
Alone on the Open Road: Truckers Feel Like ‘Throwaway People’ - 6stringmerc
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/us/trucking-jobs.html
======
gumby
It's important that there be jobs for people without much education. When I
was in my twenties I volunteered as a reading instructor. One of the students
was a trucker in his late 30s who had never learned to read. He had just
memorized certain routes and took the same ones. He wanted to read so he could
get better jobs.

Not a dumb guy, but he'd slipped off the rails at a _very_ early age, and
dropped out of school as soon as he could. He did already know the alphabet
and numbers. He was embarrassed to even talk about this with his peers.

Abstract ideas of "job retraining" may sound great but I think they are
generally unrealistic. Folks who figured they were "done with school" at 18 or
even 22 and then find themselves unemployed in their 40s have a hard time
changing direction in my somewhat limited experience.

(But those students at community college who are aged between late 30 and 50?
_Really driven_. It's embarrassing to compare typical college students to
them.)

~~~
Mz
_It 's important that there be jobs for people without much education._

Average education levels for women when Abe Lincoln was president was 2nd-4th
grade level. People routinely quit school after 8t grade. Often, only people
who wanted a serious professional career went on to high school.

It is within my lifetime that we moved from more than half of all people
living outside of cities to more than half living within cities. Not terribly
long ago, most jobs were farm related in some fashion.

I don't know what the solution is, but I seriously doubt that most people
today would feel like someone with a 2nd grade education or even an 8th grade
education _deserves_ a job as they are, without first getting more education.
As society evolves, there tends to be upward pressure on how much education is
needed to get even an entry level job. This is not merely assholery by the
people running the bureaucracy or whatever. Things seem to genuinely get more
complicated and take more skill.

I think one big piece of the puzzle is that we need to bring back genuinely
affordable housing. It has largely gone the way of the dinosaur. I think this
puts enormous pressure on people, regardless of what kind of job they have. It
cuts off a lot of avenues.

But I seem to be howling into a void. Everyone seems to be discussing UBI and
largely ignoring the fact that even if you cut everyone a check for some kind
of basic income, if we don't solve some of our housing issues, you will still
see growing numbers of people either homeless or crammed together like
sardines in a space not intended to hold that many people.

~~~
Mikushi
> Everyone seems to be discussing UBI and largely ignoring the fact that even
> if you cut everyone a check for some kind of basic income, if we don't solve
> some of our housing issues, you will still see growing numbers of people
> either homeless or crammed together like sardines in a space not intended to
> hold that many people.

And you seem to miss the fact that with UBI you have no incentive to live and
stay in an expensive area.

For the deposit amount on an average house where I live I would cover 80% of
the cash price of a bigger house country side. But you know, I'd have no work.

The problem is not housing, the problem is cramming all the work in cities. My
last 3 jobs could've been done remotely, I asked and was always denied even
while offering to take a pay cut.

I and many like me despise living in cities, we do not live there by choice.
I've slightly moved out of a big one (London) but still live/work in the outer
rim where housing is a dream far away, even on a way above average salary.

