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Reasons Truck Drivers Walk Out the Door [video]

• josh_today 5y ago
  [flagged]
  • _3u10 5y ago
    This video is real information not clickbait
  • CaliforniaKarl 5y ago
    The video was published January 29; that's probably why.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• rascul 5y ago
  From the video: 10. Poor training 9. The job is not what they thought it would be 8. Industry always changing 7. Bored with job, need a change 6. Junk equipment 5. Time off 4. Dishonesty 3. Unpaid waiting time 2. Pay 1. Lack of respect
  • sideshowb 5y ago
    11. Hostile environment. Well done Boris /s
    • Neil44 5y ago
      He’s discussing the US truck driver situation, seems a little unfair to put that on the prime minister of the UK.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • mschuster91 5y ago
        The mentioned issues apply to truck drivers everywhere in the world. The UK just added that 11th bullet point and is now suffering the costs of Brexit.
        • Neil44 5y ago
          Ah you’re cruising the internet elbowing brexit into every discussion, I see. Carry on.
          • sideshowb 5y ago
            I don't know where you live, but for context, the departure of continental European truck drivers from the UK has been in the headlines a lot here of late; for those who live here the point isn't exactly elbowed in. Though I do appreciate our domestic issues are of little interest internationally.
            • celeduc 5y ago
              Chiming in from the Continent <popcorn/>
            • makomk 5y ago
              The British media has indeed very successfully spun this to our domestic audience as a problem unique to the UK that's caused primarily by Brexit. I think that says more about the British media than about reality though; the complaints of local truck drivers seem very similar, and the industry here was complaining about driver shortages well before Brexit.
              • Symbiote 5y ago
                Driver shortages in the rest of Europe / the world aren't causing problems with fuel availability or supermarket stock. Given similar complains and conditions a few years ago, and that Germany, France etc have since made improvements, but the UK has only added border controls and added barriers to working, it's no surprise that EU drivers left the UK.
  • redis_mlc 5y ago
    There were some truck driving reality shows a while ago that centered around shipping app auctions. The biggest problem was that whether the bid showed who was responsible for loading/unloading or not, whenever the truck pulled up the shipper was like, "Oh, I thought you knew that you had to arrange the loading/unloading." Some of the items were the size of a house, commercial printing presses, etc.
  • hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Lease vechicle in many cases, and pay for any damage.
  • dym_sh 5y ago
    0. Walking out the window is kinda cringe
  • vincentmarle 5y ago
    It's interesting that AI is not on this list... </s> AI might be no longer the hyped up presumed cause of the disappearance of trucking jobs but instead a necessary band-aid to the voluntary mass abandonment of these jobs.
    • ryathal 5y ago
      AI isn't on the list, because it's not that big of a threat to what drivers actually have to do. Just driving is the easy/boring part. Without huge changes AI isn't going to manage paperwork, load shifting, securing loads, replacing tires, refueling, and random loading docks.
    • eru 5y ago
      We don't have self-driving cars nor trucks yet in the mainstream, but automation has made big impacts on driving already. In manufacturing, of course, but also behind the wheel. Think about how eg Anti-lock braking systems replaced some advanced manual braking techniques. ABS is so common now, that we hardly think about it any more. And we definitely don't view it as AI. Slightly more involved: knowing your way around used to be a big part of cab driving or trucking. The advent of GPS and mapping software has made that skill largely obsolete. You can think of more example, like cruise control or automatic lane keeping, and systems that brake automatically to avoid a crash. None of these systems are AI proper, and they don't eliminate the need for a human driver (yet). What they do is to _deskill_ the job of driving. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskilling for more about that.
      • KennyBlanken 5y ago
        I'm not sure why you're comparing an very logic driven system like ABS to self-driving ("AI"). ABS follows pretty simple logic, comparing wheel sensors (and in more modern cars, additionally: accelerometers and if the vehicle has stability control, a yaw rate sensor aka gyro.) There's little "fuzzy" or subjective evaluations in ABS, there's no need to "train" it, and so on. Also, it's a poor example of deskilling, because ABS was designed to do something humans cannot do. ABS is designed to stop or reduce incidents of uneven-braking-surface induced yaw. Ie, left tire has grip, right tire has less / no grip, which will induce counter-clockwise yaw. ABS is able to stop a car faster than any human possibly could in cases where there's uneven traction because it allows any wheel with grip to keep braking. Modern ABS systems can outbrake a human; older systems were slow and could be out-braked by a driver trained in threshold braking performing a planned stop.
