Rip to that driver, hazmat and hauling fuel is a dangerous profession trucking in general because cagers just cut in front of you or don't pay attention realizing a truck with 80k payload can't stop on a dime it takes about a football field to slow down. Truckers move america, everything you see in the stores and phones you use etc gets moved on a truck. Your never home, you miss birthdays, graduations sometimes funerals, over regulated, and your expendable. Sometimes the pay isn't worth the sacrifice.
Yep. And not only everything you need from the stores.
Truckers also carry everything you need in order to have a job.
The steel, the bolts, the printer paper, the coffee, the hardhats, the boots, the friggen first aid kit....
Look around your house.
It doesnt matter what you are looking at.
If you didnt go to the railyard and pick it up, or go down to the port and take that container home on the roof of your electric car?
Which you cant.
The only reason why you have access to those things are because of the trucking industry.
I think that one of biggest problems with trucking is that the big fleet carriers and the insurance companies have lobbied congress to the point that it just about impossible for an independant owner/operator to survive.
A fleet carrier has an entire department dedicated to dealing with federal and state laws.
An independant trucker has to abide by the same laws while driving a truck and running his own business.
Federal regulations are quite often written by big business lawyers and industry lobbyists and designed to crush small business owners.
This is a big problem for the entire "JIT"
Just in time manufacturing industry and and it can be a project killer.
Just a little example of how this happens.
While building an NFL Stadium where all of the rails were engineered for 3/8ths round bar the entire nation ran out of 3/8ths round bar.
I found some in Florida.
Through a friend of a friend I found a guy who saved my ass by doing a crazy run from Florida to Denver.
Our office building had a beer cooler in every department and a gym and two showers.
******* owner didnt want to let the driver in because he thought he would get the carpets dirty.
Back in the 1970s and up to the late 1980s if you wanted to be safe on the highway you followed a trucker.
We were taught that when we were just beginning to drive.
Back then we all understood that everything came on a truck
Truck drivers were the people who worked like dogs to bring everything to us and we appreciated all of that.
CB culture and "Movin On" and BJ and the Bear and Smokey and the Bandit.
That culture didnt come from the movies.
The movies were a response to the culture.
Which is why the government had to crush that entire free culture.
The first attempt was to try and force everyone to get a "CB" license.
CB means "citizens band"
Think about that for a bit.
Citizens band.
Anybody with a CB radio can talk to anyone else and say whatever they want to say.
70s and 80s CB trucker culture and all of that freedom we had did not just die off. it was intentionally crushed by the government.
Over my career I have found myself in dire need of some material or product that has to be onsite.
If I dont make that schedule I will pay from my companies assets somewhere in 50 to 150 thousand for every day we are late.
No way in hell am I riding my project or my liquidated damages on Swift or Western Express or any of those other pee bottle companies.
The stupid as **** problem is how do I pay you for covering my ass without you paying all of the tax for it?
I, even though I know you have knocked yourself out .
Even if I want to give you more money just for having the balls to do it.
I cant do that.
The only way I can pay you a bonus is by having a contractual deadline associated with your performance.
The world is so ****** up that I as the owner of my own company cannot pay you a performance bonus as a subcontractor unless we have set parameters before you preform some contracted action on my behalf.
It is all ******* nonsense.
If you want to go down my path you really should try.
But, I also think its all a good idea.