Give me UBI and I quit my job to settle country side tomorrow, so would my
wife. So would a few of my colleagues.

~~~
flexie
> And you seem to miss the fact that with UBI you have no incentive to live
> and stay in an expensive area.

Like many people here on HN, I can work from anywhere with electricity,
Internet and decent cell phone coverage. But I still strongly prefer a bigger
city, and I even prefer to be close to the city center, not out in suburbia.
The reasons are many:

\- close to the city center I can chose between some of the best schools in
the country for my kids. Outside the city center, I would have to chose a
mediocre school. In the cuntryside, I would have to have to go with whatever
is there

\- I like going out with my wife. In the city we can chose between all kinds
of cuisines, cafes and bars. In a village, we would be lucky to find a pub
with fries. In suburbia that would be a strip mall.

\- Shopping in easy in the city center. Whether you like it or not, you need
to do groceries on a daily basis and to buy clothes etc every now and then,
and this is far easier when you live in the city.

\- I like to walk for things (walk my kids to school, walk to do groceries, or
just walk for the sake of it). Curiously, I find that this is easier in the
city center with sidewalks and parks than in the countryside, where I would
walk in the side of a highway or road.

\- In the city center I can do sports (tennis, soccer). Yes, I might find that
option in the countryside or in suburbia, but in the city I can chose between
10 different teams, venues etc.

\- I like people. There are many more people in the cities, especially younger
people.

\- I like to travel. I can take the metro to the airport in the city and visit
hundreds of places within a a few hours of flight. Driving 2 hours to the
nearest local airport to transfer to a bigger airport would kill that. I live
far from my family and friends. They would visit much less if I didn't live
near an international airport.

What I am trying to say is that I think nowadays people live in the city for
many other reasons than work.

~~~
kwhitefoot
I think Mikushi's point would be that UBI gives both of you greater freedom to
choose. It would probably reduce inner city housing costs a little as some of
the people who currently are there only because they have no other way of
getting an income decide to take their labour elsewhere where they can get
more value for their contribution..

~~~
wickawic
> take their labour elsewhere

If we are talking about a UBI, we might as well start treating people like
people again instead of job-executing machines!

~~~
nojvek
People are essentially job executing machines for corporations. That's the
basis of capitalism. Telling yourself otherwise is just lying to yourself.

~~~
malandrew
Those corporations provide the goods and services that makes life liveable for
7.3 billion people on this planet. I'm curious what other alternatives to
capitalism and firms (to use Ronald Coase's term) would have been able to
achieve and sustain a quality of life equal to or better than what these 7.3
billion currently enjoy. Capitalism is the basis of the quality of life for
7.3 billion humans on Earth. Telling yourself otherwise is just lying to
yourself.

~~~
Mikushi
And telling yourself that on such a small sample (200years) Captialism is a
success is lying to yourself. We're already facing the hard consequences of
capitalism and consumerisms, and with no real change in sight all the QOL
improvement in the world will not matter when this planet is mostly destroyed.

But who cares, we'll go trash Mars with Elon.

~~~
sokoloff
It may only be 200 years, but that's the largest sample we have of a system
scaling to support 7+ billion people.

------
lhuser123
I guess is my chance to tell my story. I have been doing this job for a few
years now. Driving all over the country, living in the truck, see the family
one or two days a month, etc, etc. In summary not the best job but it allowed
me to help my children. Now, how have I spent all those long and boring lonely
hours ? Learning to code, yeah!. Always looking for something to do inside
that truck, somehow started reading about computer programming, and, well, now
I can't let go. I used to work in accounting(long time ago), so had an idea of
what it was, but that was it. Now I know a little bit about Angular2, Ionic,
Django, Docker, github, and things like that, and even bought a PC and
installed Ubuntu after reading the book How Linux works. But what I really
want express is this: It's amazing how much free learning material is offered
by the open source community, and will never be able to thanks them enough.
And yes, my hope is to someday get a good programming job!

~~~
tehlike
Very good for you. There are always good jobs for driven people like yourself.
I wish the best of luck to you, and kudos.

