16 ms·

Brother did this. The bad part about the job, as noted in the article, is the way the pay works. If the truck is not moving the driver is not getting paid. Stuc

Brother did this. The bad part about the job, as noted in the article, is the way the pay works. If the truck is not moving the driver is not getting paid. Stuck in traffic? Not paid, Takes a day to load your truck, no paid. Take a day to unload truck, not paid. Truckers sit for hours doing nothing and not getting paid. Sometimes trucks have to wait a day or two just to be assigned a load. Not paid.

savanaly 9y ago
I'm trying to think of reasons why it would be this way and what I can come up with is that if you were to pay by the hour instead of by the mile it would be an incentive to the drivers to take longer to complete routes. A classic principal-agent problem in other words. Is there any non-obvious reason besides that that anyone knows of?
- revicon 9y ago
  One guess is that most truck drivers were freelance (and many still are), owning their truck and getting paid per mile. Perhaps the rest of the industry standardized around that model regardless of the relationship the truck driver has with the parent company.
- petra 9y ago
  With today's apps, it's possible to solve that problem while still paying fairly. Maybe even without apps. But why ? why not dump the risk of delays at the weak party in this transaction ?
- kefka 9y ago
  Doesn't seem that hard to mix the two. We know a route from X to Y is $miles . Detours happen, but Google is getting to the point of calculating realtime incidents. But time could be fairly compensated, as could the miles on a vehicle. If you took a way longer route, it's on you. But if you're traffic jammed, it's not your fault, and should fairly be compensated. You know, that's what Unions are for.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Unions fixed this issue a long time ago. Then Reagan de-regulated and lots of companies from right to work states moved in and killed the market. The union shops like Yellow Freight mostly operate in blue states and are profitable.
    - moriarty-s3a 9y ago
      Trucking deregulation occurred between 1978-1980 during the Carter administration. Plus, the way it was regulated makes modern regulatory capture look consumer friendly. If you wanted to start a trucking company, you had to submit a business plan with a list of committed customers and already set in stone pricing. The Feds would literally hand your plan to everyone with a route in the region, give them a few months to review it and then your potential competitors got to vote on whether you should be allowed to operate that route. Predictably, it was basically just outsourced sales for the exiting companies.
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    It's not the trucker's fault they're traffic jammed. Does that mean it's their employer's fault?
    - kefka 9y ago
      It's not the employee's fault if a restaurant is "dead" for an evening. But the employees are required to be there, and thusly, are paid. Same here. If the truck driver was free to go home, or whatever, sure dont pay them. But traffic jams are in transit between places they are told to go. It doesn't have to be the "fault" of the employer. But the employee is captive, and working, and absolutely should be paid with regards to time.
      - jpttsn 9y ago
        From the employee perspective that makes sense. You articulate why they should be paid. But is that enough? I think you have to reason about the other side of the equation, where someone has to pay you. It rains. I have to walk to work I the rain. I should get compensated. But is my employer on the hook, to give me the happiness I would've had if it hadn't been raining?
- draw_down 9y ago
  The reason why it is this way is because it is better for the employer if the employee must shoulder the financial burden of dead time.
  - savanaly 9y ago
    It would be better for the employer if the employee paid for the oil checks on the trucks, or worked for the minimum wage. So why isn't that the case? "Because it's better for the employer" is simultaneously the explanation for everything and nothing. In reality, these situations arise from a lot of complex interactions between employer, employee and regulatory body, which is what I was trying to get at.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      The consequence to the employer for missed maintenance on a truck is damage to the asset or loss of use when the truck is pulled off the road by DOT inspectors. The consequence to an employee getting stuffed is that the driver has less time to sleep or jerk around in the back of the truck. Guess what the company doesn't give a shit about?
      - jpttsn 9y ago
        You're certain that it's out of spite/indifference, more than say economics?
        Spooky23 9y ago
        Definitionally. I doubt spite is a major factor, but the management is almost certainly intentionally indifferent. Economics doesn't care about the morale of the workers in this context as it contributes nothing to the bottom line.
        jpttsn 9y ago
