Trucks: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Music] moving on our main story tonight concerns trucks everybody loves them from kids who like the fact they go hog hog to produce ourselves reality shows so it seems cannot get enough of trucks and their drivers across america giant trucks with cargos worth millions vanish into thin air big rig bounty hunters there's no better way to learn this job than actually doing it through all new shipping wars a new series world's toughest trucker all new series mud mountain haulers new series ice road truckers begin sunday june 17th at 10. wow apparently people like their reality trucker shows the same way i like my coffee full of ice and intense enough to make me myself but trucks are not just a staple of reality tv they're a vital part of our economy carrying 70 of the tonnage that moves around america and the drivers involved know just how much this country relies on them if these trucks would sit shut down for one week this country would be in three days three days three days this country would be then shut the country down there's nothing you eat wear drink drive doesn't move on a truck right it's pretty upsetting to realize that without trucks after just a week three days sorry three days three days every produce department in america will go from fully stocked market to all-you-can-eat raccoon buffet so it's no wonder trucking is a huge industry with more than three and a half million people in america working as drivers from port truckers who bring goods off ships to rail yards and warehouses to long-haul truckers who move them across the country to last mile drivers who take care of local delivery and yet you've probably heard recently the whole industry is facing a massive problem all right we're going to turn now to a nationwide shortage of truck drivers major truck driver shortage straining the already stretched chain and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight empty store shelves signal a supply chain in crisis exacerbated by a shortage of truck drivers yeah that doesn't sound good does it the only time i'm actively rooting for a supply chain crisis is whenever a container ship gets stuck in the suez canal i don't care if the entire global economy collapses i just love to see that big rectangle stuck the point is trucking companies have been quick to claim they're suffering a shortage of drivers they've been saying that for a while now but the truth is their actual problem is less a problem of driver shortage and more of driver retention because hundreds of thousands of people become truck drivers every year but hundreds of thousands also quit job turnover for truckers averages over a hundred percent and at some companies it's as high as 300 meaning they're hiring three people for a single job over the course of a year and when a field this important has a level of job satisfaction that low it sure seems like there is a huge problem so tonight let's examine the trucking industry how drivers make a living how they often don't and how companies benefit from the whole miserable system and the first thing to know is it wasn't always like this in the 1970s truck driving was a solid middle-class profession with trucker culture even becoming trendy through songs like convoy movies like every which way but loose and tv shows like bj and the bear about a trucker and his chimpanzee friend and you're thinking that show sounds weird you don't know the half of it bj was a happy-go-lucky trucker who would haul anything for a price you are the guy aren't you the guy holds anything anywhere for a buck and a half a mile no questions asked but this time his cargo was 11 young women escaping from a white slavery gang roadblocks mean nothing to bj mckay and xpow xpown helicopter pilot from vietnam claude aikens and penny pfeiser star pj and the bear next wednesday at 9 8 central and mountain yes the true golden age of television right there this whole medium peaked in 1979 and we will never see the mountain top again that promo started started with a driver living with a chimpanzee and it escalated so fast casey kasem didn't have time to mention the chimp where did it come from was the chimp also in vietnam why is it called bear who cares there's no time it seems we're shooting guns from helicopters at other helicopters now those details are just going to have to wait every year the emmy should release a statement saying all awards go to bj and the bear again try harder next year tv but the truth is truck driving was genuinely a decent job but that began to change in 1980 when jimmy carter signed the motor carrier act deregulating the market in an attempt to lower prices for consumers that set off a race to the bottom in cutting wages among trucking companies and 40 years later the base compensation for long-haul truck drivers is estimated to be down 50 in real terms and there are three key problems with the way the industry is currently set up that we're going to look at tonight the first is how they are paid because most long-haul drivers are paid by the mile not by the hour raising obvious questions like well what about when trucks are waiting to load unload and reload do they really not get paid for that and for the most part they don't this is a huge sticking point for truck drivers if you ever go on trucker youtube or tick tock which you absolutely should you will see a lot of videos like these why do we have to sit in a dock for three hours or three and a half hours up to this point i've been in the shipper now for 19 hours no other not many other jobs where you can just be on the job and not get paid sitting over there judging me but i don't have a reload we can't move it's not me it's not me it's this bad i can't help with the dispatcher's slowest well you just call and tell him i ain't go you ain't i don't give a damn if you ain't got no thumbs you call and tell him yeah it's a major problem the waiting time that is not the fact that dogs don't have thumbs and can't use a phone that is probably a good thing because if they could do that they would literally never stop texting you like i just saw a squirrel and miss you love you just saw the squirrel again and while this isn't a new problem long waits at loading docks have actually jumped significantly in recent years and if you are paid per mile and lose half your work day waiting you are incentivized to try and make up for that time once you're on the road which does make sense doesn't it if i only got paid per joke about 80 and t i try and cram in as many at t jokes as possible i'd be dropping them like at t drops calls because the more johnny burns the more johnny earns but this can be a real safety problem for all of us 5 000 people each year are killed in crashes involving large trucks now the government has tried to address safety concerns by mandating brakes and limiting the number of hours truckers can be on the road they even require electronic monitoring devices like this one that log when the truck is moving to ensure compliance but many drivers find that frustrating in a different way because it limits their agency over how and when they can drive we're not computers we don't have an off button the thing this does do is it forces you to get up and go if you're tired it forces you to get up and go if you don't feel good and it's not about running 24 hours a day it's about making a common sense decision on how you feel how the road conditions are whether or not