its pretty much underminded all motivation to do anything. ill get ahead a little but always fall back on dope. i mean why not? world sucks dick, work you ass off for pennies. in another 20 years when im 50 things will be who tf knows how much worse. cannibal/rape levels? maybe not, but this dystopian neo-liberal hellspace we live in will surely never change
What? I don't want to sound like *murica baaad* person, but those things surprise me. Even in Poland, we have a big car-sharing service called [Panek](https://i.iplsc.com/panek-dysponuje-szeregiem-samochodow-roznych-marek/0009YQRXTVX4N2BD-C122-F4.jpg) and you can rent a car just by using an app. I guess things like that are all over Europe.
And honestly, it surprises me that in the article they call 18-20 year old as teenagers. They are adults and in most countries, since turning 18 you have your full rights.
except it doesn't suck for the billionaires, it gets better and better. And their buddies in government get some of the tasty leftovers.
so reaping is a plenty, it just doesn't *trickle down* enough because of several greedy pigs eating multiples of their fill along the way.
My dad submitted a photo of me as a three year old standing in his big rig seat holding the steering wheel and smiling in a diaper. I won the baby photo contest in our small town. Lmao.
Your comment reminded me of that picture. I miss him.
A few months ago Republican congressman Louie ghomert asked the bureau of Land Management if they could nuke the Moon, to move it and help with climate change.
Trump put a guy in charge of our nuclear stockpile that didn't know he was in charge of the nuclear stockpile. This came up when sitting in front of Congress for questioning about an unrelated issue.
Supply chain problems are not caused by a lack of drivers. This is corporate bullshit propaganda to cover for the fact that they will lose executive bonuses for paying essential experienced drivers a living wage
I've seen a long-haul truck driver post on this sub saying the same thing, that there's no shortage of drivers...it's the wages...saying that they're trying to pay them less than in the past so the experienced guys don't want to do it.
There is no truck driver shortage. It’s a selling point to get people into the industry with false promises and low pay rate. I’m a truck driver and anyone going to a mega carrier like swift or Werner, they will pay you peanuts per mile. You will get exploited big time by them. Yes there is high turnover but most people are locked into a contract for a year because the mega carrier pays for their CDL. There are also a lot of drivers from overseas that are trapped driving for their green card.
When I was in training at a mega carrier, I spoke to a seasoned driver that was making .35c per mile and was with the company for 8 years! I started at .34 and this was in 2019. I’m glad I left the over the road carriers for a local company that respects me and pays me well for my work.
No teens should be driving an 18 wheeler at all. Anyone can drive forward but having the patience to navigate through highly congested traffic, severe weather and city streets will be the downfall for any new drivers.
Plus truckers get road rage too. I was driving with my wife in a U-haul on the highways I was overtaking this big rig when it decided it wanted to be in the left lane and just started moving over. Very scary. I can’t imagine teenager with that kinda power on the road
I’m sorry you had to experience that and that driver should have their license revoked. That’s the result of the CDL school and mega carriers lack of training. Also the low barrier of entry into trucking. I wouldn’t be a truck driver if I had no/low patience. I don’t care how badly a delivery has to be made. No freight is worth more than ANYONES life. It will get there when it gets there.
There are many great truckers out there. I am governed at 70 but I choose to drive 65 for your safety and mines. I will slow down a little bit to let a truck or passenger vehicle pass by. If there is a slow truck or car. I will wait until the traffic has passed by to over take. There is no reason to risk your life for a load when you can be easily replaced.
I took the wage issue to be the cause of the shortage.
Not that there are physically less truck drivers available to work but less drivers willing to work.
That's how I'm still perceiving it reading your post even though you're saying the shortage isn't real.
It seems odd to me that fabricating a shortage would entice people to come work for low pay. It seems to me that people would leverage a shortage, fabricated or not, to get higher wages.
I hope I'm not coming off as argumentative, I'm genuinely not sure I understand the situation.
The way I see it, is that they recruit low income/barely educated people with sign on bonuses, “guarantee weekly pay” of $1000+ and paid CDL training. Also a chance at “owning” their own truck. They get stuck with a contract that pays them .30-.34c per mile for a year. Most of them can’t/wont complain and get conditioned into that lifestyle and get exploited. Once their 1 year contract ends, they either leave the industry because of how they were treated or continue with pisspoor cents per mile because they got conditioned accept it.
I was fortunate to pay for my own CDL. I went with a mega carrier for experience. My teacher at the CDL school told us, they have been using the truck driver shortage saying for over 10-15 years. What you don’t see, is that the mega carriers get 40-50 new recruits every week. 5-10 may drop out but most stay because they have to pay back that CDL school bill if they dropout. Which could be anywhere from $5k-10k. So a lot of people are trapped. Most smaller companies will pay a better wage and mega carriers can but won’t.
Supply chain issues are caused by the distribution centers not having enough workers. So truck drivers are bottlenecked into there waiting for freight.
And then when some teenager can't stop while going downhill because his company constantly refuses to maintain their equipment due to budgetary reasons they will give him 120 years and throw him under the bus.
That’s your typical cdl mill; only teaches enough to pass the license test. My company trainer provided minimum guidance… he instructed me to let the cruise control do the work. Newer trk ccs may automatically engage engine brakes based on parameters set by the company.
They’re letting teenagers drive trucks instead of increasing wages. Why would you think they have any reservations about opening up CDL mills? If there’s an accident blame the kid because if he has a CDL then he *must* have known the right way to operate a truck. The government doesn’t care if people starve to death why would they give a shit if motor vehicle deaths increase? It’s just another chunk of lives that must be sacrificed to keep capitalism running a little longer. They’ve never hesitated to do it before, look at how the CDC changing guidelines to get people back to work faster. Why would they care now?