        I'm in agreement, inasmuch as I hope management cares little for anything they believe doesn't touch the bottom line. Would you prefer if management cared more about that, instead of the bottom line?
- watwut 9y ago
  Truckers are not in position to negotiate better working conditions. If you don't take the deal, somebody else will. There does not need to be more.
  - adrr 9y ago
    Could always form a union. Low skill jobs income has declined with the decline of unions representing them.
    - nerfhammer 9y ago
      Long haul truckers are very often (usually?) owner-operators that own the truck themselves and pick up hauling contracts; they aren't employees. Otherwise there are teamsters, which are very heavily unionized.
      - dv_dt 9y ago
        Is there anything in between? Small to med cooperatives of long-haul truckers?
      - dredmorbius 9y ago
        Guild, then.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Nope. Look at trucks on interstates, most are from the South or Midwest right to work states on the east coast.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    On the other hand, trucking companies for the most part are lacking drivers. Turnover is rampant. Drivers will hop to another company for a better per-mile rate, or better scheduling, or newer equipment. Good, safe, dependable drivers are in demand. And they don't want idle trucks any more than the driver does because if the truck is idle they aren't making money either.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Isn't this situation directly analogous to e.g. Uber? That isn't hard to understand, is it?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  We have managers and dispatchers to take care of that. The real reason is that it pushes off risk. Why would a trucking company pay a guy to sit in traffic? WTF is the guy going to do anyway... he's sleeping in the truck behind a gas station somewhere in Armpit, PA.
justin66 9y ago
Does all that goofiness apply if you're unionized, like the Teamsters?
org3432 9y ago
The issue isn't that they're not getting paid for non-driving time, it's that the driving time pay isn't enough to cover the non-driving time. Which is to say the economics of the job overall isn't working..
abtinf 9y ago
I've met a number of people working in various piece work [1] industries and I make it a point to ask them about their view of payments and how their work effort correlates with payment. What I've found is that with near certainty, these individuals suffer from a kind of economic myopia. They view every aspect of their work as something though should be charged for and they complain about every little bit they aren't paid for separately. They are almost never open to the idea that it doesn't matter how much they get paid for each action; what matters is their total income. They view anything they don't charge for as money that rightfully belongs to them. Note that this is not about education level either. Easily, the single most vocal group about piece work payments are the medical doctors I've talked to. I've met multiple doctors who think they should be able to bill for each question asked during a visit that concerns a different medical topic, and some go so far as to demand the patient leave and book a subsequent 15 minute appointment before they will discuss it. Edit: I'm not saying anything about how much truckers, or any other profession, should be paid. Instead, piece work professions would be better served (and would avoid potentially disastrous financial outcomes) by evaluating their business in terms of overall profitability. For example, drivers might negotiate a higher price per mile, but if one of the aspects the parent mentioned changes significantly (load/unload time, traffic conditions in a geograph), they should turn down the work or start transitioning to a new occupation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work
- mentalhealth 9y ago
  Easily, the single most vocal group about piece work payments are the medical doctors I've talked to. To be fair, there are unusual incentives in place here -- depending on the specific circumstances, each individual task or procedure a doctor performs may end up being coded differently for insurance reimbursement purposes. The focus of doctors on piece work is incentivized by the way insurance works.
- ethbro 9y ago
  As someone with truckers in the family, and who discusses it frequently with them, their biggest problems with the 14 hour rules are twofold. (1) It's immutable, and squeezes them between their dispatchers (who schedule them for 11 hour drives) and remaining legal. If you're running a day load (far better quality of life), then if you hit traffic you're spending the night on the road in your truck, parked wherever you happened to hit the time limit. There's no individual flexibility in terms of "I'll drive less tomorrow to make up for it." (2) Removal of individual agency. Imagine if someone showed up at your desk and told you that you couldn't write any more code because you'd already been coding X hours. Doesn't matter you were on a roll. Doesn't matter that the past 4 hours were lightweight commenting and code formatting. Doesn't matter you were in the middle of writing a solution that finally occurred to you. Just is. Oh, and here's a $500 DOT ticket for trying to jot down some code notes to yourself to salvage your work. I hear and agree that some people feel entitled to bill counter to market. But IMHO the combination of a per-mile-rate, dispatcher-driven scheduling, and absolute regulation is pretty sadistic to truckers. There's a lot more friendly ways the legislation could have been written: work hour cap per week, different classes of CDL / experience levels mean different caps, etc.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
