Push to Let Teens Drive Trucks Interstate Divides the Industry
Proposed legislation to test letting people as young as 18 years old drive big rigs interstate is exposing a divide in the trucking sector, where companies are having trouble finding workers for the grueling job of hauling goods over long distances.
A provision in the infrastructure bill the Senate approved in August would set up a pilot program allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to drive tractor-trailers across state lines. Most states allow people under 21 to get commercial driver’s licenses, but federal rules restrict those drivers to working within state borders.
The feds are useless when it comes to regulating inter-state commerce. Bi-lateral deals between states is the way to go.
Another own goal.
These kids can join the army,but are forbidden to drive across state lines?
Classic.
Canada is creating our own Truck driver chaos,new regulations following the Humboldt accident will ensure we have a massive shortage,for in Can Ahh Duh,we never enforce the real laws,as in what was the Humboldt driver even doing in Canada,instead we penalize everyone else,with more idiot regulation ,rules and obstruction.
After the “No washrooms” for truckdrivers during the Covid Panic,I am sure Truckdrivers appreciate the contempt these regulators hold them in.
Throw in our already insane working hours inflexibility and the Gestapo we call “Highway Patrol” and you have a perfect situation developing.
Depends on the eighteen year old. If they could weed out the irresponsible yahoos then I don’t see the problem. Anything in their driving history that points to immaturity should disqualify them until age twenty five ( reckless driving or just a lack of regard for other drivers or the rules of the road. )
In WWII there were teenagers flying heavy bombers, but they were far more mature than today’s teens.
Excellent point; and they died in great numbers, through no fault of their own.
There isn’t a shortage of long haul truck drivers. There is a shortage of decent pay for long days with many unpaid hours. Not to mention the time wasted at warehouses and drops that you are not paid for. There are many people with Cdls who do not drive long haul. Long hours and days away from your family. Issues with shippers, with receivers, with your dispatchers. The very low hourly pay once you factor in all the costs makes it a very unpleasant job really. Let’s not forget just driving in North America is another area.
Average truck drivers gross 50000 or so a year. Take off taxes, meals, on the road expenses and your net drops to about 20000 to 25000 if you are good. For a basic workweek of 80 hours figure it out.
Letting people who aren’t even of legal age to drink drive 80000 pound vehicles up and down the road is a recipe for disaster. Of course it will not be the fault of the idiots promoting this stupidity. The big Companies want cheap labor and do not care who they kill.
Its actually allowed in Canada. 18 for Canada 21 for interstate in the US. But many states allow 18 year olds for intrastate hauls. The state of trucking is very different running cross country when comparing the two countries.
The problem is high turnover and bad working conditions. The big companies also sucker rookies into scam lease purchase deals. A big chunk of the US trucking industry is a racket.
This combined with many older boomer drivers retiring means a shortage. Companies that look beyond today have been planning for all of this for a long time.The ones that have not, want 18 year old kids to drive interstate. No thanks.
Other factors are electronic logs and overly complicated and expensive emissions equipment on any truck built in the last 10 years.
Yes, 18 year olds are driving coast-to-coast in Canada. Some 18 year olds are mature for their age while we have some 15 year olds masquerading as 45 year olds operating large tractor-trailer units. Attitude is another factor. There is no age group that has the “might is right” attitude cornered.
Some (especially trucker spouses) will argue about the idiots in cars. That is BS. When a trucker makes a mistake with a car, he usually walks away. When a car makes a mistake with a truck, the trucker, again, usually walks away.
Slightly off topic. My dad, having the top level licence at the time, was sternly lectured by a judge as to why his fine for a minor offence was four times higher than the guy – two years younger – who received a minimal fine for a much more dangerous infraction. The judge told him to pull out his licence and read out loud the class. Once read the judge informed him that he new better.
Just like any discipline, the average person is incapable or unskilled enough to be proficient at the task they are asked to perform.
Having my Class 1Q right out of drivers training school did not make me a truck driver capable of navigating the hazards associated with driving a big rig.
Sure, driving on a straight interstate, in the middle of flyover country during the summer, with near perfect road conditions, could boost a young man’s confidence that they are Superman.
Throw a rain storm or blizzard at them and see how they cope and conquer the hazards.
Completing a Hazard Assessment is part of my heavy equipment world, every day, and multiple times a day as conditions and tasks change. In my industry, in the circle of our contacts, 3 deaths involving dozers, another 2 having both legs aputated and one 71 year old having 2 legs and an arm amputated when a D6 backed over him. Life changing. How capable are the average 18-20 year old of making those assessments and adjusting in order to mitigate catastrophe?
The intimidation and agression which happens on the average highway between truckers and the general driving public is documented daily, too many stories to recite here.
The demand is for worker bees, they are expendable and replaceable. Easy-peazy.