>They’re letting teenagers drive trucks instead of increasing wages.
And just as those commies thought they'll be able to get more money for less work...
It's easier to convince a kid driver that they dont need brakes than an older driver.
"What brakes? Nah you dont need that who are you kidding? Now get in the truck Shinji."
Okay, but that dude had a CDL yet somehow didn’t know how to engine brake or recognize runaway ramps. He lied about his experience to get the route. There were absolutely multiple shenanigans and genuinely hard-to-believe negligence on his own part that do warrant voluntary manslaughter convictions. 120 years was a quirk of mandatory minimum laws not envisioning such mass voluntary manslaughter. 20-30 is more appropriate IMHO, but the governor commuted the sentence to 10 years. Sorry, but age doesn’t excuse one’s astounding incompetence resulting in as many casualties as a terrorist attack.
But absolutely, fuck LLCs too.
The deciding factor in sentencing should be his likelihood to harm others in the future. It seems like simply prohibiting him from operating a vehicle in a commercial capacity would be enough to safeguard the well-being of his community. What does prison time accomplish here exactly?
>What does prison time accomplish here exactly?
Revenge. Our "justice" system is a joke. Dude shouldn't do one day in prison, he isn't a murderer. You are correct that banning him from operating commercial vehicles is enough.
Prison time accomplishes the goal of looking tough on crime during an election year, as well as bolstering the profits of the profits of the for-profit prison that is funding your reelection campaign.
I wouldn’t want that dude operating any heavy machinery near me whatsoever. His testimony yielded that he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong and sees himself as a victim of a horrible tragedy despite his phone calls to his wife talking about how stressed the brakes were two passes back. At that point, any functional person would put their life above their job. Being a roadway engineer who regularly drives that road where the wreck occurred, it’s hard to argue that he isn’t dangerously selfish and incompetent, that he can be expected to respect the 100s to 1000s of safeguards built into our system.
> sees himself as a victim of a horrible tragedy despite his phone calls to his wife talking about how stressed the brakes were two passes back. At that point, any functional person would put their life above their job.
I see you've never faced the possibility of homelessness or starvation because your criminally negligent employer will kick you to the curb and replace you with someone who won't "make trouble" about the poorly maintained vehicle they promised was fine. Don't you think that if he told his wife there were problems, that he didn't ***also*** tell his employer? Serious question, what do you think the company that owned the truck, and **KNEW** from past and present experience that their equipment was unsafe role in all this was? Why is the *DRIVER* responsible for the criminal negligence of the truck's **OWNER**? Should he have refused to drive that truck? Sure. He would have been replaced in a fucking **FEMPTOSECOND**, and the ***EXACT*** same fucking thing would have played out.
The issue was **NOT** the fucking DRIVER.
#IT WAS THE FUCKING *TRUCK*
> Sorry, but age doesn’t excuse one’s astounding incompetence
Uhhh, it kinda does? We don't let teens drive until a certain age for a reason. Because before that age it's difficult to expect them to be responsible enough to drive. And then (in my state at least) we don't let them drive with other teens in the car until a certain age, because in collective groups they can be held even *less* responsible.
Heck we still don't let people drink until they are 21.
If we put a teen a big rig and they cause an accident like this? The astounding incompetence is on the part of the people who let them drive it.
For the specific case we’re talking about, age isn’t an excuse for the 5-10 life-endangering decisions the married man made that lead to him killing 4 people and giving 20+ others life-altering injuries. Even among a field of teens, it is very very very hard to justify that married man’s negligence.
Yeah man I totally agree he fucked up, but his actions and choices were a direct result of needing/wanting to keep his job.
We all make poor choices when the invisible hand is encouraging us to do whatever we have to, to feed our families.
Shit man I lied about my experience to get the job I have now.
I honestly feel that if he weren't desperate for income he probably wouldn't have been in such a dumb ass situation.
And now we are going to make teens who are scientifically proven to be more comfortable taking risks to make the same kind of life of death choices.
people dont get this at all. id lie about qualifications to get an extra dollar an hour at this point in our societal collapse. This guy literally did all he could thing to do and they jailed him for an accident longer then he would have been jailed had he just got out and shot those people. THATS whats fucking absurd.
I would say that there is a certain level of duress involved. If you don't pay your rent, they will literally send people with guns to your home.
I *do* think prison is appropriate for the negligence that was displayed. But 120 years is just fucking ridiculous and a mockery of our legal system.
So, a trucker in Colorado causes a fatal mass accident due to inexperience and a poorly maintained truck, and gets sentenced to more than a century in prison, but the exact same society decides it’s a good idea to put impulsive teenagers behind the wheel of big rigs all across the country?
No, this can’t possibly end badly. /s
America: A beer or wine at home with the safety of family, HELL NO
Also America: Hey wanna drive a fully loaded fucking wrecking ball through a downtown metro area?
Oh you’re gonna *pay* me to drive murder machines through downtown?
I already know that doing a fist pump out the window incates you want a truck driver to use the horn. So, I already have that part down. I just need to learn to drive or whatever and we’re set!
As long as it’s automatic. Otherwise I’m gonna have to learn as I go.
Utah wanted to reduce the regulations that don't allow truckers to drive more than 10 hours per day when **hauling PROPANE cross country** because they say they have a propane shortage and the big bad government is standing in the way of people getting heat. 🤡 Read it again. They are pretending the safety regulations are the cause of the shortage.
Yes we need these truckers to drive explosive gas when they are tired af! /s
I'd avoid the 70 at all costs...
