From American Truckers on X.com, we learn this. Click the image for a larger, readable view.
I don't regularly drive on ice and snow (thank you, Texas weather!), but from my (very) limited exposure to it, I know I don't do well under those driving conditions. I'd never considered the hazards of commercial vehicles, particularly 18-wheeler truck/trailer combinations, when their drivers have the same problem. Now that drivers can come in from Mexico (where snow isn't exactly commonplace, to put it mildly) and drive all the way to the US/Canadian border or even further north, I can see that would make for . . . interesting times on the highway.
How about you, readers? Have any of you run into this problem (hopefully not literally!)? If so, please tell us about it in Comments. It might help keep all of us safer on the road.
Peter
29 comments:
Yes. They cannot read road signs, and when a route is blocked, they don't follow the diversion, and end up stuck in a residential cul de sac, unable to get out. And can't figure how to appear in court for the summons. Over. And over. And over.
When I was in the military I was sent on a training mission to Alaska. I learned how to dive on snow and ice with a deuce and 5-ton pulling a load. I also got cross country ski lessons. I don't care for snow. That is why I live in SE Georgia where we see snow about every 25 years.
Having driven on interstates for 40 years, I can tell you that CMV operators are terrible in all weather. They drive like they are in a car, not an 80,000 lb monster. I don't doubt that it's almost all foreigners, having heard this from people in the industry.
When I drove for Schneider back in the late 90's I ran into a situation where a Hindu driver from Canada had to have his dispatcher explain what the street signs meant when he was driving through San Francisco... First he asked me when I stopped to deliver and he could not understand English...
Similar problems exists in Norway, Sweden and Finland.
I used to do process improvement. What I learned, if you really understand a system, is there is a huge amount of cost that is difficult or even impossible to measure. Managers, and this gets worse the higher up in the org they are, pay attention to the easily measured cost. Ostensibly, it is because they only have time for the bigger picture.
Had one coworker who showed our offshore facility was more expensive than our onshore. Senior management didn't want to hear it.
The point-Illegals are not good for the economy. The hidden costs, or those we can't or won't measure would clearly show the negative impact. If you think that is obvious, the hidden part is the magnitude of the negative impact. Depressed wages, high housing costs, impact to medical services (I think big pharma is a bigger driver on that), increased insurance costs, time spent trying to deal with people who don't speak the language, criminal activity, etc.
Getting the illegals to go back home and getting them off of social services will be a huge boost to the economy, and we haven't even taken into account the social security fraud and all the fraud that is being exposed around the gov't spending.
Next thing is to make American companies American again. Too many got enamored with offshoring and being a global company. Companies that are proud to employ Americans, have the highest quality and productivity in the world.
I had to look up CMV.
Ufda (that's Norwegian for "Oy Vey"). As I am sort of planning a possible move in the "off season", I'm now having even more reservations about driving them.
First part of the problem is the lack of people who will be long haul truckers. The companies need to fill those seats. Second part is not training drivers (road signs, weather conditions, etc.) Many stories of drivers on mountain passes wearing shorts and flip flops. Not the right clothing for installing tire chains. Third part is foreign born drivers having little, or no, respect for our laws, customs, unwritten etiquette, and safety practices. They don't seem to believe they need to learn.
Tangentially connected -
Back when I worked offshore, we used to have mandatory fire and water safety training every two years. One time, there was a group of drilling company office workers. The drilling company wanted them to see firsthand the always difficult, and often dangerous, conditions on a working drilling rig. I thought this was a great idea, particularly because several of them didn't qualify to go offshore.
Problem is not just Mexican truck drivers and not just winter weather. Plenty of problems in Canada now that Sikhs have taken over their trucking. Usual ethnic nepotism and tribalism, poor driving records, under-the-table sales, etc. Same way that a Mexican driving a non-road worthy vehicle passes inspection in Texas - cousin/amigo who gives him his sticker. No such thing as magic dirt or magic papers - people bringi their culture and business practices with them wherever they go and regardless of what 'citizenship' they claim to hold.
Don't put it all on the Mexican cousins. Early eighties I worked at the Climax mine north of Leadville Colorado. (Leadville, halfway between Climax and Balltown). We got a load of pine oil out of Alabama, used as a frothing agent. The driver, a good old boy, cussing a blue streak, told us he would never accept a load to Colorado again. Seems it started snowing about the time he hit the state line, without snow tires. Didn't have antifreeze in the radiator so started boiling over at about eight thousand feet. Took him two days to reach the mine at eleven thousand feet altitude.. Everyone had a good laugh except him. Had it been me, I would have parked the rig, called the boss to tell him where it was then hitchhiked home
I agree with WSF.