It seems like you should get paid (perhaps a slightly reduced hourly rate) if you're waiting for the truck to be loaded. That's completely outside of your control and yet I assume you must be in control of the truck the entire time? I do think the mileage incentive makes sense because it forces you to be clever about your route. But not getting paid while a truck is loaded seems like total bullshit and basically another example of companies building their business off the backs of workers.
- bluedino 9y ago
  Hey, some truckers are lucky they don't have to load the truck!
- jonlucc 9y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, the truckers are generally 1099 contractors (owner-operators), so it's not that they are just clocked out when they aren't moving, but they are paid by the mile to the destination. Of course, that results in the same effect as described above, but it hopefully adds some context.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Some are owner/operators, many are not. I don't know the breakdown, but many people who drive trucks for a living do not have the financial resources or credit score to be able to buy their own truck (generally a purchase between $150,000 - $200,000 or more, with that much again in annual operating costs).
logfromblammo 9y ago
Isn't all that exactly why taxicab meters have a hail fee and then measure both time and distance?
- taxicabjesus 9y ago
  > Isn't all that exactly why taxicab meters have a hail fee and then measure both time and distance? The meters only charge for time when the cab isn't moving, or is moving slowly... This enabled a passenger to run in to a convenience store, and it would be worthwhile for the driver to wait for the passenger to buy their beer (or whatever). Sometimes my passengers would ask me to stop the meter so it wouldn't run up on them ("sure"), others expected it and were fine with the arrangement. It looks like the gorilla rideshare company slashed their per-minute rate in Phoenix since I last checked - used to be $0.25/min, now is $0.09/min. This makes it not worthwhile for the "ride share" driver to wait for their passenger to run into a store... In theory, since the "rides" show up instantaneously it's more efficient to get a new ride rather than make stops. Since the "ridesharing" apps charge for both time & distance, the posted price-per-mile makes it seem like you're getting a better deal than you are. 3-4 minutes/mile adds $0.27-$0.36 to the cost for every mile of travel, at $0.09/min.
  - mahyarm 9y ago
    If rides show up instantly, wouldn't it be more efficient to just get another uber ride after your 5 minute shopping trip?
    - taxicabjesus 9y ago
      If rides could show up instantly, it would be more efficient to just get a new 'ride' for every leg of your trip. But Phoenix is spread out, and you can't always count on a car being nearby. It typically took me 7 minutes to get to a pickup address, which included a minute to plug the address into my navigation software (the taxi company I used to drive for now has a phone app that automagically directs the driver to the pickup address, just like the upstarts' system). The mother of a friend of mine has taken to using "Lifts" when she needs to go someplace where she'd rather not have to park. I explained that the driver she was getting might not actually be just around the corner.
mikey_p 9y ago
The big problem here is that if you're at the terminal waiting on a load, you're "on-duty, not driving." This is a specific status as it relates to federal motor carrier regulations that govern the hours a driver can operate. Once you've hit 14 hours of "on duty" time for the day you can't drive any longer. Some major carriers will ask drivers to fudge this, although the rules are actually pretty strict about this. Notably, Wal-Mart has come under a lot of criticism in the past for asking drivers to mark time waiting for a truck to be loaded/unloaded as "off duty" instead of "on duty, not driving."
- twothamendment 9y ago
  There are parts of the job that are 100% essential to have done, yet it is OK to not pay a driver for doing it - like putting fuel in the truck. I don't understand it. There are too many companies that ask drivers to fudge the books. My dad has worked for a handful of them and finally found a nice place where he doesn't have to worry about that kind of request. I think it is more common than people think.
Profragile 9y ago
I don't get paid for the time I travel to and from my office either. I don't see the problem.