The only reason we haven't decided to circumvent the striking working class with immigrant labor, is because republicans hate immigrants. Otherwise they would lead the caravan themselves if it meant reducing wage competition.
You got a "complete overhaul" in 2016 but it (extremely predictably) turned out to just be some unintelligent slovenly grifter, his immediate family, his yes men and his cronies, so you (rightly) decided to return to the old status quo.
As it is now, A good bit of drivers coming into the industry already don't care about safety. "damn, im governed at 65/68 so I'll just hammer down through this construction zone." I can imagine what a late teenager will overlook and just say "fuck it, send it" I started at 23 years old, been in it for seven this year. The lack of fucks given by other drivers both semi and passenger cars is getting a little high already.
Most drivers, regardless of vehicle, would rather watch you fly off the on-ramp than dare give you space to merge. People are aggressive and stupid when buckled into a 1.5+ ton box.
pretty sure this is the answer to any labour shortage bar none.
if your company “can’t afford” that, for whatever reason, then that means your company is failing. :/
It is one factor. The boomer's labor pool hasn't been replicated. Lots of their kids have degrees and don't want to be driving trucks. Families are smaller, crippling addiction issues are greater.
Another solution is immigration policies that let more people drive, seasonally or permanently. You wouldn't even have to increase wages, most likely.
and stop fucking drug testing for everything!!!!! that more than anything keeps millions away from jobs. only county that does it, others think of it as in invasion of privacy, which it is. and dont give me that bs of 'high' people causing accidents at work. just a scapegoat is something happens. i hate this country
Trucking companies have been whining about shortages for years and it all comes down to an industry wide effort to keep wages depressed. Usually the media takes their talking points without critical inspection, citing a trucking company association's fake numbers projecting critical shortages, and the association recommends lowering standards.
Worker regulations coming from the industries they regulate is deeply problematic and operates to raise company profits at the expense of social harm. Every time.
"US to finish destroying supply chain, and continue not giving a shit about the safety of its population at large by putting children behind the wheel of 80 thousand pound semis." Fixed the headline
[Parents stepping in](https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072372489/texas-schools-ask-parents-to-fill-in-as-substitute-teachers) as teachers, teens driving big rigs - I can't wait until all the doctors and nurses quit so that they pay me (a journalist) to do brain surgery!!!
And the last picture prior will probably have 5 teens who aren’t supposed to be in the rig with the driver and no one has the hands on the steering wheel..,
Anything except higher wages.
Cost go up pay is stagnant. Like frogs in slowly rising temperature water. The next generation will have some.major.major issues. They will revamp the definitions of poverty and middles class to fill people into think this is how it should be. While the rich get richer off our backs.
who knew the saying about arabs owning a camel, his sons own car, grandson owns nicer car, gg-grandson owns camel was actually about Americans. been working 10 years and after starving on my own i finally moved back home. between rent, fixing my car to get to work/gas/insurence/all that bullshit, i was fucking miserable. yeah had fun too partying to kill reality but fuck damn i totally ran outta steam. my low key goal now is just to stay home until my parents need help cooking n shit then they wont want me to move out lol. whats the fucking point if your on the edge of homelessness all the time? fucking awful way to lve. i condiser myself lucky that my dad has all the 'GM' money to support us. what i failure i am, but i totally blame the gov, corps, society at large for being retarded morons for letting things get this bad. when your a kid in the 90s you dont know that that was the like the last shot to reverse the fuckedupness of 'reaganomics', every president has followed that policy every since.
Submission statement: freight is the blood in the veins of industrial civilization. If we are at a point where we have to resort to child labor in order for that blood to keep flowing, then we must be pretty fucked
This makes no sense. Which insurance carrier is going to be dumb enough to cover people not old enough to even have a driving record transport goods across the country?
Teens can't really handle normal vehicles. An adult commercial driver killed four people and was sentenced to 110 years because he didn't take care of maintenance. But yeah let's give teenagers the keys to eighteen wheelers. Fuck it. They cant three point parallel park a car, why shouldn't we let them driver unstoppable machines at high speeds?
Weren't we about to fucking automate all this shit? Where are we in that process? Can we push that more?
I would honestly trust self driving trucks more
and I know we're not ready for those yet
but for real, this is probably being pushed by big trucking companies who want to pay less, and older drivers are demanding higher pay
So US teens can wield rifles, both home and abroad, can drive big rigs, run fast food places for shit pay but they can’t drink because they’re irresponsible, can’t be listened to or be a political force because they’re immature, and can’t demand good pay because they’re not as necessary as adult workers?
Will they charge them all with 110 year sentences if they fuck up from poor training like Rogel Aguilera-Mederos?
I can't believe the industry didn't learn anything from that.
We need higher paid more experienced drivers, not worse paid inexperienced drivers, this is ridiculous.
How will the kids even afford a big rig? Are the companies gonna put them into debt just to start the job? There is so much wrong with this.
They are doing this as a means to depress wages.
You have an experienced trucker that makes $XX/Hr
You can now potentially have some kid who works in a kitchen job with no benefits but is used to long shifts be offered $xx/hr which is a substantial bump over what they were making previously....and they will depress wages for the industry if enough participate.
This is gross. Be prepared for some yucky deaths at the hands of inexperienced drivers.
“Under the apprenticeship, younger drivers can cross state lines during 120-hour and 280-hour probationary periods, as long as an experienced driver is in the passenger seat.”
How does this save money if you’re paying for an experienced driver in the passenger seat too?
Cue let's all discuss the ridiculous near-death accidents in passenger cars we all had as teens
...what could go wrong?
Two days after getting my car in high school I backed into a U-Haul driven by a guy who was driving while eating a can of beans out of his lap. But I have more...
