Letters to the Editor: Border Dissent, HOS, Defensive Driving
These letters appear in the Sept. 17 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Border Dissent
I would like to urge everyone reading this letter to contact their local representatives and ask them not to pass the law allowing Mexican carriers full, direct access to U.S. roadways and customers.
We already have a strong shortage of drivers, in direct proportion to the owner-operators proclaiming they can survive due to company carriers underbidding lanes as frequently as they do and even third-party logistics companies promising the world to customers.
They don’t have their own trucks to provide and they expect drivers to pull freight so cheaply they cause them to go broke.
Yet, they presume to know what it takes to move big equipment down the road safely and fairly.
Allowing Mexican carriers full access to this country will only exacerbate the problem we have now with low rates and underbidding, as the Mexican carriers will try to cut rates further and gain market share away from U.S. carriers by the only method that works — lowering rates.
Customers and 3PLs will certainly love the idea of lowering rates, either for more profit to themselves or to help gain their own market share, but it will only serve to alienate American drivers in this country.
All too often, we run overseas or cross borders to solve our problems; just once, I’d like to see Americans stand up for ourselves and look inward to solve a problem. American truckers are a dying breed, and not by choice. They are being forced out.
The cost of living keeps going up every year — we can all agree on that. As a result, the cost of operating a big truck continues to go up every year. We can all agree on that, but why is it that rates must continue to go down every year?
Does anyone else see what’s happening here? If this practice keeps up, we won’t have to worry about the days when drivers used to strike to shut the trucks down; they are being starved out right now.
Let’s take care of our own freight with our own drivers. We can bicker among ourselves about how much to move freight for, but we don’t need foreign carriers adding to the problems.
Daniel Mitchell
CR Danstar Transportation LLC and Independent Carrier Agent
Somerset, Wis.
Enough already with adding more trucks on our already crowded highways, scaring the hell out of automobile drivers and tearing up the highways for a pittance of the taxes they pay. Try using our railroads and get the trucks off the highways.
William Abdella
Retired
Columbus, Ohio
After 14 years and a growing shortage of drivers, I am hearing the same hue and cry about safety issues with Mexican trucks — they aren’t being checked for safety,
etc., etc. — making it sound as if 50-year-old death traps will be lumbering along our highways and byways soon.
There is an easy way to compare safety records — find out how many have been involved in accidents within the trade-zone area, compared with per-mile accident rates of U.S. trucks, plus some information on the age of their trucks, safety records and checks.
My guess is that Mexican drivers, who deal with the often inferior roads down there, are every bit as good as ours, maybe better.
Jonathan Hefferlin
Transportation Recruiter
Management Recruiters
Dana Point
Dana Point, Calif.
Hours of Service
I have no problem with the hours-of-service rules now, except that you can’t stop the 14-hour clock for meals — or even for safety reasons. You are forced to run 10 or 11 hours, no matter what.
Keith Yount
Road Driver
UPS Freight
Windsor, Mo.
OK, so American Trucking Associations endorses the 11-hour rule and Mary Peters endorses it. Everyone, it seems, endorses the 11-hour rule — except the people whose lives are affected by it negatively.
Of course, there are those select few hand picked out of the driver pool who just love the hours of service. They’ve probably never known anything but the 11-hour rule.
But let’s say, just for a moment, that the rules were changed from what they are today back to a system that includes a split sleeper-berth rule. What would prevent these zealots from running their day exactly as they do now?
Nothing. They could still run their full day — 11 hours, if that’s what the rule finally turns out to be — and settle in for a 10-hour break. The rest of us, who recognize when we need a break, could nap when we were tired and continue on, rested and refreshed, completing the same 11-hour day and getting the same 10-hour rest.
How many ways does it have to be said? How many times before someone will listen to the actual drivers who have been here awhile?
And as for those statistics regarding a lower fatality rate, just because the fatality rate has been lower since the onset of the new rule doesn’t mean the new rule is in any way responsible for it. If there is any truth to the statistics showing lowered fatality, it is in spite of the new rules, not because of them.
Patricia LaRue
Over-the-Road Driver
Adelanto, Calif.
Defensive Driving
There was a pileup last week of six big trucks on a section of I-94 adjacent to my home. Those with any time in the trucking industry can recall the numerous accident reports in which a tractor-trailer rear-ends a four-wheeler in a construction zone.
Trucks rear-ending each other often prove fatal to the truck driver. These tragedies could be avoided. Actual road training in defensive driving techniques could have saved these lives.
Patrick Reardon
Retired City/Over-the-Road Driver
Climax, Mich.
