Just two years ago, Congress set a measure to increase a drivers sleeper birth time from 8 hours to 10. The average person would probably say who cares. To those behind the wheel, this amounts to an additional 3 months away from home a year, without pay.
Truck drivers normally work up to 70 hours or more a week. Without Overtime, companies have the legal right to push their drivers to the limit. As the years progress drivers begin to physically, mentally and spiritually breakdown.
Drivers work 70 hours a week, in which half is spent driving. The other half consists of breakdowns, construction zones, accidents, paperwork, multiple delivery stops/delays, metro congestion, waiting for loads/dispatch, delivery appointments, rural deliveries, etc, etc, etc … in which trucking companies seldom pay for.
Therefore, most drivers illegally have to back up their log book hours showing that none of these events took place in order to save their 70 hours for driving and make a decent income.
The average driver makes 34 cents a mile, divide that in half due to the delays above, times 55 miles an hour and you get about $9.35 an hour. Just above minimum wage and without Overtime! Now add in the fact that a truck driver is away from home and has to eat out everyday. Twenty dollars a day for food, tipping and snacks comes out to be about $480 a month. (Or a weeks pay!)
Now add in the fact that a truck driver is paying for a house that he does not live in and insurance he is forced to pay, for the car he does not get to drive. Add these all together and you get to see the average lifestyle of a truck driver!
Every truck driver runs into a point in his career, where he can no longer continue to back up his log book hours and run more then 70 hours a week. When this happens, many drivers find themselves financially, physically and spiritually weak. Even though they speak on the outside, their insides are shutting down.
Truck drivers are known for their roughness, how they talk and how they present themselves. Is this to blame for their upbringing or is it simply the product of company and government regulations? Whatever it may seem, there needs to be a change in the trucking insustry and it needs to happen now.