• codeafin 5y ago
  In Australia, one of the big reasons have been invasive surveillance - They have multiple cameras set up inside, tracking how many seconds you are looking here or there. If it detects your eyes not doing what the AI deems acceptable, then it pings your manager up in his executive chair and they get to yell at you. Basically takes your attention completely out of driving the truck and doing your job, to deliberately making actions to stay within the allowed parameters of AI.
  • donarb 5y ago
    Of course Australia allows road trains, that is a truck tethered to 4 or 5 trailers with a length of over 50 meters.
  • ishjoh 5y ago
    My father in law has been a trucker in the US for a long time, and really enjoys it, or rather used too. Video cameras being installed in the truck cab are the reason he's changed his opinion. In every way he is an upstanding citizen, employee, and driver, and even though he's passed retirement age he enjoys driving seasonally. I think this will be his last season due to the cameras. I know that if someone was watching me during all working hours I would also look for the exit.
  • caterama 5y ago
    That sounds like a horrible situation to be in, but I can also understand the safety benefit. From high school, I remember a friend telling me about how they crashed. They glanced at the radio to switch channels (or change volume or something), which was just enough for the situation on the road to change and they hit the car in front of them. Clearly, that wasn't a good time to look away for even a split second, and a mature driver should know that. The empty highway has a lot more "safe" opportunities for glances away from the road, but I'm sure there's friction because the AI isn't lenient in this way. By the time the AI is aware of that, it's probably going to be doing the driving anyway! I recently used lane keeping assistance and automatic cruise control for a long distance road trip, and it's SO liberating. You actually feel safe taking glances at the landscape. I never felt safe doing that in an old car. The new experience is simply not as exhausting as running the speed check, lane check, distance check loop required in old cars.
• UncleEntity 5y ago
  He’s taking about over the road driving which is what you need to do to get one of those cushy local driving jobs. Basically any “good” company will require at least a year of experience before they will talk to you so people have to go over the road with one of the training companies where they realize driving a truck isn’t as glamorous as Hollywood makes it out to be. Takes a certain type of person to stick with long haul because it is indeed “a lifestyle”.
  • throwawaylinux 5y ago
    Does Hollywood really make truck driving out to be glamorous? I mean since the late '70s?
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I cannot think of any other than over the top in 1987.
• Ice_cream_suit 5y ago
  The owner of one of the major trucking companies here tells me that he is hoping to automate a large percentage of the driving. He has had human drivers playing games on their phone while driving, get engrossed in social media while driving, fall asleep while driving, inject themselves with drugs while driving, masturbate while driving, turn up to work off their faces on drugs and alcohol, the list goes on and on... He has had some high profile deaths due to this. In addition to the tragedy of loss of human life, there are legal costs in seven digits ( since everybody involved turns around and sues him ), heightened scrutiny by regulators, reputational damage and the loss of equipment.
• tda 5y ago
  My wife has worked for several logistics companies, and one of the striking things was that she said a lot of them have signs everywhere banning truckdrivers from using their toilets. Quite dehumanizing if you have to defecate in the bushes cause there is no place you are allowed to use a toilet in a rich and highly developed country. And come to think of it, I regularly see delivery drives relieve themselves by the road because we as society fail to provide them with any other option. Not being able to use toilets is, on the grand scale of things, maybe not the most important thing, but it probably adds to the feeling of being disrespected.
  • olivermarks 5y ago
    US logistics companies who rely heavily on trucking should be providing the sort of restaurants, rest and sanitary services that are routine in mainland europe for drivers. They rely heavily on the truckers in their industry. Treating them like cattle and disrespecting them is a really bad idea.
  • jhgb 5y ago
    > Quite dehumanizing if you have to defecate in the bushes I thought you could use one of them tiny portable toilets, then. Is there no place in a truck to put it? One is like 40 cm in size in all dimensions.
  • jlg23 5y ago
    That is why, in Europe and Africa, I follow a simple rule for choosing facilities on highways: do they have many trucker customers? If they do, that usually means they are professionally managed, clean and food is good and plentiful.
    • mmcdermott 5y ago
      I do this on road trips in the continental US as well. I figure it's for the same reason that I use gaming hardware for office work: if you want to be comfortable, pick what is chosen by those who are doing it for uncounted hours.