And agree about opensource, I learned more from opensource than my formal CS
education.

~~~
lhuser123
Thanks. Comments like that about open source, helps me keep things in
perspective whenever I struggle to understand something.

------
Voyage_wanderer
Well. I guess, I should jump into the discussion. I'm a truck driver with 18
years of experience. Between driving jobs I have had 3 breaks when I was doing
programming/software development. I had never liked programming jobs, i always
enjoyed driving. Programming is something I can do based on my unfinished
education.

I'm an immigrant. I follow the industry news. Both industries, I guess.

First. You wont believe how diverse the truck driving jobs are and how diverse
truck drivers as a group. There is a fair populations of drivers with
bachelor/masters degrees and pretty high IQs

I had chosen the job because it is always there. No need for looking for one.
After initial 2-3 years of entry level jobs (big/ corporate type companies
driving dry vans with 90-100% turnover) good drivers migrate to niche Jobs.
Owner/operators with secured contracts. Or specialized freight. Oversized/high
security/more dangerous/requiring specific skills (chemical tankers, medical
equipment, military contracts etc)

Company drivers in such fields are getting fair pay, very much equal to
low/entry level unambiguous programming jobs in $70000-$100000 range. I get
paid both by miles(normally under 10%less than actual miles) and time I spend
at customers. But, unlike in programming field, I can dictate my conditions.
Which is normally would be work hard 8-10 months/year and play with hobbies
rest of the time.

But yes, it feels like we are getting squeezed harder and harder.

The problem is very much same like everywhere in the country. Big/corporate
type companies with low pay are getting bigger and bigger share of the market.
Going into owner/operator business(equal to being contractor/consultant) means
get plummeted with regulations and costs of health insurance. And, starting in
December 2017, every truck must be equipped with eLog. Which is watching your
every step and hackable by any kid with imagination. Hackability is written in
the law. It requires eLog providing interface to truck's engine computer and
having cellular contact with the outside world. Just look up eLog and trucking
in google and cry and be nervous every time you see 18 wheeler.

~~~
6stringmerc
As a person with a Masters Degree & 10 years office experience who has found
even White Collar work to cap out in the big city at $60,000, financially
speaking, there is actually more potential in specialized driving than doing
what I do now. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

------
wehadfun
Brother did this. The bad part about the job, as noted in the article, is the
way the pay works. If the truck is not moving the driver is not getting paid.
Stuck in traffic? Not paid, Takes a day to load your truck, no paid. Take a
day to unload truck, not paid. Truckers sit for hours doing nothing and not
getting paid. Sometimes trucks have to wait a day or two just to be assigned a
load. Not paid.

~~~
savanaly
I'm trying to think of reasons why it would be this way and what I can come up
with is that if you were to pay by the hour instead of by the mile it would be
an incentive to the drivers to take longer to complete routes. A classic
principal-agent problem in other words. Is there any non-obvious reason
besides that that anyone knows of?

~~~
kefka
Doesn't seem that hard to mix the two.

We know a route from X to Y is $miles . Detours happen, but Google is getting
to the point of calculating realtime incidents. But time could be fairly
compensated, as could the miles on a vehicle.

If you took a way longer route, it's on you. But if you're traffic jammed,
it's not your fault, and should fairly be compensated.

You know, that's what Unions are for.

~~~
Spooky23
Unions fixed this issue a long time ago.

Then Reagan de-regulated and lots of companies from right to work states moved
in and killed the market. The union shops like Yellow Freight mostly operate
in blue states and are profitable.

~~~
moriarty-s3a
Trucking deregulation occurred between 1978-1980 during the Carter
administration.

Plus, the way it was regulated makes modern regulatory capture look consumer
friendly. If you wanted to start a trucking company, you had to submit a
business plan with a list of committed customers and already set in stone
pricing. The Feds would literally hand your plan to everyone with a route in
the region, give them a few months to review it and then your potential
competitors got to vote on whether you should be allowed to operate that
route. Predictably, it was basically just outsourced sales for the exiting
companies.

------
tsm
> What’s retirement? Sounds boring. I’m single, I have no money saved up, I’ve
> lived paycheck to paycheck. My fault. I didn’t think about retirement
> growing up. This is the first time I’ve ever made decent money in my life.

> I bought me a brand-new car, a 2017 Chevrolet, two days after I hit this
> town.

I don't know what the answer is, but there must be a better way of educating
people about their finances.

~~~
titanomachy
You mean a better way than car commercials? There's no money to be made by
teaching people financial responsibility... Lots of money in convincing them
to buy cars, though.

