“..Okay, If YOU owned a trucking company would you want to put a person behind the wheel of a $200K tractor, pulling a $90K trailer with some ones product on/in that trailer that could not pass a drug test? Do you have any idea what the liability insurance alone costs for a trucking company?
A good friend of mine had been in the trucking business ever since he got out of high school. At one point, and not that long ago, he had at least dozen tractors traversing the country. With the advent of electronic logging and the increased liability insurance, he finally tossed in the towel. Sold all the rigs and trailers and now does land clearing/digging for local construction jobs. He’s home every night, makes about the same money and the insurance is about 1/3 of what the trucking business was.
What is happening in the trucking industry is that the wage scale is going up as drivers are getting offered better deals with signing bonuses.
Instead of being a long haul driver, being gone for a day or two at a time. They are taking jobs for more money with a dedicated route that they can be home every night. Waste Management was offering signing bonuses to be a garbage truck driver around here. They were offering even more money if your were also a diesel mechanic.
My dad was an owner operator in the 1960s-1985 when he retired. He would be gone for two-five days depending on the haul. Then when he was home he/we were working on the truck.