      • 5y ago
• nbzso 5y ago
  Funny enough, I worked mainly as a designer 20+ years. A lot of shared problems for truck drivers are present in the designers profession. No proper education, not adequate payment ("Dime a dozen" as someone stated here on HN), no respect. I have found a way to circumvent all of this by creating my web company in early 2000s, but today find a little to none motivation to work as a designer. In one point in time I offered design services as a package bundled with web-development ( people still treat design as a some decoration with personal preference). I can bring your company differentiation that will convert in a proven and very quantifiable ways. But I won't. Living in the design UX journey, fixing things that everybody "wants" but nobody want to pay for, dealing with multiple "stakeholders" with no visual culture and common sense at all, creating thousand versions just to satisfy some subjective preferences. Nope. Working as a front-end engineer is way easier and monetary rewarding. You have more value, more respect, less time spend in "subjective" perception land. Things are binary. They work or don't work. I hope, in the near future Figma, after collecting all the design "collaboration" practices to create Figma AI Designer SaaS and end this madness once for all.
  • cobertos 5y ago
    > Things are binary. They work or they don't Until a calendar view you add needs hotkey support and different calendar types and localization and ... "Oh, wait, that wasn't what was sold? But why would anyone think it would work any other way?? That's how a calendar is supposed to work!" Still finding the same problems in freelance frontend dev and it makes me never want to do it again
    • nbzso 5y ago
      Sorry, I have spend enough time in multiple roles, Design, PM, Management, etc. I have done very scientific and statistically correct experiments to measure time spend in proper way of designing and proper way of front-end development. I trust my numbers. When you do front-end development your problems are strictly technical, frustration point is little to none compared with designing something. You have multiple tools to debug and measure and your focus is clear. Design has no quick debugging tools, you work with your knowledge and experience which you try to communicate most objectively with little to no success, because the engineers are always right and you are always categorized as nobody automatically. This perception was present even in my case, as a designer who codes and pays engineers a competitive salary. Just yesterday I saw here a job search with description of: Engineers who are Designers.:) I fit perfectly the description in reverse: Designer who is Engineer. I can bring my ideas to life in full stack dev way. But never will sell my skills so stupidly. P.S. Please, down-vote more. This is HN, designers here have little to no voice present. They fear a retribution and stay silent.
• Mashimo 5y ago
  Two short videos about trucking in the UK: https://youtu.be/ZT5rQd_q-Eo https://youtu.be/ZT5rQd_q-Eo https://youtu.be/f76q62k1cB0 https://youtu.be/f76q62k1cB0
• jmacd 5y ago
  My father's dream job was always working as a long haul trucker. Once my parents divorced, he hit the road and I'd never seen him happier. I didn't see him as much, but the random phone calls from payphones all over North America were always super interesting. There was always a story of some sort. The work itself didn't sound great. You basically have to sit around and wait for 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 hours. You are always managing against the clock because if you time out (maximum working hours in a day) and can't get your load delivered on time, that's on you. Even if the schedule wasn't very realistic to begin with. For him the lifestyle, seeing weird and interesting places, and getting to meet new people every day was what he loved and it made up for all that downside. He's retired, but when the pandemic hit and there was a shortage of drivers, he and his buddies relished the chance to get back on the road. I thought he was doing it because he needed the work, so I tried to send him some money to cover rent etc. He happily took the money (he's no fool) but was perplexed as to why I thought that would mean he'd stop driving. In terms of bathrooms, most of the good truck stop chains in Canada not only have bathrooms for drivers, but "VIP" lounges with TVs, very cheap showers, etc.
  • nlh 5y ago
    Speaking of “timing out”, I always found it remarkable how commercial drivers have to play by a different set of rules (and enforcement) than we civilians. You and I drive on the highway basically blind to this parallel system. I experienced this when a company I ran many years ago had to dip its toes into commercial vehicles (we were moving rental cars and had always just driven them, but got a small trailer & pickup truck to help). One of our guys got pulled over by a DOT enforcement officer once (we had no idea that they even existed) and got written a stack of tickets that we didn’t even realize were possible - code violations, stop-work order, etc. etc. etc. It was a fascinatimg (and expensive) lesson and peek into that world.
  • zebnyc 5y ago
    I applaud you for trying to provide for your parents. I used to do the same, I even gave my dad a lump sum which allowed him to buy an apartment. Nowadays, I try to ask if he needs money before sending money.
  • 5y ago
• sandworm101 5y ago
  Reason A: The past ten years of people on HN telling everyone that robots will soon be driving all the trucks, that "driver" is a doomed profession. Reason B: All the young people who believe reason A because they lacked any clear appreciation of the financial incentives behind the people making those statements. Which leads to: Reason C: All those "tech-savvy" people who think of driving as no more than keeping between the lines without hitting anything.
  • timdaub 5y ago
    seconded. Now that we've seen the fragility of self driving cars and the lack of originality in driving, I think it'll be some time before truckers will be replaced. Maybe they won't be used much anymore to keep the device between two lines. They'll supervise that. But for everything else it seems a human being is required to be present.