Not many people look to see who is driving their goods to the stores. Even though you see them daily. Movies, Television, commute to and from work, taking your kids to karate, they are everywhere. I’m talking about the semi, that big thing that is constantly in your way from A to B. As I said earlier, you see them everywhere. Did you know that there is a driver shortage in the nation?

                Congress is trying to investigate possible scenarios to help battle this severe problem. One good question into how? They are thinking that they should allow 18-20-year-old potential drivers into driving Interstate. Interstate, according to the national highway safety administration, is where a CDL holder can cross state lines. Intrastate is where you can only stay within the confines of the state in which your license originated from. I personally have no issues with one trying to get their foot into the door of an industry that is going to be around for easily another 50 years, even with recent talks of the Tesla Autonomous truck. However, this is one industry that I don’t believe we should put test subjects in.

                Times have changed over the past 60 years. Modern technology of cell phones, laptops and gaming devices have overpowered the minds of what many people will consider the Millennial generation. Being a professional driver myself, and a millennial, I’m going to have to agree with previous generations. Technology has taken over the minds.  I sit in my driver’s seat cruising along at my whopping 69 miles per hour down the interstate, and I get bored. I start looking into vehicles passenger windows. Every single day, I see a minimum of 100 vehicles that pass me, with their cell phone in hand and at times both hands. Swerving into my lane, nearly hitting me, or cutting me off. It is due to a lack of attention to the roadway, or blatant disregard for the safety of themselves or others.

                I’ve heard the argument, “if they are old enough to fight for our country, they are old enough to drive a truck.” I would agree for many other cases, but not this. In the military, a brand new private gets assigned to a division, to a battalion, to a company, to a platoon, to a squad and to a team. There is a strong trickle-down chain of command that that soldier is to receive guidance from. In a truck, you have you, yourself and that’s it, for weeks at a time. You don’t always have them one or two people that can be there whenever you need them. Need to quickly make the most effective move to keep yourself going. Efficiently utilize your time to create the most miles you can in a week, miles equal a paycheck. You do not have that tap on your shoulder saying that you must do this at this time, stop at this time for a break, get going again at this time, so on so forth. Sure, you have a dispatcher, one who assigns you the load, but they can be two thousand miles away from you. They aren’t going to go to your truck just to have you get going. I have had that knock on my door a few times as I was in the military. There, for the most part, you knew what was on the agenda for the day. Wake up at 0530 to get to PT by 0600, off to breakfast by 0730, at work by 0900. Your day is structurally sound. Driving semi, there is no such thing as a schedule. Some days I am driving day shift, from 5:30 am not get off work until 7 pm, many I can be running swing, few graveyards. It makes life difficult not having “big brother” looking over your shoulder, just to make sure you are doing the right thing and your job to the best of your ability.

                Emotions also play a big factor. You know when you are talking with a teenager, or a toddler with a teenaged attitude, you see a lot of hormones come into play? One second, it’s all unicorns and rainbows, next makes Hell look good. Road rage, you must have the emotional strength to control your anger, sadness or whatever else you are feeling that day. I’m not saying they are not out there right now, because I can give you a few names but that’s kind of immoral. The young adult, 18-20yo tends to get angry extremely easy. Just because you are in their way. I couldn’t tell you how many that are under the age of 26 flip me off, just because I’m a slow vehicle, but observation has shown me that it is usually the younger ones that are fresh out of high school with the problem. They don’t tend to have the ability to let stuff roll off the shoulder, and they dwell on the bad that has just happened. Now, think about the rainbows and unicorns. Can you imagine the damage that can potentially happen should this occur behind the wheel of a 8 foot wide, 70 foot long, 13’6” tall, 80,000 pound truck? Results would be devastating to a lot of families that cut you off, or the business that just got crashed into because the shipper took 6 hours to load you.

                I understand that they are trying to correct a problem. In my personal opinion, they are overstepping their boundaries. Transportation and logistics is the most regulated industries in the nation. All eyes are on us, we are the focal point of every bad thing that happens on the roads. Although, studies have shown that roughly 80% of accidents, involving a semi, the passenger vehicle has been at fault of the accident. Of them 80%, many of them are from teen drivers, which are 3 times more likely to cause an accident than somebody 20 or older. They are speeding, following too closely, must speed past that semi just because it happens to be in their way, that text or Facebook message was far more important than people around them. I do not believe they are responsible at that age to be able to completely control the situation that they may encounter while on the roads. Weather, traffic, driving into the sun at dusk, paying attention to the roads on a beautiful 70-degree day with clear blue skies, all major factors that tend to have the largest potential for an accident. Instead of lowering the age limit drastically, I think we should drop it to 20 at the youngest and require 1-year experience with a trainer. However, we need to make the industry more appealing. We need quality along with quantity. Nobody wants to be on the road for a month at a time away from their family, not for the big chunk of change of $700 per week that seems to be the average paycheck. College is another obstacle here. Parents and teachers both push that college is the way to go, the only way that you will ever have the ability to have a good, quality, life. They forget that without a blue-collar job, them college jobs would be nonexistent. Somebody must do the grunt work. With that grunt work, you have the backbone of American, and the world, known as The Truck Driver.

Guest Writer: Joe Kallenbach

Joe Kallenbach grew up small town in Washington. Farming community, just your average blue collar. Been driving truck for only 3 years, roughly 400,000 safe miles. Require three states to have what many in their 60’s and 70’s don’t have. But you know, I wouldn’t change this lifestyle for anything. So, I just hope that I am able to put pen to paper on ways that our industry can help itself. My focus is the transportation and logistics industry of this great land, but there are times that I’ll get off track and venture off into different areas.