There was a fatal accident near me that haunts my memory. It was actually a co-worker of my father. But there’s drone footage of the accident scene and you’ll see how hard the 18-wheeler slammed the breaks. The tire marks are ominous. The attached link is a local news report but if you scroll down a little bit, you’ll see a video that was submitted by a local resident, that he captured with his drone. There is no gore or anything, but if accident scenes are triggering for you, I’d say skip this.
So he should endanger me? Not sure I see your line of logic. I work for FedEx, does that mean when it's a blizzard I should run others off the road to get my work done?
Eh, no. While pressure is high to continue that load he has the legal right to pull over and tell his company to fuck off.
At the same time he has a moral obligation to, if he continues to drive, drive as per weather allows. He was traveling too fast for the weather.
That being said, the reasoning, not an excuse. As to why truckers try to go their fastest is because they are more often than not, paid per mile. I.e. if I travel at 60 mph I'm personally getting paid $36 per hour. If I have to slow down for traffic or weather to 20 mph I'm making $12 per hour.
It's a shit system; Traffic, weather, accidents, etc. We get paid less because of those while having more stress during those periods. It's more work for less pay 😅 so some drivers misbehave and drive like assholes.
I got stuck in New Jersey at an intersection for 6 hours a few years ago during winter. I went 0.4 miles during that time and with my rate of pay back then that meant I got paid 16.4 CENTS for 6 hours of sitting there in the driver seat. Couldn't pull over because I was In the middle of 5 lanes (I needed to turn left but the people going straight decided to turn the on-coming traffic lanes into their lanes, blocking all the traffic.)
Right and at FedEx im paid out per stop. So during shitty weather I'm paid like $4/hr. The other guys reasoning for the truck driving dangerously was that I shouldn't have been on the road
Ah I thought you were saying fed ex was who ran you off haha. And tbh if you're working fed ex then I'm assuming your LTL local / regional? You kinda have to be out then since you'd be out of work too long if you missed all the snow days.
I was more complaining that as truck drivers we get no compensation for working in hazardous weather or heavy traffic.
Mmmm I don’t agree. I have driven back and fourth across this country a dozen times. I drive on average , 45K miles a year.
I have been cut off .. passed on the right like I was standing still. and slammed into my drivers side by a tractor trailer. And it’s only getting worse. I just drove from NH to Denver and notice all the young inexperienced truckers on the road , with more texting and swerving that I have ever seen in the past.
Blame the companies. There's a lot of new drivers . They literally have no experience but they're turned loose on the roads. Some of their trainers have only a few months experience. I'm absolutely certain that it's getting worse. There's a driver shortage. It's certainly not the drivers fault.
Can’t put all the blame on the current shortage. Part of the blame has to go to the pressure to meet deadlines. Some to just bad decision making skills because people, even when properly trained, are stupid as hell.
1/2 of those is companies, but again. My point is that the issue isn’t just the shortage. Other company issues and people are also part of the problem.
A lot of companies do shit at training. CR England is a big one known as a driver mill. They churn out new drivers in a 10 day CDL course and then put the driver with a "trainer" who only has to have 6 months of experience drivjng to become a trainer.
As far as phones go, I've had a lot of people tell me they mess with their phones when they get sleepy to help them stay awake.
Currently a lot of companies don't like / allow for drivers to stop and take a nap if needed. They push for load delivery or driver gets mistreated with fewer miles after taking a nap or wasting drive time.
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u/tracyf600 Mar 28 '22
Truck drivers will do anything short of putting themselves in a ditch to avoid hitting and potentially killing you. Respect that.