Now throw in the vaxxed with all kinds of medical conditions which could happen at a moment’s notice, and the carnage will happen. JMHO
Having my Class 1Q right out of drivers training school did not make me a truck driver capable of navigating the hazards associated with driving a big right
AMEN brotha!
Seems every time I witness some near cataclysmic collision between a truck driver and automobile on my (awful) CA highways … I look up and see a very young-appearing heespanick, or Middle Eastern truck driver. They drive their big rigs and box trucks as though they were Toyota Tercel’s.
Indeed, Kenji.
The hilarity begins when they have to back up those rigs. Saw one guy try for over 1/2 hour to back up 75 feet straight. Senior driver finally threw him out of the seat and did it in one push. Trucks backed up everywhere waiting for this easy back up and dump.
In another life I managed a feed mill. We received bulk loads and the mill was old with low clearance so semis had to back in. A lot of these guys fresh in from the USA seem to have never backed a trailer in their life. Every other mill or elevator allowed drive through. Some guys spent half an hour getting the trailer in the door. Our downside was we couldn’t scale the loads. Nowadays everything in Alberta has double trailers totaling about 100 feet long. I’m guessing these don’t back up well.
Whenever people start screaming “think of the children!”, and “safety, Safety, SAFETY!!!” it generally means they’re full of shit, and have no real arguments. One would have thought that with all the Covid fear-porn that people would have woken up to this fact. One would have been wrong, and the fear-mongers continue their self-interested fear porn, to the detriment of society as a whole.
18 year olds are not kids. They are perfectly capable of driving trucks if they have the training.
When I watch our 18 year old new hires, let alone the 20-somethings who believe they are invincible, making decisions which could be terminal many times per week, I believe your opinion would change rather quickly and drastically.
120, 000 lb trucks traveling down the road with Jr. at the the helm of these land-yachts is unwise and a disaster waiting to happen.
There are exceptions, some of the young men are more than capable, but few and far between.
Most are glued to their cell’s checking out their friends and girlfriends.
Mentorship is required for that much responsibility. Where are the mentorship programs, ensuring accountability and learning the ropes? The response is, it’s too expensive. Really?
Mentoring indeed. An apprenticeship. Exactly.
But we are a DIY online “e-expert” about everything now. Some knowledge can be acquired that way … but full knowledge can only be learned from the – experienced.
There’s not a driver shortage there’s a pay shortage. That’s why all the truck drivers in Alberta are Dogmeat Singh’s cousins. Just pay them what they are worth.
No different than what’s being done in other professions: unrestricted immigration from 3rd world countries bloats the supply of workers with unqualified persons and that drives down wages. It’s simple supply and demand. It also lowers professional standards, but hey. DIVERSITY UBER ALLES.
In the GTA – Brampton, in particular, the Asians driving big rigs are like the Grim Reaper with an 18-speed transmission. You don’t dare go through a green light without making sure all the New Canadian rig drivers have finished their illegal turns or run the red. Not if you want to die peacefully in bed with your children and grandchildren around you.
I believe it was an Asian who caused major QEW mayhem a few years ago when he decided to raise the bed on his 18-wheel dump rig while going over the Burlington Skyway.
That was something to behold.
mhb23re
Re: “In the GTA – Brampton, in particular, the Asians driving big rigs are like the Grim Reaper with an 18-speed transmission. You don’t dare go through a green light without making sure all the New Canadian rig drivers have finished their illegal turns or run the red. Not if you want to die peacefully in bed with your children and grandchildren around you.”
Amen. In the late 90’s I was almost whacked at an intersection in Mississauga. I was about to enter the intersection as the light turned green – then the 18 wheeler beside be began blowing his horn. This got my attention, I stopped momentarily as an 18 wheeler blew through the intersection at a good 60 km/hr. Johal Truck Driver Training school. Peel Region Police did bupkis when I complained.
Same as voting I guess. There are a few 18 year olds who can handle the task responsibly … and a few 58 year olds too. 🙂
L – Post the Humboldt Bronco tragedy of 16 dead, many maimed and a tragedy the politically correct government could not face honestly. A while back two in a car where killed by a big rig driver acts of not paying attention, lack of skill, training and accepting the responsibility of driving an instrument so powerful, it can produce instant death. This near Wakaw.
More recently, a big rig driver in Ontario killed 4 people in a crash and was sentenced to 4 years in prison due to the degree of neglect of moral/legal duty (included cell phone usage).
All three drivers, were imported from the same area of the 3rd world. Again, a Calgary driving school was shut down circa early 2000s, for graduating unskilled drivers. When B.C. checked the actual driving skills of 100 of their big rig drivers graduating from that same school. They all failed. That imported ethnic group has many high achievers from a Commonwealth nation, but it doesn’t demand that of everyone, which Western Civilization’s Judeo/Christian one does.