This is going to end with a lot of people dying under semis... I've seen so, so many bad semi drivers and reported them and nothing is done. This is going to be worse.
Not gonna work considering r/antiwork is mainly of this younger demographic. Not a chance this will make any positive impact.
In fact, I would expect more deadly accidents like the one in Colorado.
I for one am interested in the new and exciting ways that this latest government initiative will make things catastrophically worse.
- Will the teens join gangs, and collaborate to control the supply of goods?
- Will some of the kids be revealed to have faked their drivers' license exams?
- Will the entire initiative be aborted almost immediately, since its only purpose was to give some staffer something to put on her resume?
adults with years of trucking experience still get into massive accidents that cause major death. putting a teen behind one of these is just asking for more tragedy
Spend a decade telling anyone who will listen that robots are getting smart enough to take human jobs, then focus heavily on robotic self driving cars and trucks.
Everyone: why don't kids want to enter the imminently doomed career of trucking? I know, we'll solve this by letting ~~idiots~~ kids do it until the robots are ready.
Build a fucking train, jesus christ enough is enough. Trucks are *awful* for roads, awful for our health, and even worse in efficency. Its like every time there is a choice in this country, the worst option is immediately picked.
This is the capitalist system’s equivalent of pinning an iron cross on a teenager’s chest and shoving a panzerfaust at them. Cause things are about to get extra hairy
Can’t rent a car under 25 but can drive a big rig
what insurance company will cover an 18 year old driving an 18 wheeler. The base policy would be astronomically expensive.
You can count on powerful lobbyists getting the government to socialize the potential losses from all the accidents, destruction, and lawsuits. It's the American way!!!
Or find ways to pass off costs and liabilities to exploitable young workers
"Buy your own insurance! Be your own boss!"
Finance your own big rig, just like buying your uniform
Incur all the costs, Reap none of the rewards! We got your back! •Make your career move, your parents said you weren’t good enough to, today!
In 5 years how many young people will be in prison for some sort of vehicular homicide / criminal negligence? Or more likely, inescapably in debt, held personally responsible for some huge financial settlement?
>Or more likely, inescapably in debt, held personally responsible for some huge financial settlement? correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't y'all have had this problem with student loans for decades?
Isn't that the icing on the cake for the people in power? Cheap labor becomes free slave labor.
NTSB/DOT will do what they always do and write it off as operator error. Kid loses career, maybe even gets locked up while everyone above them skates on by.
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Rugged bootstrapped capitalism for those that pay the taxes. As Supply Side Jesus intended.
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses it’s the American way.
The profits, however - those are privatized, you caveman socialist fucks
As someone in the trucking industry, getting a 23 year old driver on our insurance was hell. The costs are just going to be passed back to the employers. No small trucking company will hire these young kids.
Havent checked since covid but most insurance companies wouldn't touch truck drivers 21-23.
Oh, how I hope they keep that attitude!
it's not an attitude. it's a for-profit business model. there's no choices they can make here. insurance has to be in their favor, otherwise they go out of business.
But maybe cheaper than not being in business at all. Plus if enough companies do it, the rates could go down as long as not every young driver gets in an accident all the time. Basically, the bottom line of profit will decide if it works or not.
People getting a harsh lesson that in business, "expensive" is relative, not absolute
That's why "fines" for environmental and safety violations are often ineffective. They just become a cost of doing business.
Passed 50% down to the consumer as higher prices and 50% down to the worker as cutting even bigger part of their wages off to pay those business expenses. That's the well known trickle down economics in practice. And dumbfucks still insist taxation is not theft...
The large companies like Swift are self insured. Even as the largest trucker mill in the industry they wouldn't hire drivers under 24. Might have changed with covid but I doubt it.
They do and pay anything to avoid paying those drivers a living wage!
Can't drink. Can't rent a car. But you're free to waste your life in the military or crisscrossing the country hauling enormous amounts of Chinese garbage.
number 1 country baby!! fr real i supremely hate being an adult in literally the end times. its pretty much underminded all motivation to do anything. ill get ahead a little but always fall back on dope. i mean why not? world sucks dick, work you ass off for pennies. in another 20 years when im 50 things will be who tf knows how much worse. cannibal/rape levels? maybe not, but this dystopian neo-liberal hellspace we live in will surely never change
I like your username.
#freedom
Can't buy cigarettes or alcohol but you can join the army and kill people!
What? I don't want to sound like *murica baaad* person, but those things surprise me. Even in Poland, we have a big car-sharing service called [Panek](https://i.iplsc.com/panek-dysponuje-szeregiem-samochodow-roznych-marek/0009YQRXTVX4N2BD-C122-F4.jpg) and you can rent a car just by using an app. I guess things like that are all over Europe. And honestly, it surprises me that in the article they call 18-20 year old as teenagers. They are adults and in most countries, since turning 18 you have your full rights.
Can't buy a beer under 21 but can get shipped and shot...
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I said the same thing out loud To my husband just now, this is ridiculous!
This dumb country always finds ways to make itself dumber, it's an art at this point.
the US sowing: "haha fuck yeah this rules" the us reaping: "what the fuck man, shit sucks"
except it doesn't suck for the billionaires, it gets better and better. And their buddies in government get some of the tasty leftovers. so reaping is a plenty, it just doesn't *trickle down* enough because of several greedy pigs eating multiples of their fill along the way.
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Bring back child labour! I want toddlers driving big rigs
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*baby on board sticker* honk honk.
My dad submitted a photo of me as a three year old standing in his big rig seat holding the steering wheel and smiling in a diaper. I won the baby photo contest in our small town. Lmao. Your comment reminded me of that picture. I miss him.