When NAFTA was first proposed Ross Perot warned us of the giant sucking sound we would hear as jobs and dollars flowed south into Mexico. What he DIDN'T say was that NAFTA was a two way pipeline with stupidity, ignorance, incompetence and crime flowing north.
During my time in the class 8 industry, I helped people that did not know to drain the air tanks or check the engine oil, people that used their children as translators, etc..... These are people that should be given the label of steering wheel holders instead of drivers. And I had a lot of drivers that had been moving product for a lot of years tell me worse stories.
Iowa born and raised, I learned how to drive on ice and snow before I got my first license. My last job was delivering propane to houses in rural areas. The younger drivers couldn't drive a standard transmission, had no clue what tire chains were, and didn't own winter clothes. Out of a small fleet of five trucks, we lost one every winter to driver error.
How many of you didn't know what cmv means, and now know more that you wanted to about cytomegalovirus?
Similar in Australia. Huge chunks of the trucking industry here only employ Indians, and the skill levels are generally poor.
Didn't Ross Perot warn us about this long ago?
Inclement weather may increase the incidence of at fault accidents, but it isn't just the weather.
Look at it this way; inclement weather more readily exposes the underlying poor ability. A friend who had been an instructor of commercial drivers and accident investigator bares this out. The number one reason why he got out of the business was the onslaught of foreigners. He couldn't take it anymore. The absurdly inferior skill level, and the inability to improve in spite of the extraordinary amount of training they received seems implausible to a reasonable mind. It has to be cultural, an entire country can't be retards, right?
When I travel I-40 between AZ/NM border and points west, it is usual to see accidents in the making, or have already occurred. The legions of drivers from India are often at fault. Look for the small black bag hanging from the left side mirror. Or, some hindi god painted on the cab. Stay far away.
In context, I reckoned commercial motor vehicle.
I'm a 30 year truck driver. It is federal law that anyone issued a commercial license MUST be able to read and communicate in English. Anyone who cannot do so needs to have their CDL yanked on the spot. But since when does the law matter any more?
I doubt that most drivers from the southwest US would do any better.
I looked into it after getting out of the army over 20 years ago. It didn't make financial sense back then unless you do cross country with multiple hazmat and other endorsements and owned your own rig, kind of like getting into commercial farming from scratch.
More reasons for returning the movement of freight to the safety of the rails.
Can you say East Palestine? The rails are as bad or far worse. Rule #1 in effect on all roads and highways.
I'm willing to bet if they paid more money, they wouldn't have such a problem hiring native born Americans. Of course, H1B is like 2/3 the cost so .....
Tangential comment
It isn't always foreigners or limited to CMVs.
I learned to drive in Idaho, including a session with dad on an iced over parking lot when the store was closed. Learned to stop, start, initiate and recover from a skid and the importance of leaving extra following distance.
Fast forward to college also in Idaho. I lived off campus but within walking distance. When I crossed the main lower campus parking lot in winter, I almost always heard the inevitable whirr of tires spinning at high speed and getting nowhere. Being a helpful type, I'd detour to help out the poor idiot stuck in a parking space. I'd politely admonish the driver to NOT spin the tires and slowly back out while I pushed. Inevitably the cars had California plates. It became a standing joke among the "native" students.
As I understand it , American driving exams are ridiculously easy by European standards. Perhaps you should try toughening them up?
Physics, dear boy.
Newton's First and Second law apply. Your vehicle, and every part of it, will continue to move in a straight line, at a constant velocity unless some force that you control, or on ice, you have no control over, acts on the vehicle. Think of curling, the sport. So on ice try not to accelerate or brake and try not to turn that steering wheel more than a few milliradians per second.
Then there is the relationship between the vehicle mass, (weight,) velocity (speed) and kinetic energy (momentum). Momentum, kinetic energy, increases with the square of your speed - double your speed and your momentum increases four times. Meaning that those few square inches of tyre rubber in contact with the ice are having to work four times harder - or try to. Sometimes momentum is your friend. As when you are descending, on a straight road leading to an ascending road, and there is no eedjit in front of you and you know that there is nothing coming in the opposite direction, or about to pull out of a side road. Then you can accelerate (see caveat above) down and gently power up the ascending road. When this works out, it is a great feeling.
And of course, gravity which is only important if you are climbing or descending a gradient, or if the road surface has a side to side gradient - camber, bank, etc. Gravity is not affected by temperature. It will pull you, or that load that was behind you, forward, back or off to one side, in front of the oncoming vehicle,
Remember the only force you, the driver, has any control over is the friction between those few square inches of tire (tyre) rubber and the ice. Approximately zero. So allow yourself the braking distance of an oil tanker ship, enter every unbanked corner at a crawl, consider that that vehicle approaching might suddenly be approaching sideways.
And, until proved otherwise, know that every other bampot on the road is out to kill you.
Apart from all of that it is a piece of piss.
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