Posted on 04/25/2020 7:17:44 PM PDT by Libloather
Thomas Ramirez, 39, a truck driver from Beaumont has spent the last month hauling cleaning supplies intended for hospitals in San Francisco and Sacramento from the Los Angeles and Inland Empire areas.
While the coronavirus has brought most sectors of the economy to a halt, prompting mass unemployment, and keeping families shut in at home, thousands of truck drivers like Ramirez have continued transporting essential equipment and goods throughout California, such as medical supplies, food and clothes.
Despite the risk of exposure to the disease as well as their essential role in keeping the wheels of society turning, even garnering praise from President Donald Trump who last week, exclaimed from the White House “Thank God for truckers,” some Southern California drivers say they have noticed their pay for carrying cargo sharply decrease by hundreds, and in some cases, by thousands of dollars in recent weeks.
On Friday, Ramirez rallied dozens of other truck drivers from across the region who took to the road to protest the plunging wages and to call for more regulation of the freight brokers who the truckers say are driving the falling rates.
“I feel like we’re America’s lifeline,” Ramirez said. “We’re the ones who move the clothes, the food, the medical supplies, and in New Jersey, the dead bodies. They’re using truck drivers. But we feel at the end of the day we are left behind.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailynews.com ...
Everything but the air one breathes, has had a truck involved.
To the progressives, robot trucks will be better.
You go Cali FluBros!
The big trucks shut down, everyone in the big cities will be starving in a week.
It might take parking the rigs to get the message across.
...everyone in the big cities, who hasn’t prepared, will be starving in a week.
Clown wanna be president Garcetti and the adulterous Gavin Newsom threesome are the main problems in California. So when is the right to stop this madness, when the economy is destroyed and people are homeless? This is unconstitutional, and they will be hopefully held to account.
The are calling for more government regulations and that will only drive up costs and force trucking companies to autonomous vehicles.
Self driving trucks are a very scary idea.
“Self driving trucks are a very scary idea.”
Are their accident rates higher or lower than trucks driven by humans?
Will the cost of autonomous trucks and cost to operate go up or go down over the next ten years?
Will the cost for a human to drive a truck go up or go down over the next ten years?
Sorry, but not all trucks go from one loading dock to another. We go many places that were designed for only automobiles, over rough terrain, and in all weather conditions. A lot of hazmat - you want to be on the highway next to a tanker full of sulfuric acid with a robot driving it???
Right now I’m delivering 12,000 gallons of propane to a customer at a remote location.
Good luck automating this.
That is up to the trucking companies.
I know that I have never knowingly seen an autonomous truck on an interstate but my guess is that I have and they were driving along in a safe manner.
However, I know there will always be conditions that will require a human. The economics will in the end make the decision for the trucking companies.
It will look like a scene out of Dawn of the Dead.
SHTF if trucking stops. Truckers could be seriously powerful if they unite.
I got sideways once in the middle of a froze over bridge on an incline and my truck went 90 degrees in about 1 second....went into oncoming lane. I just missed doing that right in front of a single axle propane truck by about 200 yards. Could have been a head on with a massive explosion.
My old man drove a big truck when they dropped the speed limit to 55mph. Him and all the other drivers he knew bitched constantly. I said pull over shut them off for 3 days. Get Jimmys attention. He said it’ll never happen, Union drivers and independents are to damn dumb to try to help each other to change it. I’m betting it’s still the same. Plus sitting on your ass at a truck stop don’t pay the bills and there’s a lot of them driving your own rig. A wiseman once said “There Ain’t No Easy Run”.
Amazing how fast that can happen to any of us! Good job driving!
Brokers have nothing to do with this. Freight rates are low because there is too much supply (number of trucks) chasing less demand (amount of freight).
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