This is a story shared by a Fleet Manager from another company about one of his employees:
Let me tell you a little about the truck driver you just flipped off because he was passing another truck, and you had to cancel the cruise control and slow down until he completed the pass and moved back over.
His truck is governed to 68 miles an hour, because the company he leases it from believes it keeps him and the public and the equipment safer.
The truck he passed was probably running under 65 mph to conserve fuel. You see, the best these trucks do for fuel economy is about 8 miles per gallon. With fuel at almost $4 per gallon -- well, you do the math. And, yes, that driver pays for his own fuel.
He needs to be 1,014 miles from where he loaded in two days. And he can't fudge his federally mandated driver log, because he no longer does it on paper; he is logged electronically.
He can drive 11 hours in a 14-hour period; then he must take a 10-hour break. And considering that the shipper where he loaded held him up for five hours because it is understaffed, he now needs to run without stopping for lunch and dinner breaks.
If he misses his delivery appointment, he will be rescheduled for the next day, because the receiver has booked its docks solid (and has cut staff to a minimum). That means the driver sits, losing 500-plus miles for the week.
Which means his profit will be cut, and he will take less money home to his family. Most of these guys are gone 10 days, and home for a day and a half, and take home an average of $500 a week if everything goes well.
You can't tell by looking at him, but two hours ago he took a call informing him that his only sister was involved in a car accident, and though everything possible was done to save her, she died. They had flown her to a trauma hospital in Detroit, but it was too late.
He hadn't seen her since last Christmas, but they talked on the phone every week. The load he is pulling is going to Atlanta, and he will probably not be able to get to the funeral.
His dispatcher will do everything possible to get him there, but the chances are slim. So he has hardly noticed your displeasure at having to slow down for him. It's not that he doesn't care; he's just numb.
Everything you buy at the store and everything you order online moves by truck. Planes and trains can't get it to your house or grocery store. We are dependent on trucks to move product from the airport and the rail yards to the stores and our homes.
Every day, experienced and qualified drivers give it up because the government, the traffic and the some greedy companies involved in trucking have drained their enthusiasm for this life.
They take a job at a factory or construction if they can find it, and are replaced by an inexperienced youngster dreaming of the open road. This inexperience leads to late deliveries, causing shortages and higher prices at the store, and crashes that lead to unnecessary deaths.
It is even possible that is what led to the death of this driver's sister.
This is a true story; it happened last week. The driver's name is Harold, and I am his Fleet Manager.
Been thinking about this one since it came out last week. This is something all the FM's here should read. We who go home every night to our own houses, 1500 plus square feet, with a bathroom we don't have to walk 1/4 mile to, across a cold, snowy , windblown parking lot, and don't share with 1000 other people; who get to pick what we want out of the fridge or cabinet, need to keep in mind the life of the folks who make our jobs necessary. Those guys live in an 8 x 8 foot metal box for weeks at a time, giving up all the conveniences we take for granted, and the companionship of family and friends. Even in the best of circumstances, that's a challenging life. It's easy to forget that at the other end of those truck numbers on the screen, there's a real person. It's a hard life to understand if you have not done it.
ReplyDeleteAll that to point out this: I overheard a fleet manager here-I don't know who, it was in another group, but loud enough I could make out the converation-yesterday on the phone with one of his drivers. The driver did not want to take a new truck, because the interior space was not to his liking. For whatever reason-probably cost, that drives most such decisions-we are acquiring trucks with smaller sleepers than we have in the past. They make my old International 9800-the famous flat floor-look like a ballroom by comparison. The driver was complaining it did not have enough space for his gear. The FM was chewing out the driver for rejecting the truck. That was bad enough-the FM's tone was disrespectful-but what really got me was when he told the driver "maybe you have too much stuff(not the word he used, another word that starts with "s") and should get rid of some "stuff," I was an OTR driver here for five years, based in Syracuse. If any of my FM's had told me that in that tone of voice, I'd have been on the phone to my OM in less than five minutes, after telling the FM where to park his truck. The thing to keep in mind is in that first paragraph. These guys give up a lot of the things we do every day to do this job. We need to be mindful of that. We also need not to be disrespectful, even if the driver is being a total ass, and some of them are good at it. We spend a lot of time, and a lot of money, on retention. That's not the way to do retain drivers.