~~~
Neliquat
One could argue with one, people would buy more of the other. Now that most
rent, a car will be the biggest single financial decision most people make in
their lives. Kinda weird, but preparing people for it would help it happen
more. I know people who feel they are too poor to even aspire to a car these
days. Its not true, but it is the best of their knowledge. Surely there is
wide reaching opprotunity to be had here.

------
erikbye
Some of the comments here... SMH. I think that a lot of you should cut back on
the self-aggrandizing and realize that whether you are a software engineer or
a trucker, very few people in the world do great and meaningful things.

------
d-sc
I drove a semi truck for a summer. Enjoyed it more than the summer I spent
writing iOS and Android apps for a startup (Beartooth Radio). I was pretty
unusual however in that on both sides of my route (300 miles) I had nice
houses to stay in as well as a social and family life.

Most truck drivers don't get this luxury and the infrastructure setup for
trucks is absolutely awful from a social/health perspective.

------
TYPE_FASTER
Long haul is the only type of trucking I can see being replaced by autonomous
vehicles in the next 10 years. Milk runs require, at least for the time being,
driving through many surface streets, unloading product off the truck, and
potentially upselling the customer using the relationship you build with them
over time.

~~~
shostack
I think if battery and drone technology increases sufficiently, we could see
automated or semi-automated drone deliveries for the "last mile" for many
things like that.

Drones that can deliver small packages will likely disrupt quite a bit of the
delivery scene. Why hire five delivery drivers for an area when you can have
one who drives the drone launch truck, they drive to the middle of the zone,
deploy the drones, monitor them (or offshore their piloting to remote pilots),
wait for them to finish their run, rinse and repeat.

------
rwmj
Does any government in the world have a sensible plan for what happens when
(probably) 1 in 10 of the workforce become unemployable when self-driving
cars/trucks take over their jobs?

~~~
mullen
Clinton did. She had a jobs retraining program that would have addressed
people in industries that were in decline or going away. Ironically, the very
people who would benefit from this program mostly vote for Trump and he is not
going to do anything for them.

Automation is coming for these people's jobs and there is nothing that can be
done about that. Retraining is the only hope for these people but they have to
stop acting entitled and start voting for people who will help them get
retrained.

~~~
rayiner
Retrain them to do what?

~~~
acdha
The best answer I've had wouldn't work without a big change in politics: we
could use a ton of home health aides and other support for aging Boomers, not
to mention classroom assistants (one of the best ways to boost academic
performance) or daycare workers.

Spending on directly helping people seems like a very humane way to deal with
shifts in employment but I don't see us choosing to invest that kind of money,
not to mention the problem with attitudes complicating shifting a heavily-male
worker surplus into traditionally female fields.

~~~
mistermann
I don't think the 1% is going to be too keen on footing the bill for something
like this.

~~~
acdha
Exactly the problem – it'd be a good way to deal with a rising worker surplus,
just as e.g. the New Deal created a lot of not-strictly-necessary public
works, but I don't know how we get here in the current political climate and
its bitter crab-pot mentality.

------
mlinksva
For other reasons, a large % of trucking should be de-subsidized and replaced
with rail [http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-
have-1...](http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-
have-18-wheels/)

What are working conditions of truckers relative to railroad workers?

~~~
ams6110
Since the advent of containers, a huge amount of freight is shipped by rail,
especially from coastal ports to inland hubs.

Trucks are used for shipments to more local warehouses or retail/factory
locations that don't have rail access. And no, it's not feasible to build a
rail spur to every warehouse or Wal-mart.

~~~
dredmorbius
Interestingly, previously, you _did_ see spur lines to many facilities which
today are served by truck.

Low-speed (15 - 30 mph) tracked autonomous vehicles for local ("last 10 - 20
mile") delivery might very much make sense.

