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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 fr

• 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.
    • avgDev 5y ago
      This doesn't make any sense......gaming hardware for office work sucks and I used to be an avid gamer. Gaming chairs are garbage. Gaming keyboards do not have much ergonomics in mind, there are much better and comfortable options from logitech and microsoft but they don't light up like a Christmas tree. Gaming mice have many buttons and DPI switches and logitech mx master is much more comfortable than any gaming mouse I used over the years. If you want to be comfortable you need to research and be willing to drop $1000+ on a chair and peripherals.
      • mmcdermott 5y ago
        Funny enough, I've never gotten on with ergonomic mice/keyboards. Switching from Logitech to mechanical some years ago made wrist pain go away and it never came back. I agree that many buttons (which appears to be mostly mice intended for MOBAs or MMORPGs) is not good. My current desktop mouse is a Corsair Glaive (https://www.corsair.com/us/en/glaive-rgb-gaming-mouse https://www.corsair.com/us/en/glaive-rgb-gaming-mouse) which has a very normal button set.
  • RegBarclay 5y ago
    This is universal. Eat where the truckers eat was passed on to me by my father in the US decades ago.
  • yardie 5y ago
    Well, TIL. And here I was thinking those facilities are popular with truckers because they have the cheapest diesel/petrol.
    • AlwaysRock 5y ago
      Company pays for gas often right? So that isnt even a factor for many.
    • ethbr0 5y ago
      A lot of trucks run company cards for fuel. So slightly cheaper fuel isn't a differentiator. Better food, showers, and restrooms are. ;)
• CodeAndCuffs 5y ago
  I've worked at truck weight stations. On multiple occasions we've had truckers come in to get their ticket for overweight trucks, and I've had to leave the room due to the smell. We're not talking about, "Oh, I forgot to put on deodorant" or "we need to spray air freshener when they leave". It was "If I stay in here I'm going to start gagging". Painting with a broad brush is bad. The vast majority of truckers were perfectly kind, clean, great people. But I don't think there is any demographic that I've interacted with that has had a higher percentage of offensive smells coming from them. So while I strongly disagree with the "No Truckers" rule, I can understand where the motivation could come from.
  • neltnerb 5y ago
    It sounds like we also probably both agree that such rules are likely the cause of the problem they are trying to solve.
    • KennyBlanken 5y ago
      BO comes from not showering / not being able to reach every part of your body (obesity), not changing clothing and bedsheets often enough, etc. Poor diet doesn't help. I've literally never seen a sign that says "no truckers allowed" in my life. Truck stops have showers and laundromats. Clothing and sheets don't take up much room in a sleeper cab. Some people just don't care. Others can't afford it; trucking isn't a lucrative job for most.
• UncleEntity 5y ago
  IDK, I’ve been back over the road for the majority of the year and the only place I can think of that didn’t let me use the restroom was a secure warehouse that only let you in as far as a little cage… which I still complain about because it was a “high value load” where we couldn’t stop for the first 200 miles so as to not be hijacked. Had to walk a 1/4 mile to a gas station before setting off. Everywhere else, no problem. Just ask someone and they point out the way. Might have to go through security (twice?) because you’re at a fedex terminal at the airport but nobody has a problem with us dirty truck drivers generally speaking.
• racl101 5y ago
  Blame junkies. They have ruined businesses letting customers use the washroom in general.
  • silexia 5y ago
    Yup... Junkies are destroying a lot of our world unfortunately. I don't even blame the junkies as humans are just bags of chemicals and meth / fentanyl can override most of the other chemicals we have. My thought is we need to ship them all to an island where they have no chance of getting drugs and let them live their lives out there. And to prevent criminals from bringing them drugs, institute the death penalty like Singapore did for it.
• donw 5y ago
  There is, unfortunately, a common pathology amongst white-collar workers, and especially the "managerial class". Of which I am a member, so I get to see this first-hand quite often. It is incredibly common that my economic peers and betters treat blue-collar workers as filthy meat-robots, tolerated purely out of necessity. Because, after all, if they were worthwhile human beings, they'd have a college degree. I find this mindset abhorrent. Anybody that works a job well deserves respect, regardless of the job.
  • sandworm101 5y ago
    >> Anybody that works a job well deserves respect Everyone deserves respect, even those who do not work "well". Being bad at one's job doesn't means anything in terms of access to basic services. Half the people in any job are below the average. Basic dignities must be provided to all, even those a day away from being fired. I've seen it so many times that the "underperformer" or new guy in the office ends up working through every lunch or pulling the bad shifts because "they deserve it". That isn't a healthy work environment.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      One way someone whom you label above as an “underperformer” can make themselves more valuable to the team us by taking work that others don’t want to do. One way they can close some of their performance gap is by working more. Both of those could easily be a perfectly rational and voluntary response to preserve their job.
      • birksherty 5y ago
        Society simply sucks as even to view someone as a human being, they have to be a valuable member (means work whole life). Not good enough, just work more. Basically be a cog in the economic system or die.
        • AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
          It's more basic than that. The universe itself, entropy, means you must "work or die," in the most basic sense. Complaining about that unavoidable reality of existence is pointless.
• pfortuny 5y ago
  Being able to use a toilet and properly wash your hands is one of the most important things in a job, and in any place. The fact that there is prctically no plague or cholera in developed countries (among other illnesses) is due exactly to that.
• dustintrex 5y ago
  Is the rationale behind this liability concerns, cleanliness, drug use concerns or something else?
  • mschuster91 5y ago
    Cleanliness, for one. The current state is "everyone bans truck drivers", which means that any place accepting truck drivers will be swarmed by truck drivers to a degree it may actually cause traffic jams - because who would not use the only toilet for a hundred miles? - and you simply can't have enough cleaning staff on hand to deal with that. The obvious solution for that would be to do what is the law in Germany - you can't get a license for a highway rest/gas stop without offering toilets for travellers of all kind.
