This was stunning.
Truck drivers are often romanticized as the last real American cowboys, if you will. We have this vision of them out on the open road, rolling along some highway somewhere with many miles to go, and people relying on them for the goods that they are transporting. I have heard plenty of people also talking about how trucking is good money, too. But this video kind of wakes you up to the realities of it all. It might indeed seem like good money, and perhaps even is at first glance. But take a closer look, and you will see that, too often, truckers are the victims of corporate scams, for all intents and purposes.
In many cases, truckers are paid by the mile. That means that time where they are waiting for their trucks to either be loaded or unloaded is time unpaid. It also suggests that time stuck in bad traffic jams, with maximum stress involved, also amounts to time largely unpaid. Then, there is the leasing scam, which typically for this country, amounts to the hidden de facto exploitation in small print hidden underneath the screaming headlines advertising the freedom of being independent, skilled truck drivers.
Now, while I had heard some of these horrors about how truck drivers are pushed to drive on the road for far too many hours - well beyond reason - the specifics of it all had largely eluded me. In this incredibly fascinating journalistic piece by John Oliver and his team in this past weekend's show, you see this problem dissected like I had never seen before. There are all sorts of problems with the trucking industry in the United States, but before watching this program, it dawned on me that I likely not only did not know the half of it, but probably did not know the quarter of it.
Watch this video, and see if it does not open your eyes to the trucking industry here in the United States, as it did for me.
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