It's a lot easier to focus on things like traffic control and hazard detection
(including people on tracks) when your wheels literally hold you to the road.

~~~
posguy
Short lines & spurs have nearly all been spun off into small, local railroad
companies as BNSF, UP & CNX don't want to deal with the expensive, time
consuming short lines.

The major rail companies would much rather move mile long trains hundreds of
miles on well maintained track, and let the short lines fend for themselves,
barely scraping by, running trains at a few miles an hour (as they can't
afford proper track maintenance.

~~~
dredmorbius
Many of them _started_ as local-only, "short-line" railroads in the first
place.

------
losteverything
Im not sure i would extrapolate the feelings of workers in an entire industry
from a two day visit to a truck stop.

If you interviewed my coworkers at the hated retailer-of-them-all you could
cherry pick totally bad experiences. Or on the other hand you could find
example after example how a walmart worker can buy their own house [1] and how
every walmart has at least one employee making 6 figures, often 250k or more.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/walmart/comments/69m275/walmart_emp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/walmart/comments/69m275/walmart_employees_who_have_been_able_to_buy/)

------
throwaway31298
Frankly, this is probably what most of humanity will be like in the not-too-
distant future.

------
bluedino
Won't uber drivers feel this way when they have to drive to survive, and it's
not just a novelty?

------
lowbloodsugar
In the US we're all 'Throwaway People'. Its just a matter of time before all
our jobs here are automated (programming, lawyering, even art and design). And
yet everybody here seems to think that they will get different treatment than
detroit workers, or truckers, or who-ever is losing their job to automation.
The rich have responded perfectly consistent to automation opportunities, and
yet somehow programmers seem to think it will be different for them. Instead
we spend all our time discussing the various merits of each of these jobs, and
how its probably a good thing that they've been automated. Its like everyone
thinks we're magically going to get Star Trek instead of Blade Runner.

~~~
int_19h
Whether we'll get Star Trek or Blade Runner depends entirely on us. Automation
enables both of these possibilities, but it also requires political action to
adjust the economic system accordingly.

Whether said political action takes the form of ballots and bills, or torches
and pitchforks, remains to be seen - it could go either way.

~~~
mistermann
Modern democracy is an illusion. Until the pitchforks come out it will be one
group after another thrown under the bus.

~~~
solonagathon
Actually it's the pitchforks that are an illusion. State control today makes
subjects docile even when they have nothing to lose.

------
nnq

        Q: Know that joke about the self-driving-car engineer who walks into a trucker bar?
        A: 'course you don't, he never lived to tell it...

~~~
draw_down
It's always the engineers. People just can't bring themselves to hate the
business people involved, somehow.

~~~
Kevin_S
You're joking right? Here and in other software circles MBAs and other
business people are constantly looked down upon as being a waste of time and
money.

I really doubt he was trying to make a point about engineers....

------
dingo_bat
I'm surprised truck driving used to be a "road to the middle class" in USA.
It's one of the shittiest jobs and requires almost zero higher brain function.
I'm pretty sure you can train a brain damaged person to reasonably drive a
truck across the country. This job should never have been able to lift anybody
into middle class.

Glad to see that truckers are feeling the pinch. If they are even a bit smart,
they should leave and do something else. Even repairing trucks along the
Highway may be a better job.

Somewhat tangential, but I hate this notion people seem to harbour, that any
kind of job should be able to provide dignified living. No. If your work is
shitty and super replaceable and doesn't need much brain power you will live
in poverty.

~~~
analog31
In the past, a wage job like trucking wasn't a road to the middle class. It
was the middle class. I grew up in what was supposedly a middle class
neighborhood -- little tract houses, families with one wage earner, and one
stay-at-home parent. A lot of the adults worked in the car plants, steel mill,
machine shops, or other jobs that didn't require college education. Among
those with college degrees, many didn't earn substantially more than the wage
workers, e.g., school teachers, nurses, etc.

~~~
dingo_bat
Exactly, and that's what I'm surprised about.