Comment part 2
ReplyDeleteFinally, because I can't resist since it was mentioned in the original quoted piece, speed. I get that there are economies to be had by keeping truck speeds down. There are other factors in that equation, among them the many emission controls that have been required over the last 20 years or so. Seems like I used to run 7 MPG or better a lot of the time with a cabover back in the day. We don't seem to be doing nearly as well now. In the story above, the driver who was flipped off was going 68 MPH, passing a truck going under 65, probably on a posted 70 MPH highway, where most drivers are going 75, some faster. One of my pet peeves is vehicles going too slowly in the passing lane, so bear with me. Here we have a truck governed at 68, running less than the speed limit in the left lane. The driver who flipped him off is of course annoyed that he had to cut out the cruise to accomodate the truck. That's a minor issue, but it leads to the larger issue, which is overall highway safety.
I spend a lot of time driving for a guy who does not do it for a living, almost 40,000 miles most years. I traded a 6 year old Toyota last year with 253,000 miles on it, so I have some experience with this from both sides. I think many companies need to revisit their governed speeds, us included. Given the speed limits most places. a vehicle out on the road doing much less than 70 MPH is just in the way. Several of them in close proximity have the potential for creating not only congestion, but conflict as other vehicles must make lane changes to work around them. I have watched on many occasions a 68 MPH truck overtaking one of ours, or a Swift truck, taking a couple of minutes to make the pass and return to the right lane. Not a lot of time in the grand scheme, but enough on a busy interstate-think I 40 between Little Rock and Memphis-to cause some real disruption in traffic flow as everyone jockeys for position to work around the slow trucks that now have the whole highway bottled up. This is now an opportunity for mayhem, and is a contributing factor to accidents. Even one truck going much slower than the posted speed can create this situation if there's enough other traffic. I know from driving both cars and trucks in Michigan, where trucks were limited to 55 MPH and everyone else could run 70, that this was a real problem. Picture I 75 from Toledo to Detroit, three lanes wide, trucks in the two right lanes, poking along at 55. Every car that enters or leaves the interstate has to make its way across two lanes of plodding behemoths to get to the left lane so they can make posted speed. Meanwhile, the trucks have to contend with all these 4 wheelers darting in and out between us as they cross the slow lanes to get on and off, and hope none of them runs into us.
Back in 1996, we cut our truck speed to 59 MPH, just as many states were raising their speed limits to 70. Among the stated reasons was that slower was safer. I doubt that; I was accident free in any event, but now it took me an hour a day longer to accomplish the same 500 miles I was used to doing. Slow trucks were a bad idea then, and still a bad idea now, especially as highways get more and more congested. I saw a lot of cars coming up behind me, the drivers having that "Oh crap!!!" look on their faces as they swerved to avoid me when they realized I was going A LOT slower than they were. With a few exceptions, every state outside the northeast has at least a 70 MPH speed limit. We'd all be safer if the trucks ran closer to the flow of traffic, thus creating less conflict, than poking along and being an obstruction. We have, for the most part, safe drivers. We should be able to trust them at 68 MPH as well as at 62, and it would be a service to the rest of the motoring public if we were not an obstruction.
That is a rather frank and pointed tale. I think we all needed that, and we should all put that in mind. Truck accidents are a burden for both the alleged offender and the victim. However, it's the trucks that take the fall more often, as well as the folks who find themselves needing them for a living. I mean, it's easier to pin the blame on inanimate objects, such as large vehicles, and just make it a matter of prohibiting their use or their driving into lanes. Ultimately, it's in drawing of the line between the cause and effect that will identify actual culprits and bring some measure of justice to set things straight. In any way, thanks for sharing that! All the best to you!
ReplyDeleteModesto Culbertson @ D & Z Law Group