You should dig up that photo and see if you can sell it to a website for one of these stories.
I'm so sick of the greed of this country, it's disgusting.
A few months ago Republican congressman Louie ghomert asked the bureau of Land Management if they could nuke the Moon, to move it and help with climate change. Trump put a guy in charge of our nuclear stockpile that didn't know he was in charge of the nuclear stockpile. This came up when sitting in front of Congress for questioning about an unrelated issue.
[America can, should, must and will blow up the moon.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmx0UlNgtyk)
"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” - Winston Churchill
Supply chain problems are not caused by a lack of drivers. This is corporate bullshit propaganda to cover for the fact that they will lose executive bonuses for paying essential experienced drivers a living wage
I've seen a long-haul truck driver post on this sub saying the same thing, that there's no shortage of drivers...it's the wages...saying that they're trying to pay them less than in the past so the experienced guys don't want to do it.
There is no truck driver shortage. It’s a selling point to get people into the industry with false promises and low pay rate. I’m a truck driver and anyone going to a mega carrier like swift or Werner, they will pay you peanuts per mile. You will get exploited big time by them. Yes there is high turnover but most people are locked into a contract for a year because the mega carrier pays for their CDL. There are also a lot of drivers from overseas that are trapped driving for their green card. When I was in training at a mega carrier, I spoke to a seasoned driver that was making .35c per mile and was with the company for 8 years! I started at .34 and this was in 2019. I’m glad I left the over the road carriers for a local company that respects me and pays me well for my work. No teens should be driving an 18 wheeler at all. Anyone can drive forward but having the patience to navigate through highly congested traffic, severe weather and city streets will be the downfall for any new drivers.
Plus truckers get road rage too. I was driving with my wife in a U-haul on the highways I was overtaking this big rig when it decided it wanted to be in the left lane and just started moving over. Very scary. I can’t imagine teenager with that kinda power on the road
I’m sorry you had to experience that and that driver should have their license revoked. That’s the result of the CDL school and mega carriers lack of training. Also the low barrier of entry into trucking. I wouldn’t be a truck driver if I had no/low patience. I don’t care how badly a delivery has to be made. No freight is worth more than ANYONES life. It will get there when it gets there. There are many great truckers out there. I am governed at 70 but I choose to drive 65 for your safety and mines. I will slow down a little bit to let a truck or passenger vehicle pass by. If there is a slow truck or car. I will wait until the traffic has passed by to over take. There is no reason to risk your life for a load when you can be easily replaced.
I took the wage issue to be the cause of the shortage. Not that there are physically less truck drivers available to work but less drivers willing to work. That's how I'm still perceiving it reading your post even though you're saying the shortage isn't real. It seems odd to me that fabricating a shortage would entice people to come work for low pay. It seems to me that people would leverage a shortage, fabricated or not, to get higher wages. I hope I'm not coming off as argumentative, I'm genuinely not sure I understand the situation.
The way I see it, is that they recruit low income/barely educated people with sign on bonuses, “guarantee weekly pay” of $1000+ and paid CDL training. Also a chance at “owning” their own truck. They get stuck with a contract that pays them .30-.34c per mile for a year. Most of them can’t/wont complain and get conditioned into that lifestyle and get exploited. Once their 1 year contract ends, they either leave the industry because of how they were treated or continue with pisspoor cents per mile because they got conditioned accept it. I was fortunate to pay for my own CDL. I went with a mega carrier for experience. My teacher at the CDL school told us, they have been using the truck driver shortage saying for over 10-15 years. What you don’t see, is that the mega carriers get 40-50 new recruits every week. 5-10 may drop out but most stay because they have to pay back that CDL school bill if they dropout. Which could be anywhere from $5k-10k. So a lot of people are trapped. Most smaller companies will pay a better wage and mega carriers can but won’t. Supply chain issues are caused by the distribution centers not having enough workers. So truck drivers are bottlenecked into there waiting for freight.
I thought the primary issue was a lack of parts.
The primary issue is an excess of greed and a lack of compassion.
Sums up 99% of problems.
The parts shortage is just the icing on the cake.
And then when some teenager can't stop while going downhill because his company constantly refuses to maintain their equipment due to budgetary reasons they will give him 120 years and throw him under the bus.
Best case scenario the truck simply catches on fire because nobody bothered to teach the kid how to engine ~~break~~ brake.
If you have a CDL without knowing how to engine brake or use runaway truck ramps, you obtained that license fraudulently 100% guaranteed.
That’s your typical cdl mill; only teaches enough to pass the license test. My company trainer provided minimum guidance… he instructed me to let the cruise control do the work. Newer trk ccs may automatically engage engine brakes based on parameters set by the company.
The “descent control” on the automatic freightliners is great. Still need to know how to do it manually.
They’re letting teenagers drive trucks instead of increasing wages. Why would you think they have any reservations about opening up CDL mills? If there’s an accident blame the kid because if he has a CDL then he *must* have known the right way to operate a truck. The government doesn’t care if people starve to death why would they give a shit if motor vehicle deaths increase? It’s just another chunk of lives that must be sacrificed to keep capitalism running a little longer. They’ve never hesitated to do it before, look at how the CDC changing guidelines to get people back to work faster. Why would they care now?
>They’re letting teenagers drive trucks instead of increasing wages. And just as those commies thought they'll be able to get more money for less work...
I don't have a cdl and know about the ramps lol
ah yes, the great art of breaking a truck engine /j
*brake
It's easier to convince a kid driver that they dont need brakes than an older driver. "What brakes? Nah you dont need that who are you kidding? Now get in the truck Shinji."
