Our Broken Trucking Regulatory System
By When the Wal-Mart truck driver crashed into Tracy Morgan’s limousine last week after falling asleep, I wanted to write a short piece on how the trucking companies endanger workers and drivers through their horrible labor practices. But I didn’t have time to do the research (pro tip: don’t write 2 books at once). Luckily, David Dayen did write this up and it’s typically excellent. The whole system is a nightmare of labor exploitation, corporate purchase of politicians, and casual indifference toward you and I when we are on the road. An excerpt:
But the fact is it’s difficult for truck drivers to make a decent living by playing by the rules, and employers, including Walmart, effectively create a hazardous workplace by constraining pay to make cheating attractive, and ordering faster shipments with deadlines that can only be achieved through cutting corners. Roper had been awake for over 24 hours when he crashed his truck, according to the criminal complaint. A January accident in Illinois featured a driver on the job for 36 straight hours.
The average trucker makes around $37,000 a year. While trucker pay varies from one company to the next, in general terms they get paid by the mile, but not for each mile driven. If a driver goes from Seattle to Minneapolis, they get an “as the crow flies” rate, meaning that any detours or miles spent lost on the road are unpaid. Most drivers aren’t covered by Fair Labor Standards Act requirements on overtime pay beyond 40 hours. Truckers are also often not paid when the haul gets loaded or unloaded, so they could spend hours at a facility working without being on the clock, adding to fatigue. Some industries, like oil and gas, have exemptions from hours-of-service rules that make driving even more dangerous.
Drivers also face tight deadlines to deliver loads on time. Employers restrict speed because it impacts fuel costs, so the only way to get goods to their destination faster is through more driving hours.
5 quick points. All drivers should be covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Second, trucking companies simply need to be held criminally liable each and every time one of their truckers gets in a crash from overwork and exhaustion with vastly increased financial punishments. Third, drivers need to be paid for established route miles, not as the crow flies. This should be set by the federal government. Fourth, OSHA needs authority over the truckers even when they are on the road (the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has jurisdiction on the road). Fifth, as Dayen suggests, electronic logbooks need to be kept for every truck. The nation can spy on its citizens but can’t prevent truckers from working 100 hour weeks. Right.
And all those life-threatening hours and stress for $37,000 a year. That’s a terrible hourly rate.