The most crippling prejudice for anyone, child to adult, is that of low expectations, of lowered standards. Identity politics (Marxist class conflict under another name) has eroded the very concept of competency. This in most or almost all of government institutions. (Hence, the Panic-demic Lockdowns, costs exceeding the benefits. No political party, no private association is demanding an accounting medical and financial, so we slide into another season of the cure is worse than the disease, but I digress.)
It takes a long education(skills/values) to be able to accept the full responsibility, for self and others; that build Western Civilization. Whether for native born to Canada or not, we recommit to our ideals and soon. Or Canada, will achieve the status of a failed nation-state like Lebanon, Venezuela et al. Becoming a client state to the C.C.P. or the W.H.O. isn’t going to set upright out listing ship of state.
Having a higher rate of low skilled, irresponsible drivers edging up the accident mortality rate; that lowers the bar for adopting driverless (computer run A.I.) big rigs. Androids that can’t make moral decisions or distinguish reality from programming. Having a few too young to know better, drivers involved in disasters and poof, android drivers replace them. Being approved, like experimental vaccines, before passing requisite safety/efficacy trials.
Coming soon to a dystopia near you.
Scar. I shipped many B Trains of grain a few years ago. I had two entrances about 300 yards apart that the truckers used. If I wanted them to use first entrance I usually met them there and got them to turn at first driveway. I missed catching a driver at first driveway and suggested they could drive into second driveway turn around then go back to first driveway. She said no problem and backed that double rig back to the first driveway. I was on a 4-wheeler and she beat me back to first gate. I think she was going 10MPH backwards. A couple of other drivers did the same thing but none as fast as she did.
if we paid truckers what they’re worth, or the value of their labour, the price of EVERYTHING goes up.
Its easier to sucker young guys into the job who aren’t made for university and are getting told lies about the major trades.
This may also be a back-door route to pushing AI trucks (and taking AI-less cars off the road) with peach face behind the wheel “just in case”.
A couple summers I went coast to coast swamping furniture. No mileage, just paid by the weight loading and unloading in the various cities. It was a good way to see the country if not very lucrative. Back in the eighties furniture movers made boocoo dollars. Don’t know what its like now.
The move to city dwelling strikes again.
Us Farm kids were driving any piece of equipment we could reach the pedals on,if our parents thought us responsible.
So at 12 I could drive most machinery.
It is more an attitude than a taught skill.
Of course being mostly free of other traffic is a great moral boost.
Two of my BC cousins are truck drivers in McMurray,both say their employers prefer their driving over most of the men as they don’t get as rammy with equipment,keeping breakage down a wee bit.
We may soon be paying drivers what they are worth,cause more and more are refusing to work as drivers,because of the low pay and abuse.
Like Oxygen,you never think of how essential it is,until there is none.
Commercial auto insurance underwriter here,
Yes some 18 year olds have the maturity, usually farm raised kids if anyone, to handle the responsibility.
Generally not though and its not just the kids, it amazes me how many people can’t say no to the beer or can’t put their cell phone down.
But we are seeing capitalism work, slowly the pay is being increased attracting more talented/responsible operators.
As for the new requirements, some of it is good, ie road tests with manual transmission, audits of nsc compliance that kind of stuff, some is just government make work project.
More needs to be done though my thoughts would be to treat it as a trade.
Starting with local delivery in medium duty units/non hazardous commodities/short haul and progressing to an unlimited license/commodities/radii over a 4 year time scale with testing at every year.
I’ll repeat whata been said already there needs to be professional pay for professional work…..I think all our safety on the roads is worth the extra expense of all our goods.
As I recall there was about a three mile stretch of the 402 at the Sarnia/Porthuron border that was under a strictly enforced speed limit of 80Km an hour some years ago, not sure if it’s still that way now. The reason given was “vehicles” with inattentive drivers were ploughing into stopped trucks who were backed up for a mile or so waiting to cross the bridge. Some were quite horrific, especially the ones carrying flammables.
Truth is it was a very small minority of cars who were at fault, most were trucks piling into each other’s ass end in the day and at night.
The kinda thing that makes you shake your head.
Our 10 year old grandson drives every machine on the farm with the exception being the 8 axle trucks that haul the 42,500,000 kg loads of grain. He has the wits and ability to do that too but his height puts him at a distinct disadvantage plus a traffic stop by one of the boys in brown could put his parents and grandparents in a spot of trouble.
42,500,000 kg loads of grain?
Would you believe 42500 kg or 42.5 tonnes?
That wrong number would give you a truck hauling 1561620 bushels of wheat;
‘unpossible’ as Ralphie would say.
well there ya have it.
polllllitiSHUNS ‘solving’ one problem by creating thousands more. including very deadly ones at 100 km/h