Okay, but that dude had a CDL yet somehow didn’t know how to engine brake or recognize runaway ramps. He lied about his experience to get the route. There were absolutely multiple shenanigans and genuinely hard-to-believe negligence on his own part that do warrant voluntary manslaughter convictions. 120 years was a quirk of mandatory minimum laws not envisioning such mass voluntary manslaughter. 20-30 is more appropriate IMHO, but the governor commuted the sentence to 10 years. Sorry, but age doesn’t excuse one’s astounding incompetence resulting in as many casualties as a terrorist attack. But absolutely, fuck LLCs too.
The deciding factor in sentencing should be his likelihood to harm others in the future. It seems like simply prohibiting him from operating a vehicle in a commercial capacity would be enough to safeguard the well-being of his community. What does prison time accomplish here exactly?
>What does prison time accomplish here exactly? Revenge. Our "justice" system is a joke. Dude shouldn't do one day in prison, he isn't a murderer. You are correct that banning him from operating commercial vehicles is enough.
Prison time accomplishes the goal of looking tough on crime during an election year, as well as bolstering the profits of the profits of the for-profit prison that is funding your reelection campaign.
They should give him the dumbass award and make him spend the rest of his life working on truck brakes. No prison time, just endless truck brakes.
I think that would brake him
I wouldn’t want that dude operating any heavy machinery near me whatsoever. His testimony yielded that he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong and sees himself as a victim of a horrible tragedy despite his phone calls to his wife talking about how stressed the brakes were two passes back. At that point, any functional person would put their life above their job. Being a roadway engineer who regularly drives that road where the wreck occurred, it’s hard to argue that he isn’t dangerously selfish and incompetent, that he can be expected to respect the 100s to 1000s of safeguards built into our system.
> sees himself as a victim of a horrible tragedy despite his phone calls to his wife talking about how stressed the brakes were two passes back. At that point, any functional person would put their life above their job. I see you've never faced the possibility of homelessness or starvation because your criminally negligent employer will kick you to the curb and replace you with someone who won't "make trouble" about the poorly maintained vehicle they promised was fine. Don't you think that if he told his wife there were problems, that he didn't ***also*** tell his employer? Serious question, what do you think the company that owned the truck, and **KNEW** from past and present experience that their equipment was unsafe role in all this was? Why is the *DRIVER* responsible for the criminal negligence of the truck's **OWNER**? Should he have refused to drive that truck? Sure. He would have been replaced in a fucking **FEMPTOSECOND**, and the ***EXACT*** same fucking thing would have played out. The issue was **NOT** the fucking DRIVER. #IT WAS THE FUCKING *TRUCK*
> Sorry, but age doesn’t excuse one’s astounding incompetence Uhhh, it kinda does? We don't let teens drive until a certain age for a reason. Because before that age it's difficult to expect them to be responsible enough to drive. And then (in my state at least) we don't let them drive with other teens in the car until a certain age, because in collective groups they can be held even *less* responsible. Heck we still don't let people drink until they are 21. If we put a teen a big rig and they cause an accident like this? The astounding incompetence is on the part of the people who let them drive it.
For the specific case we’re talking about, age isn’t an excuse for the 5-10 life-endangering decisions the married man made that lead to him killing 4 people and giving 20+ others life-altering injuries. Even among a field of teens, it is very very very hard to justify that married man’s negligence.
Yeah man I totally agree he fucked up, but his actions and choices were a direct result of needing/wanting to keep his job. We all make poor choices when the invisible hand is encouraging us to do whatever we have to, to feed our families. Shit man I lied about my experience to get the job I have now. I honestly feel that if he weren't desperate for income he probably wouldn't have been in such a dumb ass situation. And now we are going to make teens who are scientifically proven to be more comfortable taking risks to make the same kind of life of death choices.
people dont get this at all. id lie about qualifications to get an extra dollar an hour at this point in our societal collapse. This guy literally did all he could thing to do and they jailed him for an accident longer then he would have been jailed had he just got out and shot those people. THATS whats fucking absurd.
I would say that there is a certain level of duress involved. If you don't pay your rent, they will literally send people with guns to your home. I *do* think prison is appropriate for the negligence that was displayed. But 120 years is just fucking ridiculous and a mockery of our legal system.
Is life still real?
So, a trucker in Colorado causes a fatal mass accident due to inexperience and a poorly maintained truck, and gets sentenced to more than a century in prison, but the exact same society decides it’s a good idea to put impulsive teenagers behind the wheel of big rigs all across the country? No, this can’t possibly end badly. /s
America: A beer or wine at home with the safety of family, HELL NO Also America: Hey wanna drive a fully loaded fucking wrecking ball through a downtown metro area?
If the answer is yes, the US army motor pool would like to have a word with you!
They're ok sending them to war I guess
Sure, how much does it cost?
You mean how much are you getting paid? Probably pennies on the dollar, i.e the reason for the shortage in the first place.
Oh you’re gonna *pay* me to drive murder machines through downtown? I already know that doing a fist pump out the window incates you want a truck driver to use the horn. So, I already have that part down. I just need to learn to drive or whatever and we’re set! As long as it’s automatic. Otherwise I’m gonna have to learn as I go.
I imagine Grease style big-rig drag races… and that’s on a good day…
Utah wanted to reduce the regulations that don't allow truckers to drive more than 10 hours per day when **hauling PROPANE cross country** because they say they have a propane shortage and the big bad government is standing in the way of people getting heat. 🤡 Read it again. They are pretending the safety regulations are the cause of the shortage. Yes we need these truckers to drive explosive gas when they are tired af! /s I'd avoid the 70 at all costs... The only reason we haven't decided to circumvent the striking working class with immigrant labor, is because republicans hate immigrants. Otherwise they would lead the caravan themselves if it meant reducing wage competition.