    • Mashimo 5y ago
      Wait, the rest stop ban truck drivers? That is fucked up. From OP I thought it was the logistics companies. As in the place where you deliver to. Germany has also a truck driver shortage, but the infrastructure has been improved. As in the truck stops and what not. Should be easier to get a shower compared to UK.
      • mschuster91 5y ago
        > From OP I thought it was the logistics companies. As in the place where you deliver to. I have read more than enough reports of both happening - and the logistics companies banning truck drivers from toilets is a direct consequence of not being enough toilets and other facilities on the road, because people who have been on the road non-stop for days without a shower, sleeping in their trucks, don't exactly smell good. > Should be easier to get a shower compared to UK. It should be, but well... corona has led to massive issues (see e.g. https://www.trucker.de/nachrichten/transport/lkw-fahrer-klagen-ueber-geschlossene-duschen-an-autobahnen-2585803 https://www.trucker.de/nachrichten/transport/lkw-fahrer-klag...).
        • Mashimo 5y ago
• jasode 5y ago
  >Not being able to use toilets is, [...], but it probably adds to the feeling of being disrespected. Words like "dehumanizing" and "disrespected" are being used but we also have to remember that truckers are not the only ones that care about bathrooms. It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. As someone who used to clean dirty public toilets as part of my first job, this old video showing the owner of the company how to clean his office toilets has always stuck with me. He even cites the common problem of truckers leaving a mess for office workers to clean. Deep link: https://youtu.be/XlHWkdfZmb4?t=2m59s https://youtu.be/XlHWkdfZmb4?t=2m59s Sure, many truckers are considerate and clean up after themselves but the few bad apples ruin it for the other truckers. The office workers don't want to deal with disgusting bathrooms. Until we have robots in the future cleaning the toilets, there will be somebody getting dehumanized by cleaning up poop & piss. What are the office workers' options? - clean up after drivers (dehumanizing work) - deny bathrooms to drivers I feel bad for the good drivers but unfortunately, some disrespect the office workers because someone else's bathroom is not the driver's problem. What's the solution to avoid dehumanizing people?
  • xwdv 5y ago
    > It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. There is a crucial difference. For the workers this is their job. For the truck driver, taking a shit is a fundamental human right. If you don’t want to clean up shit? Don’t take that job. But a truck driver doesn’t get to decide he no longer has to take a monstrous shit.
  • beebeepka 5y ago
    Somewhat offtopic but your story reminded me of the time I went to a KFC to use the facilities and found a huge brown turd on the water tank. Right there on top of it. I wonder how often does something like this happen. I've seen my fair share of messes but that was clearly intentional for no good reason
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    > It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. Just have the maintenance contractor come and clean mid day and at night. What type of business has the regular employees clean the bathroom anyways?
• jtdev 5y ago
  It’s symbolic of the utter lack of respect, appreciation, and understanding of importance we have for working class people. It’s quite disgusting, and I’m pleased to see people finally saying “enough!”.
• jeffwask 5y ago
  And the reason the Public Bathroom disappeared from America is because we wouldn't want any place for the homeless to feel human either.
  • AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    Or because we don't want literally filthy, mentally ill, drugged out people using our bathroom. It's not my job to clean up after those people.
  • asah 5y ago
    Well, public bathrooms also attack the dignity of the people who have to clean the restrooms from the 1-in-100 homeless (and non-homeless) who trash them. Some experiments were done with self-cleaning public bathrooms, but they're not a scalable solution due to large physical size and high capex and opex costs.
  • robomartin 5y ago
    > because we wouldn't want any place for the homeless to feel human either I'm sorry, that is nonsense. Who is "we" anyway? Voters? Government? The rich and famous? C'mon. Nobody cares about who uses a bathroom. The issue is how it is used and cared for. Public bathrooms, regardless of the venue, tend to suffer from the tragedy of the commons [0] effect. Most people use them as they would their own bathroom at home. All you need is a very small percentage who just don't care, who are absolute pigs, to ruin them for everyone. If you have ever gone to a public restroom at a Los Angeles beach you know exactly what I am talking about. They are nothing less than disgusting and sometimes revolting. And this is so due to a small percentage of animals (1%? Who knows?) who have no concept of social responsibility and consideration towards others. My guess is you are not aware of what happened this year at schools all over the US [1] (and maybe elsewhere). This, again, was at the hands of a very small number of kids who, for who-knows-what-reason decide it is OK to behave like animals. At our kids school a handful (3 to 5?) actually got arrested. The school had to close all bathrooms except for two. Students had to ask for permission to go and could only go one at a time. They had to post a person outside each bathroom to go inspect it after a student got done. The animals caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages and the inconvenience to well-behaved kids cannot be measured. And then there's a sense of scale. If you own a small restaurant, you can't have 300 people come in just to use the bathroom. You are not a bathroom facility. These things cost money and upkeep and, yes, they need to be clean and available for customers. At the limit you'd have to hire multiple staff just to clean and maintain the bathrooms --because they will get trashed. As is always the case, reality isn't driven by a single convenient variable. One has to consider the multiple (tens, hundreds...) of drivers behind any effect. It isn't single-cause -> effect. It's often incomprehensibly-complex-multivariate-problem -> effect. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=kids+trashing+school+bathrooms https://www.google.com/search?q=kids+trashing+school+bathroo...
• asah 5y ago
  totally. But are they really going to stop you? I understand undocumented people opting for bushes, but otherwise just march in, find the restroom and don't ask permission. p.s. for bonus points, leave the place cleaner than you found it and for extra bonus points, donate a roll of TP.