Posted on 10/20/2019 6:02:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
“There is no driver shortage. There is a driver PAY shortage.”
Don’t worry, the Feds are working hard to import foreign drivers that hardly speak English. Another corporate welfare program we’re paying for.
Nebraska made an exception for a trailer manufacturer but they can only pull three trailers provided they’re empty.
On the long and largely empty road from Adelaide to Perth the danger to other vehicles from those long trains of trailers is something Aussies do talk about. The tail ends swing side to side like a snake. It works there because of the “largely empty” part of the equation. Put the same thing on busy American Interstates? Better order body bags.
Take it from someone who has been in the transportation industry for 33 years... There is NO safety reason not to allow LOW SPEED multi-trailer convoys on 80% of the highways in this country. Yes, there is a slight increase in risk for a vehicle hauling 5 trailers, BUT that vehicle is replacing 5 trucks. So the NET effect is INCREASED safety overall. It’s ironic that the first automated vehicles will probably being exactly that... Hauling multi-trailer trains at low-speed.
They obviously would never be in a city... come on man.
The calculation is not that any certain vehicle would be less safe. The calculation is NET safety overall. If you reduce that TOTAL number of trucks on the road the NET effect is FEWER accidents. The math is not hard and it has been done already. But few people care to think it through to the end. . . Case in point.
Make America Mad Max because that’s where we are headed anyway.
No. It works in Australia because they have long empty roads and no adequate railways.
Why can’t they build railways?
Why do they need it? They don’t have massive industries and populations in remote areas to justify expenditure. A road train on the dirt road is good enough.
Mad Max imagery call is right. Empty outback highways. Some inner outback towns are hubs for road and rail. Toowoomba in SE Queensland. Another is Dubbo in central west New South Wales. Signs on the western (outback) approach to these hubs have signage and regs stipulating Road Train Limit, No Road Trains Past This Town. If a for real road train came further east they would have significant problems, high population density and increased road congestion...., and the main problem is that the plain finishes and the Great Dividing Range starts. Road Trains work on flat topography.
Yes, i am aussie.
Did you look at the videos in Australia? They are in cities.
Looking at the article example of a road train, I thought we were already doing that for long haul, which ends at a depot, where the goods are then conveyed by last mile operators.
According to a July report from the American Trucking Associations (ATA), 60,800 more drivers were needed at the end of 2018 to meet the country’s demands for freight services.
Kind of points to how many more Americans could be employed in this one industry alone...
Tell me a way to avoid the Seattle urban area in getting from Vancouver Canada to Portland Oregon.......
The damned fools who designed I-5 ran it UNDER a damned building complex.
Even the Interstate bypasses are clogged.
The only solution is for these rigs to travel between 7PM and 5AM.
Ah, a sane and knowledgeable comment. By my observations (not as a rig driver), you have nailed it.
Number one, Australia has had long truck trains for a very long time. This means they have adapted all of their roads to these vehicles. Obviously there would be restrictions on where and when these vehicles could travel in the United States. Cities have a lot of say about what type of vehicles can travel on their roads.
Number two, these vehicles would obviously always be restricted two drivers that have the proper credentials to operate them. Companies Themselves would restrict who could operate search vehicles because of the prohibitive cost of insurance.
Business people really don't believe in the free market do they? The want to set wages at X and when they cannot get labor at X they claim there is shortage an use politicians to increase supply.. The the concept of paying X + Y never occurs to them.
If call yourself a "businessman" you are more than likely a corrupted person IMO. Not always but I think mostly.
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