you want to run through rush hour etc etc etc look there are some jobs you can absolutely do if you don't feel good like this one for instance i feel like all the time look at me but it doesn't really matter does it because this desk isn't moving towards you at 80 miles an hour so the consequences of my poor job performance are not likely to kill anyone and when these rigid rules bump up against unpredictable work hours drivers are put in an impossible position take this driver whose company made him take his 10-hour break during the day when he couldn't sleep and then found himself driving exhausted at night and when he called his dispatcher to say that he felt unsafe to drive just watch how badly the call went hey man we got a bit of a problem dude i'm starting to fall asleep going down the road here but get a load of this the k b dispatchers instead of telling him to just get some rest hot potato ape from one dispatcher to another each of them with the same advice get some coffee and then let's because we don't have it we don't have a choice on this coffee walk around the truck do something i already did that earlier man let's get out and get some fresh air 10 degrees outside yeah that'll wake you right up right i'm telling you i'm not safe to drive at the moment here's the deal we don't have a choice on this that's not how we work wow i don't need that this morning that is a hell of a statement get out of here with that dramatic until at least 1pm it's like the mug says don't confront me with the potentially lethal consequences of my reckless decision-making until after i've had my coffee so drivers end up getting squeezed between regulations and the companies that they drive for and at no point in the process are their own feelings or needs taken into account and that is not the only way that they get squeezed here because the second exploitative quirk of this industry concerns the relationship between drivers and trucking companies many carriers classify drivers not as employees but as independent contractors and while there are some to whom that label truly applies those who genuinely have the freedom to choose between different loads and haul for whomever they want the fact is many companies misclassified drivers as independent who work exclusively for them and whose day-to-day lives they fundamentally control and there are obvious reasons for companies to do this as this trucker explains i am not classified as an employee i am classified as an independent contractor but i have very very little control over the success or failure of my company despite his so-called independence pryor works exclusively for shippers which dulls out his daily routes he's seen his paychecks dwindle and has none of the protections he would get as an employee as long as we're independent contractors they don't have to cover benefits they don't have to cover sick days bereavement leave time holiday pay it just saves the the company money yeah of course this is attractive for companies they don't even have to give you time off when a family member dies so unless your nana's wake is being held in front of the diesel pump at a wawa you're probably not going to be able to attend and it actually exempts them from even more than what he just said there because it also allows companies to avoid paying payroll taxes workers comp and unemployment insurance as well as the minimum wage and if that wasn't enough being an independent contractor means all the costs and risks of truck ownership get pushed onto the driver just watch as this former trucker explains exactly what was left of her household earnings once she and her husband had accounted for all their costs we made and fifty thousand dollars right in a year that sounds great right that's like good money we paid a hundred thousand dollars in fuel okay so right there i no i made fifty thousand dollars but i didn't really because you know you get an oil change every month so it's 300 a month you you still have to do all the maintenance we had a motor blowout right 13 000 right i know i mean i choke up a little just thinking about it because it was and it was 13 000 and we were off work for two weeks so by the end of the year with that 150 000 by the end of the year we made about 20 about 22 000 yeah and look i am no cpa despite the face glasses and insatiable horniness for numbers that strongly implies otherwise but that seems like a pretty shitty bottom line and while most of the drivers that you've seen so far tonight have been in long haul this independent contractor problem also very much applies to those at either end of the shipping process too like port truckers where one study estimated two-thirds of them are misclassified and also last mile drivers those are the people who drive box trucks or sprinter vans to deliver stuff directly to your door you know how you see fedex ground trucks those aren't actually fedex employees despite every visual indication to the country they may wear a fedex uniform their truck may say fedex on it and they may exclusively deliver packages for fedex but they are technically independent if you look carefully at the side of their trucks you will see small fine print indicating who actually owns it and it's not fedex amazon uses a similar model with its delivery service partners and again the appeal for amazon is obvious using drivers that aren't direct employees allows them to distance themselves from liability when things go wrong which they do particularly given the ridiculous pace that amazon expects you've probably heard all of the stories about drivers having to urinate into bottles because they didn't have time to stop that speaks to the relentless pressure to deliver hundreds of packages per shift people are busting their ass driving way over the speed limit people are running through stop signs running through yellow lights everybody i knew was buckling their seat belt behind their backs because the time it took just to buckle your seat belt and buckle your seatbelt every time was enough time to get you behind schedule yeah that's not good is it i thought that everyone knew the only place it's absolutely fine not to have a seat belt is for some reason a school bus that is where we collectively agreed to skimp on them as a society the kids will be fine we'll put a little stop sign on the outside they'll be fine and if you think that non-stop pressure seems like an accident waiting to happen it already has investigations by propublica and buzzfeed found that in a four-year window drivers delivering amazon packages to be involved in more than 60 crashes that led to serious injuries including 13 deaths or that's more commonly known at bezos's dozen but again amazon is basically off the hook here because these drivers are not their employees they're independent contractors meaning that the contractor is responsible for anything that goes wrong not them in fact under amazon's contracts they're even reportedly responsible for paying amazon's legal bills in the event of a lawsuit which you know what is actually only fair it's not like jeff bezos can afford to pay all those lawyers he's spending his money on things that truly benefit society like launching himself into space before disappointing everyone and coming back home safely and amazingly i've got one more exploitative quirk of this industry to show you and it's something called lease purchase agreements this is a system where drivers who cannot afford their own truck offer