savanaly 9y ago

I'm trying to think of reasons why it would be this way and what I can come up with is that if you were to pay by the hour instead of by the mile it would be an incentive to the drivers to take longer to complete routes. A classic principal-agent problem in other words. Is there any non-obvious reason besides that that anyone knows of?

revicon 9y ago
One guess is that most truck drivers were freelance (and many still are), owning their truck and getting paid per mile. Perhaps the rest of the industry standardized around that model regardless of the relationship the truck driver has with the parent company.
petra 9y ago
With today's apps, it's possible to solve that problem while still paying fairly. Maybe even without apps. But why ? why not dump the risk of delays at the weak party in this transaction ?
kefka 9y ago
Doesn't seem that hard to mix the two. We know a route from X to Y is $miles . Detours happen, but Google is getting to the point of calculating realtime incidents. But time could be fairly compensated, as could the miles on a vehicle. If you took a way longer route, it's on you. But if you're traffic jammed, it's not your fault, and should fairly be compensated. You know, that's what Unions are for.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Unions fixed this issue a long time ago. Then Reagan de-regulated and lots of companies from right to work states moved in and killed the market. The union shops like Yellow Freight mostly operate in blue states and are profitable.
  - moriarty-s3a 9y ago
    Trucking deregulation occurred between 1978-1980 during the Carter administration. Plus, the way it was regulated makes modern regulatory capture look consumer friendly. If you wanted to start a trucking company, you had to submit a business plan with a list of committed customers and already set in stone pricing. The Feds would literally hand your plan to everyone with a route in the region, give them a few months to review it and then your potential competitors got to vote on whether you should be allowed to operate that route. Predictably, it was basically just outsourced sales for the exiting companies.
- jpttsn 9y ago
  It's not the trucker's fault they're traffic jammed. Does that mean it's their employer's fault?
  - kefka 9y ago
    It's not the employee's fault if a restaurant is "dead" for an evening. But the employees are required to be there, and thusly, are paid. Same here. If the truck driver was free to go home, or whatever, sure dont pay them. But traffic jams are in transit between places they are told to go. It doesn't have to be the "fault" of the employer. But the employee is captive, and working, and absolutely should be paid with regards to time.
    - jpttsn 9y ago
      From the employee perspective that makes sense. You articulate why they should be paid. But is that enough? I think you have to reason about the other side of the equation, where someone has to pay you. It rains. I have to walk to work I the rain. I should get compensated. But is my employer on the hook, to give me the happiness I would've had if it hadn't been raining?
draw_down 9y ago
The reason why it is this way is because it is better for the employer if the employee must shoulder the financial burden of dead time.
- savanaly 9y ago
  It would be better for the employer if the employee paid for the oil checks on the trucks, or worked for the minimum wage. So why isn't that the case? "Because it's better for the employer" is simultaneously the explanation for everything and nothing. In reality, these situations arise from a lot of complex interactions between employer, employee and regulatory body, which is what I was trying to get at.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    The consequence to the employer for missed maintenance on a truck is damage to the asset or loss of use when the truck is pulled off the road by DOT inspectors. The consequence to an employee getting stuffed is that the driver has less time to sleep or jerk around in the back of the truck. Guess what the company doesn't give a shit about?
    - jpttsn 9y ago
      You're certain that it's out of spite/indifference, more than say economics?
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        Definitionally. I doubt spite is a major factor, but the management is almost certainly intentionally indifferent. Economics doesn't care about the morale of the workers in this context as it contributes nothing to the bottom line.
        jpttsn 9y ago
        I'm in agreement, inasmuch as I hope management cares little for anything they believe doesn't touch the bottom line. Would you prefer if management cared more about that, instead of the bottom line?
watwut 9y ago
Truckers are not in position to negotiate better working conditions. If you don't take the deal, somebody else will. There does not need to be more.
- adrr 9y ago
  Could always form a union. Low skill jobs income has declined with the decline of unions representing them.
  - nerfhammer 9y ago
    Long haul truckers are very often (usually?) owner-operators that own the truck themselves and pick up hauling contracts; they aren't employees. Otherwise there are teamsters, which are very heavily unionized.
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      Is there anything in between? Small to med cooperatives of long-haul truckers?
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Guild, then.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Nope. Look at trucks on interstates, most are from the South or Midwest right to work states on the east coast.
- ams6110 9y ago
  On the other hand, trucking companies for the most part are lacking drivers. Turnover is rampant. Drivers will hop to another company for a better per-mile rate, or better scheduling, or newer equipment. Good, safe, dependable drivers are in demand. And they don't want idle trucks any more than the driver does because if the truck is idle they aren't making money either.
jessaustin 9y ago
Isn't this situation directly analogous to e.g. Uber? That isn't hard to understand, is it?
Spooky23 9y ago
We have managers and dispatchers to take care of that. The real reason is that it pushes off risk. Why would a trucking company pay a guy to sit in traffic? WTF is the guy going to do anyway... he's sleeping in the truck behind a gas station somewhere in Armpit, PA.

