This is going to be a bit different for me, because I take this stuff very personally, as you’ll see.
Before I go any further, let me please begin with a full personal background disclosure, so you might better understand what I will say here.
Right out of high school, I was in the broadcasting (radio) business for many years, mostly on-air talent, but it wasn’t unusual to see me with a soldering iron in my hand. I've leaned toward the technical my whole life.
After that, I spent over a decade supporting computers, mostly at a bank (the name of which I will not mention except to say it’s one you would know anywhere in the country). During my tenure there, I earned many certifications in the field, which increased my earning power well beyond my expectations. Life was good.
However... As a result of the 2008 election, the president of the bank decided that Home Equity, the division to which I was attached, was no longer going to be the big deal. In his view the economy was going to hit John Crapper’s elegant device. (Well, he got that part right, anyway. Welcome to hope and change!) Thing is, that left me and a number of the hundreds of desktops I was helping to support on the sidewalk, looking up at where my office used to be, a mere two weeks before Christmas. Due to the changes in Washington, D.C., much of the rest of the country was in a similar jam, and so jobs in the field, particularly ones paying the rates I'd been getting for a decade, were going scarce.
To say the least, I was in a bad spot. I had a wife and two boys to think about, a house and two fairly new cars to pay for. I needed to turn a buck, in fairly short order, too. I felt I had to switch careers again, and execute plan C. I was fairly well acquainted with what the trucking game required, having some family in the business already, so I dropped $5000 (the going price at the time) for a driving school. They did a pretty good job with my class, from what I can see, both from the perspective of a new student I was then, and from the level of experience I have in the business now. Alas, if what I see in most truck driving schools anymore, that quality is becoming increasingly rare.
To cut to the chase, I graduated and I hooked up with a local trucking company, and spent 14 years driving for them, mostly regional haul. Usually around 450-500 miles per day. Fourteen-hour days, five and a half to six days a week. (So much for a family life!) This truck, shown here, was pretty much my home as a result. It took years to get to this level.
I was, at the time the company closed down a little over a year ago, one of their most senior drivers, with responsibilities as a driver, a trainer, and a mentor for drivers who had recently joined the company. My phone, as a result, was going pretty much all the time. I am now retired. Truck driving, particularly long haul trucking, is, as Vince Gill sang, a "young man’s town." At 68, it was time to "pull the pin."
Okay, I know that was a little long and I apologize for that, but I feel it was needed to explain why I can speak on this topic with some authority. So now you know enough about me to understand my perspective, and to hear my thought on commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and illegals, which are the two subjects I intend to address here. Again, I stress, this is two subjects, and I hope you'll see this when we're done here.
Much has been said, much has been written about unqualified people getting CDLs without even being close to the minimum standards required to drive a commercial truck. Let's concentrate on the domestic issues first. We'll add the issue of illegals as a we go along.
Let me be clear here; I’m not talking about what the law requires. I’m talking about what the reality of the road requires. Of the two, the latter is by far more important and harder to learn for many.
This is a little unusual, since most people view the problems we are discussing here as uniquely American, but I’m going to go to the Canada's CBC for this video. They’re having a lot of the same issues up there as we are down here in the States. My point for using this source is that we're not the only ones suffering with these issues. Change the names and the dates, and I promise you, absent the southern Ontario accent, nobody will notice, eh?
I live outside Rochester, New York on the south shore of Lake Ontario, which is within earshot of a goodly chunk of the Canadian provinces of both Ontario and Quebec. In a political and social sense, Ontario is the relative equivalent of our California in many ways, and so you’ll hear references to them being a problem regarding CDLs. The issues mentioned in this video are pretty much identical to the baseline conditions here in the States. Ontario is accused of doing pretty much the same as California is, in terms of sliding people through the legal process, and in the end, putting totally unqualified people on the road. There’s a lot more going on here, but this will start the conversation. I can’t clip it, but the relevant part ends about six and a half minutes in.
Where the problem started, many years ago, was with the mistaken belief that we could solve all problems by passing a law. The reality is that when you prohibit or even regulate any activity by means of law, particularly where there’s a dollar to be made, you will find people coming up with unique and clever ways to bypass that prohibition. The CBC video demonstrates that rather well.
When, in my role as trainer, I got my hands on a new driver, usually the ink hadn't dried yet on his CDL. Now, understand that while the state considered these guys fully qualified to drive a commercial vehicle without supervision and additional training, I could not. Mostly, because it simply wasn't true, and still isn't.
I told every one of them, "Congrats for making it through the truck driving school," meaning they got enough into their heads to pass the state's test. That's no small achievement. Most were shocked and amazed how much talent is required and how much additional knowledge is needed to handle a big rig. But I told every one of them that they weren't ready yet. My job was to go beyond what the state told them they needed. It was my job to teach them about what goes on in the real world. Rather than training for the test, they now had to train MY way. These trainees had to pass MY testing to become full-fledged employees. I found, during my years as a trainer, that most were basing what understanding was needed upon what they had learned driving a four-wheeler. The two in my opinion, are not even close to each other in terms of the depth of understanding required.
Alas, most companies don't abide that kind of stringency. They simply cannot afford to, not having those kinds of financial resources to toss around. Their core business is moving freight. This results in an attitude best described as "Get them into the seats and get them out on the highway as quickly as possible." So it is that many of the big line haul companies whom you drive by every day have serious safety issues. Folks with a lot of miles and truck stop food under their belts often run the smaller companies. Such was the situation with my employer... whom, I should note, I still consider a good friend to this day. His company made serious (and mostly successful) efforts to keep the drivers safe and to make that safety the priority. Understand, however, that someone running a one or two truck operation often doesn't have the resources to spend on such matters. And that, dear reader, is exactly the trouble you imagine.
Notice, please, that as yet, I have made no mention of the illegal aliens driving big rigs and the safety issues that brings. The situation I have described so far is problematic enough. Now, having discussed the purely domestic side of this problem, we can address the addition of illegal aliens to this witches brew. (OK, sorry, I had to work Halloween in there somehow).
The problem of illegal aliens in trucking, in my view, is strictly second-level stuff, since they're simply taking advantage of the situation which existed before they even got to this country..
My take is that government officials who are more interested in being seen as non-racist, not xenophobic, or whatever, add to the main faults, beyond a lack of driver qualification, by allowing illegals into the system with minimal, if any, safety checks. In short, official malfeasance and vote buying, masquerading as "compassion." We see this attitude reflected in the current fight for free healthcare for illegals, as an example.
California (I think justifiably) gets a lot of the blame for the illegals getting CDLs, and make no mistake, the problem is a serious one, to the tune of some 60,000 unqualified drivers being issued CDLs from that state alone.
Look, the more miles you drive, regardless of experience and care, the more accidents you're going to have. This new class of driver, both domestic and to a larger degree the alien driver, however, have a history of a much higher number of accidents of much greater severity, the two most recent high profile crashes being on the Florida Pike:
... and the I-10 out in Ontario, California:The complexity of the issue has forced me a bit long on this one, so I will address the addition of illegal aliens to the mix, which multiplies the problem, in tomorrow's column.
