Mark Batty Publisher

Truckers and Texts

September 28, 2009

Truckers, who schlep the vast majority of the goods we come into contact with from the end of the world and back again, are under constantly increasing pressure to get their loads where they need to go in as little time as possible. The industry has become so precisely controlled, as a result of legislative measures and economic structures, that today’s truckers look more like overworked assembly-line workers than wandering mavericks cruising the open road while jabbering on the CB. With so much pressure and control, any advance in technology that might cut down on stops and increase efficiency by a couple of minutes – whether it’s a make-shift Gatorade-bottle urinal or an onboard computer – is seized upon and put into use, often with ambiguous results.

The New York Times has published an article on an example of what happens when the demands of the industry collide with the public’s desire for safety, centered on the modern problem of drivers who text while behind the wheel. Congress is working on legislation that would cut off federal money to states that allow drivers to text while on the road, which has some people within the trucking industry worried that the legislation will be taken to apply to the onboard computers that are now commonplace in trucks. The industry’s fear is one driven by economics: if it takes 15 minutes for a driver to pull over, access his messages and respond to them, and he has to do that four times a day, then he loses an hour’s worth of driving time daily. And, since the number of hours a trucker can work per day are themselves regulated, the new anti-texting regulation, if enforced, would take quite a bite out of the efficiency of the nation’s trucking fleet. But it’s been shown that drivers who use the onboard computers more likely to crash than those who do not, so there is some justification for the new laws.

This back and forth between safety legislation and economics is nothing new to trucking. The debate over texting will take place against the backdrop of consolidation within the industry, decline in independent owner-operators and arrival of Mexican and Canadian drivers onto American roadways. Images and info on all these changes make up the recent MBP book Truckers, by Mary Richardson. As Truckers notes, the computers that will or will not be banned in the coming months can be seen as something of a symbol for the direction that the trucking industry is headed: most often used in company trucks to feed data about a driver’s performance – his driving speed, his location, the length of his breaks – back to a corporate headquarters, and to relay commands about where to pick up, drop off and get fuel, they are as much about control as they are about efficiency.

For the people who are most subject to the forces that shape trucking – truckers themselves – navigating corporate demands can be as grueling as driving through LA freeways. And, if the industry past related in Truckers is any guide, it is safe to assume that onboard computers, and the way they dictate what truckers do, are here to stay.

–JCD

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