the chance to lease one from the company they drive for with the promise that they'll earn enough to eventually pay it off and own it here is one company giving you the hard sell own your future with western express find your true potential and earning power with truck ownership western's lease purchase program is like no other there's no money down no credit check and no balloon payments at western express we deliver independence one driver at a time okay for what it's worth i am immediately suspicious of phrases like own your future and find your true potential companies with selling points like that typically leave you with nothing but debt and a closet full of leggings designed to turn your crotch into a magic eye poster and the fact is drivers who participate in lease to own agreements almost never succeed one truckee company executive even estimated that of all the drivers entering into their lease purchase program only around five to ten percent actually ended up successfully taking ownership of the truck so the odds are heavily against you and as for the whole delivering independence part that is the real irony here if you are leasing a truck from the company you work for you are now tethered to them you are reliant on them to give you loads to earn money which you are then paying back to them to pay off your lease on top of all the other expenses they can throw at you this has been a common problem for both long-haul and port truckers it takes drivers until each week they get paid each week and it could take them until wednesday or even thursday before they even begin to make a hundred dollars and the reason for that is because the company charges them to use the company truck they charge them to maintain the company truck to buy new tires they even charge these guys to park the company truck at the company yard overnight they don't they can't even take it home oh it gets worse in one case a company even charged contractors for using company toilet paper all of which can lead a driver to actually owe their company money at the end of a work week can you imagine picking up your paycheck and finding an envelope full of negative five dollar bills you'd be absolutely furious and yes that is john wilkes booth on the negative five which makes sense he cancels out a lincoln you know just like how aaron burr is on the negative 10 and the negative 100 features the 72-ounce steak ben franklin choked on while trying to win a t-shirt learn your history so drivers are basically stuck here if they stay with the company they can end up scraping to get by but if they leave they risk losing the truck they've poured so much into us most lease to own agreements stipulate if the driver leaves the company it can take back the truck leaving the driver with nothing it is frankly no surprise multiple trucking companies have settled over accusations brought by drivers who found their lease to own agreements predatory in fact western express the own your future company is currently awaiting court sign off of a 15 million dollar class action settlement right now and i know at least one person who might be happy to hear that because just watch this former western express driver talking about how she felt how she felt misled after opening a paycheck that came to after all the company's deductions just 293 dollars i'm pissed the off if i had the strength to pick this truck up and throw it straight to mars i would don't listen to those recruiters because i'm telling you they lying least purchase here is a lie yeah and it is probably a good thing that people aren't strong enough to hurl a semi truck to mars because if they were nasa would probably have to plan their rover missions around the constant rain of 35 000 pound debt traps so what can we do here well first we should probably recognize that we have all gotten used to the idea of free next day shipping but crucially someone somewhere always pays the price second the work arrangements that drivers endure and the fundamental lack of value placed on their time clearly needs to be addressed and the good news is the departments of transportation and labor are set to examine the type of predatory truck leasing arrangements that we just talked about they also plan to study the issue of driver pay and unpaid waiting times and hopefully they won't just study it but actually also do something about it because the key way to stop this so-called shortage of drivers that we've actually had for years now is to make this a job that people actually want to stay in and until we make big changes here the very least we can do is make our trucking reality shows a little more reflective of what life on the road for so many drivers is actually like trucks the lifeblood of america they flow across our highways driven by people tough enough to do one of the grittiest jobs on earth there's a lot of ways you can die out here all right baby we're gonna get there from the makers of ice road truckers and world's toughest truckers comes the realest reality show yet each week watch the best drivers go up against the biggest dodge navigating tough weather bumpy roads and hardcore budgeting 14 grand for the engine fuel oil change don't forget the new tires right god oh yeah these old road dogs have diesel in their blood and they're living the american dream yeah it's kind of like being a cowboy i'm independent so i got my freedom i just got to haul what my company tells me where they tell me during the hours that they specify in a truck that i pay for and do not own but on the plus side there's no slowing down for these road warriors because in the freight industry every minute counts except during loading and unloading dang it come on because those hours are not compensated is this your card yes this show brings you all the thrills that's pissed that's my own piss all the drama is this a charge for company toilet paper a man needs to wipe and all the romance of life on the road i miss my wife the action literally never stops hey dispatch i'm not safe to drive right now i'm falling asleep roger that driver why don't you pull over lie down in the back curl up and yourself right in the face because i deal with that baby over well i'm just worried that someone could get hurt oh somebody could get hurt i didn't realize i was talking to a drama queen hey tony get a load of hamlet over here [Applause] to drive or not to drive that is the question am i right yeah whether tis nobody in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against the sea of troubles and my opponent and them that's you that's what you sound like you guys seem to both know a lot of hamlet verbatim get back on the road hell yeah get ready for 100 excitement 100 adrenaline and 100 well no i didn't bring a coat oh and it's not just truckers this show brings you everyone from the drivers to the company owners owners is a pretty strong term and we have much more casual relationship with our trucks no labels i mean why why complicate things i'm having fun you're having fun this paycheck says i owe you money is that right booyah yeah do you have the cash tune into the show that brings you as close as you can get to the trucker life without actually being one okay so yeah neither one of us go to the dentist anymore and you bring your own toilet paper to work yeah i just ordered a new pack from amazon you what [Music] coming to the history channel for some reason you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 5,970,123

