In the Driver’s Seat

Road Warrior
Jimmy is proud to be a trucker and takes his job seriously. He is licensed to drive in 28 states and his longest hauls have hit 3,500 miles in a week. He drives about 160,000 miles a year, equivalent to 48 round trips—and with an average of 6.2 miles per gallon of diesel, that’s a lot of miles and fuel.

He does not like large truck stops, often the launch pad of cargo thieves (for more information on cargo theft and prevention, see our article in the main journal’s Eye on Economics department), preferring small mom-and-pop filling stations and restaurants. They may not always have the best rates, but a friendly atmosphere more than offsets the cost in his view.

Safety Concerns
Safety—his own and that of other drivers on the road—is always a top concern. The actions of a few careless drivers, who caused spectacularly tragic crashes in the last several years, has cast a pall on commercial truckers nationwide. This, of course, led to the revamped and rather controversial Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) 2010 program from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which governs over-the-road trucking.

Like many truckers, Jimmy is not a fan of the more stringent regulations and believes there is already too much “federal interference” in today’s transportation industry.

Whether it is tighter hours of service rules (the new 34-hour restart hits its one-year anniversary July 1), equipment mandates, liability insurance minimums, fuel efficiency, or emission controls, it all weighs heavily on independent owner-operators who must absorb these added costs themselves. This makes every mile a much more expensive proposition, and many older drivers are calling it quits.

Drivers and Driving
When seasoned veterans leave the business and there aren’t enough experienced drivers to take their place, shippers must scramble to get their loads on the road with new or inadequately trained drivers—and, well, this is when mistakes and accidents can occur—which then causes a public outcry and another round of federal rulemaking. It is the vicious circle oftransportation life.

Jimmy is not afraid of other truckers, but he is very leery of motorists who get impatient behind big trucks and race ahead, cutting them off, nearly forcing rigs off the road. Due to the increasingly litigious atmosphere for carriers, Jimmy installed a video camera on his dashboard, in case he ever has to prove the recklessness of drivers around him caused an accident.

The camcorder came in handy little more than a week after my ride-along, when a driver lost control of her car on Interstate 94 and crossed four lanes of traffic, slamming into the side of Jimmy’s cab.