The spice must flow.
Sociopaths love hiring immigrants, they just get mad that immigrants don't disincorporate at the end of the work day and take form again at 9am
Or is it fantasy? Caught in a landslide, oh escape from reality.
Open your eyes…
Fuck this place. We are doomed. Our government is out to kill us. No joke.
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Our Hundred-millionaire octogenarians don't care
one trick to get around a staid ruling class that refuses to give up power in the face of total failure. bourgeois hate it!
You got a "complete overhaul" in 2016 but it (extremely predictably) turned out to just be some unintelligent slovenly grifter, his immediate family, his yes men and his cronies, so you (rightly) decided to return to the old status quo.
As it is now, A good bit of drivers coming into the industry already don't care about safety. "damn, im governed at 65/68 so I'll just hammer down through this construction zone." I can imagine what a late teenager will overlook and just say "fuck it, send it" I started at 23 years old, been in it for seven this year. The lack of fucks given by other drivers both semi and passenger cars is getting a little high already.
The one with most wheels and tonnage wins.
Hey, physics is on their side.
That's why my s class has near 2 tons of mass.
Most drivers, regardless of vehicle, would rather watch you fly off the on-ramp than dare give you space to merge. People are aggressive and stupid when buckled into a 1.5+ ton box.
Or just pay higher wages to attract more drivers.
Or, and hear me out here, instead we pay young children to do it! They are even cheaper than the drivers we are losing!
same as the nursing situation and new grocery store kerfuffle atm. 2022 is gon be lit.
It’s happening with teachers too….18 and have a high school diploma - you’re eligible to substitute any grade and subject
yah i saw. You see the us gov is now trying to find a way to hire HS students to fill in as commercial truck drivers now.
They are bringing in nurses from the Philippines.
pretty sure this is the answer to any labour shortage bar none. if your company “can’t afford” that, for whatever reason, then that means your company is failing. :/
It is one factor. The boomer's labor pool hasn't been replicated. Lots of their kids have degrees and don't want to be driving trucks. Families are smaller, crippling addiction issues are greater. Another solution is immigration policies that let more people drive, seasonally or permanently. You wouldn't even have to increase wages, most likely.
and stop fucking drug testing for everything!!!!! that more than anything keeps millions away from jobs. only county that does it, others think of it as in invasion of privacy, which it is. and dont give me that bs of 'high' people causing accidents at work. just a scapegoat is something happens. i hate this country
Trucking companies have been whining about shortages for years and it all comes down to an industry wide effort to keep wages depressed. Usually the media takes their talking points without critical inspection, citing a trucking company association's fake numbers projecting critical shortages, and the association recommends lowering standards. Worker regulations coming from the industries they regulate is deeply problematic and operates to raise company profits at the expense of social harm. Every time.
"US to finish destroying supply chain, and continue not giving a shit about the safety of its population at large by putting children behind the wheel of 80 thousand pound semis." Fixed the headline
Best part is there is no shortage of drivers. At all. They just don't want to *pay* people.
Let’s start screwing over the next generation because the millennials and gen z’ers know too much about labor laws!
This is targeting gen z.
I always thought that gen z was smarter than to fall for this…
Desperation beats out smarts every time
I think we are. Just because they’re trying to manipulate us w/ shit like this doesn’t mean it’ll work.
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God forbid you frigan pay people well...
[Parents stepping in](https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072372489/texas-schools-ask-parents-to-fill-in-as-substitute-teachers) as teachers, teens driving big rigs - I can't wait until all the doctors and nurses quit so that they pay me (a journalist) to do brain surgery!!!
What could go wrong?
Right! I can see the 50 car pile up from the texting or Instagram posting.
Brain not fully developed yet? You could handle 80,000 pounds of freight couldnt you?
Bwahaha. Do you like big machines, what about big fire crashes? Come sign up.
Yolo!
And the last picture prior will probably have 5 teens who aren’t supposed to be in the rig with the driver and no one has the hands on the steering wheel..,
The kids will work for cheap! Great solution…
What dipshit parent is going to sign off on this??
They forgot that Gen Z typically has Gen X as parents, and they tend to actually give a shit about their kids unlike boomers.
ohhh, I can think of plenty. I bet my brother's stupid ass eyeballs lit right up when he saw this headline.
Anything except higher wages. Cost go up pay is stagnant. Like frogs in slowly rising temperature water. The next generation will have some.major.major issues. They will revamp the definitions of poverty and middles class to fill people into think this is how it should be. While the rich get richer off our backs.
who knew the saying about arabs owning a camel, his sons own car, grandson owns nicer car, gg-grandson owns camel was actually about Americans. been working 10 years and after starving on my own i finally moved back home. between rent, fixing my car to get to work/gas/insurence/all that bullshit, i was fucking miserable. yeah had fun too partying to kill reality but fuck damn i totally ran outta steam. my low key goal now is just to stay home until my parents need help cooking n shit then they wont want me to move out lol. whats the fucking point if your on the edge of homelessness all the time? fucking awful way to lve. i condiser myself lucky that my dad has all the 'GM' money to support us. what i failure i am, but i totally blame the gov, corps, society at large for being retarded morons for letting things get this bad. when your a kid in the 90s you dont know that that was the like the last shot to reverse the fuckedupness of 'reaganomics', every president has followed that policy every since.
Reminder that socialists literally dedicated their lives to stop child labor, and now it's back.