justin66 9y ago

Does all that goofiness apply if you're unionized, like the Teamsters?

org3432 9y ago

The issue isn't that they're not getting paid for non-driving time, it's that the driving time pay isn't enough to cover the non-driving time. Which is to say the economics of the job overall isn't working..

abtinf 9y ago

I've met a number of people working in various piece work [1] industries and I make it a point to ask them about their view of payments and how their work effort correlates with payment. What I've found is that with near certainty, these individuals suffer from a kind of economic myopia. They view every aspect of their work as something though should be charged for and they complain about every little bit they aren't paid for separately. They are almost never open to the idea that it doesn't matter how much they get paid for each action; what matters is their total income. They view anything they don't charge for as money that rightfully belongs to them. Note that this is not about education level either. Easily, the single most vocal group about piece work payments are the medical doctors I've talked to. I've met multiple doctors who think they should be able to bill for each question asked during a visit that concerns a different medical topic, and some go so far as to demand the patient leave and book a subsequent 15 minute appointment before they will discuss it. Edit: I'm not saying anything about how much truckers, or any other profession, should be paid. Instead, piece work professions would be better served (and would avoid potentially disastrous financial outcomes) by evaluating their business in terms of overall profitability. For example, drivers might negotiate a higher price per mile, but if one of the aspects the parent mentioned changes significantly (load/unload time, traffic conditions in a geograph), they should turn down the work or start transitioning to a new occupation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work

mentalhealth 9y ago
Easily, the single most vocal group about piece work payments are the medical doctors I've talked to. To be fair, there are unusual incentives in place here -- depending on the specific circumstances, each individual task or procedure a doctor performs may end up being coded differently for insurance reimbursement purposes. The focus of doctors on piece work is incentivized by the way insurance works.
ethbro 9y ago
As someone with truckers in the family, and who discusses it frequently with them, their biggest problems with the 14 hour rules are twofold. (1) It's immutable, and squeezes them between their dispatchers (who schedule them for 11 hour drives) and remaining legal. If you're running a day load (far better quality of life), then if you hit traffic you're spending the night on the road in your truck, parked wherever you happened to hit the time limit. There's no individual flexibility in terms of "I'll drive less tomorrow to make up for it." (2) Removal of individual agency. Imagine if someone showed up at your desk and told you that you couldn't write any more code because you'd already been coding X hours. Doesn't matter you were on a roll. Doesn't matter that the past 4 hours were lightweight commenting and code formatting. Doesn't matter you were in the middle of writing a solution that finally occurred to you. Just is. Oh, and here's a $500 DOT ticket for trying to jot down some code notes to yourself to salvage your work. I hear and agree that some people feel entitled to bill counter to market. But IMHO the combination of a per-mile-rate, dispatcher-driven scheduling, and absolute regulation is pretty sadistic to truckers. There's a lot more friendly ways the legislation could have been written: work hour cap per week, different classes of CDL / experience levels mean different caps, etc.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago

It seems like you should get paid (perhaps a slightly reduced hourly rate) if you're waiting for the truck to be loaded. That's completely outside of your control and yet I assume you must be in control of the truck the entire time? I do think the mileage incentive makes sense because it forces you to be clever about your route. But not getting paid while a truck is loaded seems like total bullshit and basically another example of companies building their business off the backs of workers.

bluedino 9y ago
Hey, some truckers are lucky they don't have to load the truck!
jonlucc 9y ago
If I'm not mistaken, the truckers are generally 1099 contractors (owner-operators), so it's not that they are just clocked out when they aren't moving, but they are paid by the mile to the destination. Of course, that results in the same effect as described above, but it hopefully adds some context.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Some are owner/operators, many are not. I don't know the breakdown, but many people who drive trucks for a living do not have the financial resources or credit score to be able to buy their own truck (generally a purchase between $150,000 - $200,000 or more, with that much again in annual operating costs).

logfromblammo 9y ago

Isn't all that exactly why taxicab meters have a hail fee and then measure both time and distance?

taxicabjesus 9y ago
> Isn't all that exactly why taxicab meters have a hail fee and then measure both time and distance? The meters only charge for time when the cab isn't moving, or is moving slowly... This enabled a passenger to run in to a convenience store, and it would be worthwhile for the driver to wait for the passenger to buy their beer (or whatever). Sometimes my passengers would ask me to stop the meter so it wouldn't run up on them ("sure"), others expected it and were fine with the arrangement. It looks like the gorilla rideshare company slashed their per-minute rate in Phoenix since I last checked - used to be $0.25/min, now is $0.09/min. This makes it not worthwhile for the "ride share" driver to wait for their passenger to run into a store... In theory, since the "rides" show up instantaneously it's more efficient to get a new ride rather than make stops. Since the "ridesharing" apps charge for both time & distance, the posted price-per-mile makes it seem like you're getting a better deal than you are. 3-4 minutes/mile adds $0.27-$0.36 to the cost for every mile of travel, at $0.09/min.
- mahyarm 9y ago
  If rides show up instantly, wouldn't it be more efficient to just get another uber ride after your 5 minute shopping trip?
  - taxicabjesus 9y ago
    If rides could show up instantly, it would be more efficient to just get a new 'ride' for every leg of your trip. But Phoenix is spread out, and you can't always count on a car being nearby. It typically took me 7 minutes to get to a pickup address, which included a minute to plug the address into my navigation software (the taxi company I used to drive for now has a phone app that automagically directs the driver to the pickup address, just like the upstarts' system). The mother of a friend of mine has taken to using "Lifts" when she needs to go someplace where she'd rather not have to park. I explained that the driver she was getting might not actually be just around the corner.

mikey_p 9y ago

The big problem here is that if you're at the terminal waiting on a load, you're "on-duty, not driving." This is a specific status as it relates to federal motor carrier regulations that govern the hours a driver can operate. Once you've hit 14 hours of "on duty" time for the day you can't drive any longer. Some major carriers will ask drivers to fudge this, although the rules are actually pretty strict about this. Notably, Wal-Mart has come under a lot of criticism in the past for asking drivers to mark time waiting for a truck to be loaded/unloaded as "off duty" instead of "on duty, not driving."

twothamendment 9y ago
There are parts of the job that are 100% essential to have done, yet it is OK to not pay a driver for doing it - like putting fuel in the truck. I don't understand it. There are too many companies that ask drivers to fudge the books. My dad has worked for a handful of them and finally found a nice place where he doesn't have to worry about that kind of request. I think it is more common than people think.

Profragile 9y ago

I don't get paid for the time I travel to and from my office either. I don't see the problem.