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Id: phieTCxQRLA

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Truckngirl63]

He made some excellent points. He covered topics not usually touched upon. The little skit at the end was pretty funny. Not that it will do anything to improve overall conditions...but here's to raising awareness!

[u/adventure_dog]

11 minutes in gets into the earnings and expenses of 1 independent operator.

15 min. he touches on lease purchase

ended up watching the whole video, no clue why this is being mass reported. he touches on everything we all bitch about.

[u/BellyUpBernie]

Honestly a decent segment. I enjoyed the skit.

[u/ear_cheese]

This was a great summary of most of the issues we face. I know I had many conversations with my dispatcher where I said, “the routes you have me on tomorrow are not legal. They will take me over my drive time.”

Complete with google map routing showing the fastest route possible (not truck friendly/legal) coming in at over 11 hours.

“Well we need this done…” “So you want me to go over my hours?” “OH NO, I WOULD NEVER ASK YOU TO DO THAT!

….yeah

[u/Scrapalicious]

So back in bj and the bear days he was getting 1.50 a mile ...6.18 in today's money

[u/Songgeek]

I’m glad he hit the lease purchase stuff. It’s a pure scam. It’s one thing if companies bought the trucks and were selling them directly, but they don’t. They lease the trucks and you pay some 3rd party company they own, who pays the manufacture who holds the title. But you get trapped into the company by the lease and the freedom to get loads you want that they put in the lease.. is basically their way of saying we have you the right but we’ll never approve it.

[u/color_shot]

Yo I just want 2 days off a week while making a similar paycheck.

[u/I_will_recycle_this]

This is extremely good publicity/exposure for us. Thanks for sharing.

[u/Mike18Wheels]

Homerun!