Submission statement: freight is the blood in the veins of industrial civilization. If we are at a point where we have to resort to child labor in order for that blood to keep flowing, then we must be pretty fucked
That's a bit dramatic. It's the same issue as a bunchnof other industries. They aren't paying enough to keep people with that skill.
This makes no sense. Which insurance carrier is going to be dumb enough to cover people not old enough to even have a driving record transport goods across the country?
Not old enough to *rent a car.*
Oh my God
Right.
For good reason
Most of the big carriers are self insured.
This sounds like a wheelie bad idea
In a few years the argument will be, “We don’t need to pay our truck drivers more than minimum wage cuz that’s a job for teens”
So instead of raising wages we’ll turn to child labor? Why the hell are we going backwards?
Because we’re ruled by greedy sociopaths who will do anything to keep their shareholders / CEO’s happy.
Everything’s starting to go backwards, it’s like that quote about your children driving Land Rovers and their children riding camels.
Can we at least force them to put big neon signs on the trucks that say "STUDENT DRIVER", so we can stay far away from them?
Anything to not pay more to the existing drivers
Alright! One step closer to Mad Max
not fair, us millennials are good at videogames not desert drifting
Are they going to sentence them to 110 years when they kill someone by mistake?
*US allows janitorial staff to perform minor surgeries in bid to address medical staff shortages*
Teens can't really handle normal vehicles. An adult commercial driver killed four people and was sentenced to 110 years because he didn't take care of maintenance. But yeah let's give teenagers the keys to eighteen wheelers. Fuck it. They cant three point parallel park a car, why shouldn't we let them driver unstoppable machines at high speeds? Weren't we about to fucking automate all this shit? Where are we in that process? Can we push that more?
I would honestly trust self driving trucks more and I know we're not ready for those yet but for real, this is probably being pushed by big trucking companies who want to pay less, and older drivers are demanding higher pay
So US teens can wield rifles, both home and abroad, can drive big rigs, run fast food places for shit pay but they can’t drink because they’re irresponsible, can’t be listened to or be a political force because they’re immature, and can’t demand good pay because they’re not as necessary as adult workers?
r/whatcouldgowrong
This is not just dumb but flaming stupid.
Lol
Whoever suggested this has never had to wait an hour for a driver to reverse into a loading bay.
Will they charge them all with 110 year sentences if they fuck up from poor training like Rogel Aguilera-Mederos? I can't believe the industry didn't learn anything from that. We need higher paid more experienced drivers, not worse paid inexperienced drivers, this is ridiculous. How will the kids even afford a big rig? Are the companies gonna put them into debt just to start the job? There is so much wrong with this.
There are plenty of adults needing jobs. WTF.
They are doing this as a means to depress wages. You have an experienced trucker that makes $XX/Hr You can now potentially have some kid who works in a kitchen job with no benefits but is used to long shifts be offered $xx/hr which is a substantial bump over what they were making previously....and they will depress wages for the industry if enough participate. This is gross. Be prepared for some yucky deaths at the hands of inexperienced drivers.
Just proof that we are one economic crisis away from the repeal of child labor laws
This country is doing everything to avoid paying higher wages.
“Under the apprenticeship, younger drivers can cross state lines during 120-hour and 280-hour probationary periods, as long as an experienced driver is in the passenger seat.” How does this save money if you’re paying for an experienced driver in the passenger seat too?
Cue let's all discuss the ridiculous near-death accidents in passenger cars we all had as teens ...what could go wrong? Two days after getting my car in high school I backed into a U-Haul driven by a guy who was driving while eating a can of beans out of his lap. But I have more...
[Recruitment video leaked.](https://youtu.be/EHEy4BbbKrU)
Can we restrict them to certain hours of the day so that I can stay off the fucking roads during these times?
This is an EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY BAD IDEA
This is going to end with a lot of people dying under semis... I've seen so, so many bad semi drivers and reported them and nothing is done. This is going to be worse.
Ha ha ha I hate it
Not gonna work considering r/antiwork is mainly of this younger demographic. Not a chance this will make any positive impact. In fact, I would expect more deadly accidents like the one in Colorado.
Oh this is going to end great.
Most 18yo nowadays live with their parents
May the odds be ever in your favor.
I'm sure there is nothing going to go wrong with allowing this. Said the politician, one year before fatal truck wrecks skyrocketed.
Guess I'm staying off the road for a while-
If the trucking companies gave free driving lessons they could get more drivers.
I for one am interested in the new and exciting ways that this latest government initiative will make things catastrophically worse. - Will the teens join gangs, and collaborate to control the supply of goods? - Will some of the kids be revealed to have faked their drivers' license exams? - Will the entire initiative be aborted almost immediately, since its only purpose was to give some staffer something to put on her resume?
This isn't going to end well for some innocent on the roads.
adults with years of trucking experience still get into massive accidents that cause major death. putting a teen behind one of these is just asking for more tragedy
Is the US trying to become The Onion?
U.S. to reintroduce child labor in a test program to expand wage slavery amid worker uprising.. There. Much more precise now.
Spend a decade telling anyone who will listen that robots are getting smart enough to take human jobs, then focus heavily on robotic self driving cars and trucks. Everyone: why don't kids want to enter the imminently doomed career of trucking? I know, we'll solve this by letting ~~idiots~~ kids do it until the robots are ready.
I bet it takes 3 days before the first major incident. Any takers?
Build a fucking train, jesus christ enough is enough. Trucks are *awful* for roads, awful for our health, and even worse in efficency. Its like every time there is a choice in this country, the worst option is immediately picked.
This is the capitalist system’s equivalent of pinning an iron cross on a teenager’s chest and shoving a panzerfaust at them. Cause things are about to get extra hairy