Featured Truck sales: bad news

If there are only 2 axles, they are likely medium duty.

 

I'd way rather have a hard working immigrant who knows how to speak multiple languages running big trucks around us rather than an overweight diabetic from Texas who didn't graduate from high school, has painfully slow reaction times, as well as anger management issues. Not to mention how they tend to almost fall asleep while driving everyday because their C-Pap machine keep them awake at night.

 

If making up imaginary parameters works, fine & dandy

 

Wall-E

 

Where I live it seemed a lot of the early adopters drove as fast as possible. I remember many times being passed by Prius drivers while going near or above the speed limit myself. I guess it was about showing that you can both save fuel and drive fast. But then again, I did have a conversation with a couple of them that complained they weren't getting the fuel mileage they had hoped for (often lower 30's), while I was doing up to 60 mpg in my 1985 VW Golf diesel.

I know a lot of commercial drivers all with licenses. I only knew of one tractor trailer driver who didn't and got into a wreck (solo, no others were hurt) and fled.

I kind of see both, or maybe too much competition or a bust that is happening.

I was talking with a fellow truck driver and trucking business owner who said things were extremely slow. She said a lot, if not all of her contracts had fallen through to bigger companies that could charge cheaper. I don't know if it's true, but a lot are saying that these companies have mostly new hires with very little experience and they fear this coming winter there will be a lot of empty store shelves as a result.

On the other hand, the place I work at now just can't keep enough people employed. Even I am planning on leaving for another job not related to trucking. Trucking just doesn't pay enough to make a living anymore. Like, what's the point if working 60 hours a week can't afford a home, a new car, or pretty much anything else that's nice and new even for a guy with zero debt and low expenses when there are other places with bigger fish to fry?

Broken English and illegal alien are many times not the same. I know lots of green card holders or even US citizens raised outside of the USA or who got citizenship at an age they no longer are required to speak English for the test who can't hardly say even the word "hi" in English. And I know lots of illegal aliens who speak English better than a lot of native born Americans.

In Colorado, and presumably other states like California, you don't need to be legally present in the USA in order to get a normal driver's license. But you do need something like 3 years of tax returns.

 

The thing is that you can drive a vehicle way over the weight limit if it's a recreational vehicle. You'll see a lot of RV's that are over the 26,000 lb limit, especially when towing a car or trailer behind it, as well as a lot of pickups towing very large 5th wheel RV trailers. But they are not subject to the weight restriction because apparently RVs don't cause any damage at all when they get into wrecks.

So every day I have to do a complete vehicle inspection twice that takes half an hour or better both times, and follow all sorts of rules and regulations, and be in fear that anything that happens, my fault or not, will get me sued by Frank Azar, while all these RV drivers just hop in and drive.

 

I noticed PA has a CDL exemption for RVs. It is the same mentality that had the state classifying full size SUVs as station wagons for registration fees.

 

oh, there are many much larger than that. they even have a couple semi's. i'm not sure what they use them for.
most of the pickups look like 350's or larger if they make them. there are a lot of trailers as well.

 

You know its complicated. Sorry for the consultant answer but lets look at trucking the point of this rant. Unemployment is going up and it looks like it will be structural. There is more demand for workers in certain jobs than candidates.

Truck driving is a hard job, I know one of my cousins did long haul for awhile, then quit. Truckers are an aging population and retirements are causing a shortage. I guess one solution is to reduce trucking so that those left can do the jobs, but that seems to screw up supply chains, which hurts other businesses. I guess the government decided to solve "the problem" by screwing up supply chains themselves with tariffs. Now this has not impacted overall consumer spending because the top 10% are buying more, but its different stuff and many sales have been pulled forward. That means consumer spending on those items will likely drop. Tarrifs only took full effect in august and there is a lag, but companies are already laying off workers.

+1

 

26,000lb is 11.8 tonne, that is a heavy vehicle in Australia ..... anything over 4.5 tonne requires a heavy vehicle licence. To tow a caravan or 5th wheeler over 3 tonne would require a tow vehicle heavier than 4.5 tonne, like a Ram or Silverado or F250 or bigger.

Unfortunately, a tow vehicle under 4.5 tonne can tow a caravan or 5th wheeler that is within the max combined weight capabilities of the tow vehicle .... and still drive it on a car licence ..... they are the ones that generally end up on the their roof because they couldn't drive a nail into softwood ......

The highways around Australia are dotted with drive through scales that measure axle weight, combined axle weight, height and width and compare it to the registered capacity of that vehicle, it then either directs them back onto the highway or though the weighbridge where everything is checked, log books, licences, registration, that the required rest periods have been observed, as well as the mechanical condition of the vehicle .... if you don't pass all that, you go no further.
There are cameras that monitor truck movements and facial recognition, log times between each camera set up to determine if the driver has been observing their required rest periods and there is a notification and penalty sent to the registered owner, if the facial recognition doesn't match the licence photo records, the vehicle is also pinged for unlicenced and a warning sent ahead to the highway patrol vehicles ..... they don't mess around with much these days because the trucks are so big and so fast ..... and any truck crash is usually a major event .... at the minimum closing major highways for hrs, multiple deaths as the scale of the accident increases .....

But, truck driving does pay well over here, if you can put up with the hrs and time away from home ......

T1 Terry