Insanity! U.S. to Pay for EOBRs on Mexican Trucks

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
Part of that Obama "hope and change" gift that keeps on giving.
 

chefdennis

Veteran Expediter
Davekc wrote:

Part of that Obama "hope and change" gift that keeps on giving.

Come on...everyone needs to just give him a chance....he needs time to fix everything that he inherited and...well he is working on making the world "love" American....well thats what his supporter, even those here on EO told us....:rolleyes:

By the way, How is that "hope and changy" thing working for all of you who voted for him!?!? :D
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
American taxpayers will pay for Mexican compliance. Why is our government so anxious to subsidize the entrance of Mexican trucking into the interior regions of our country? At first it will be only a trickle, a few companies in the pilot program with shiny trucks and reasonably competent drivers. Once acceptance among the public has been established, it won't be just Mexico's best truckdrivers tooling through our cities and suburbs, but the less well trained as well.

For many reasons, this entire program is a bad idea. Safety of the American motoring public will be more imperiled. Hundreds, then thousands, of good paying American truckdriving jobs will fade away as cheaper labor takes the driving seat. Thousands of freight loads previously hauled by American truckers to transfer stations along the border will go to Mexican driven trucks which will take the load all the way to final destination.

Many parts of NAFTA have crippled American industries. Manufacturing plants moved across the border for cheap labor. Now, we are importing cheap labor here. No wonder wages have been stagnant for 20 years. We never needed NAFTA at all. Goods and services were moving just fine before NAFTA and would have continued. Ross Perot was right. How I wish our leaders would work as hard at developing good jobs as they do to destroy them. Nobody wins in a race to the bottom.
 

greg334

Veteran Expediter
I think the money is coming from the road taxes collected by the feds.

BUT here we go with the assumptions - what proof will there be with the carnage on the roads?

it won't be just Mexico's best truckdrivers tooling through our cities and suburbs, but the less well trained as well.

AND??

I don't see the difference in training, here or Mexico because we all have the same issue whether the driver is from Mexico or Canada or the good ol' US of A - a lot of them can't drive to begin with. Companies still push for less training and the feds have yet to actually bring up the standards where they need to be in order to get behind a wheel of a 80,000 truck.

In another thread which actually is related to my position that training s*cks everywhere, Phil asked ...

In the years ahead, will EOBR's level the playing field, or will they degrade the game by making it easier for dregs to suit up and drive?

I think in our case the EOBRs will make it easy to put anyone who breaths into the driver's seat.

good paying American truckdriving jobs will fade away as cheaper labor takes the driving seat

Where are these good paying truckdriving jobs, I would like one.

If you think NAFTA has a lot to do with this, think again. More has to do with taxes than with anything else. NAFTA actually lifted a lot of the tariffs that were punitive and the people did the rest by demanding cheap throw away things. For 30 years we have been importing labor and NAFTA didn't have a thing to do with the changes in visa requirements for tech workers which gutted a lot of our tech industry jobs.
 

Pianoguy

Seasoned Expediter
It's not just NAFTA it's over regulation by individual states as well. Any normal family owned small business cant even afford to hire employees. We spent 187 grand last year hiring a few employees. States get their cuts of Comp and Unemployment taxes before they do a single minute of work and then if they dont work out that's another whole issue

Business licenses are increasingly going by what your projected revenue will be. The Pizza Hut on the corner pays 16 grand per YEAR for their business license. 8 Grand per county and city. It's Insane.

Sooner or later it will come to a screeching halt but by then I think the USA will be a ghost town.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
It's not just NAFTA it's over regulation by individual states as well. Any normal family owned small business cant even afford to hire employees. We spent 187 grand last year hiring a few employees. States get their cuts of Comp and Unemployment taxes before they do a single minute of work and then if they dont work out that's another whole issue

Business licenses are increasingly going by what your projected revenue will be. The Pizza Hut on the corner pays 16 grand per YEAR for their business license. 8 Grand per county and city. It's Insane.

Sooner or later it will come to a screeching halt but by then I think the USA will be a ghost town.


Yep, my buddy was telling me that all the NEW unemployment taxes to cover the NEW welfare program (extended unemployment) and the raises in comp etc is costing him 75,000 PER YEAR! Now, he COULD HIRE a person or two with that OR pay taxes. Obama says taxes are GOOD for job growth. Somehow the math just don't work.
 

skyraider

Veteran Expediter
US Navy
cant wait for 25cpm in vans, and that could be soon the way things are going, maybe 65 cpm for straight trucks of course that will never happen because gas and diesel will never reach 3 bucks a gallon, not iin the USA:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
There were a number of drivers who eagerly supported EOBR's when the idea first surfaced. I wonder if they would have been so eager to embrace EOBR's if they realized what their long term impact would be.

As EOBR's become more widespread on the road and known in the public mind, they are becoming devices that dehumanize trucking by taking compliance out of the truckers' hands and vesting it with machines. And this is only the beginning.

Speed limit monitoring, lane departure sensing, turn signal use tabulation, out of route avoidance, tire pressure monitoring, engine oil level checks, fuel stop planning, and other such things can all be done by machine, and increasingly eliminate the need for skilled and conscientious drivers.

It is very, very significant that people at the highest levels of our government worked out a deal that enables "scary" Mexican trucks into the US by using technology to turn unproven truck drivers into trustworthy robots and the trucks themselves into closely monitored machines.

The greater the technology, the less skilled drivers need to be. And the less skilled drivers need to be, the less they need to be paid.

Skilled human welders were once a common sight on automotive assembly lines. Now robots do the job. Modern factories and warehouses have robots that move the materials about that human fork lift drivers used to move.

Trucking has not reached the point where trucks can drive themselves, but EOBR's are already making drivers more robot-like; thereby improving their reliability and decreasing their value in the marketplace.

When Diane and I wrote our business plan eight years ago, EOBR's were little more than an experimental concept if that. I'm glad we bought and paid for our truck when we did. Trucks like ours may be coming to an end. When the time comes to replace it, I'm not so sure we will. Robots do not need expensive sleepers and drivers may not be making enough money to pay for one.
 
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Deville

Not a Member
Drivers aren't making enough money now. Drivers such as myself with nearly 20 years in the business are being pushed out to make way for people with little to no experiance that will work for pennys & not bother to lean the in's & out's of the business, like reading a map, because they can rely on GPS & other technology. It's a sad sad state of affairs.
 

greg334

Veteran Expediter
Phil; said:
Speed limit monitoring, lane departure sensing, turn signal use tabulation, out of route avoidance, tire pressure monitoring, engine oil level checks, fuel stop planning, and other such things can all be done by machine, and increasingly eliminate the need for skilled and conscientious drivers.

AND

Drivers aren't making enough money now.

If you think Mexican truckers are a threat ... just saying...
 
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