… driving 16 hours straight, with only water and a bag of chips in the cab before resting at a pit stop.
No amount of training will “fix” the working conditions these drivers have to face.
The paper cited an aging workforce, demand for higher pay and difficulty attracting youth and women to the profession as the main reasons for the shortage.
“Difficulty attracting” and “demand for higher pay” are linked. Add in the horrific work conditions and there’s no wonder the industry has a problem! They caused it!!
The most recent failed response to poorly trained drivers was tripling the tuition cost without offering any subsidies to help pay for it… And companies used it as an excuse to stop covering even the amount for training they used to.
My uneducated guess would be to train them more and with better training.
Training needs to start earlier, when they’re kids. Topics should include road rage and how to prevent it and the value and importance of vaccinations.
We have rushed training because of a shortage. We have a shortage because trucking companies don’t wanna pay their workers enough for the work involved. When you get paid peanuts to work with constant pressure to deliver, it’s no surprise that drivers on their way to getting experience leave when a better opportunity arises, which leaves an opening filled by someone with no experience again.
Have a unionized standard hourly rate like we used to when trucking was a job one could sustain a life and raiseafamily on, or the federal government should help jumpstart trucking co-ops. Or just re-nationalize CN and get a comprehensive freight network back to replace trucks.
The paper cited an aging workforce, demand for higher pay and difficulty attracting youth and women to the profession as the main reasons for the shortage.
There you go.
I agree on all points you made. Especially the need for Canada to get its shit together and get rail back in play for long distance freight. No reason to use 53’ for everything.
I would even go as far as mandate if freight travels farther then a set distance rail is mandatory. Maybe 80km from a distribution hub?
Rail should be for long distance, with products coming to distribution hubs within towns/cities by rail. Then shipping for last mile delivery should be on smaller 10’-15’ truck or a 9’ cargo van for anything within city limits.
And take the opportunity to electrify the rail network while we’re at it.
Even last-mile 53’ TL and LTL make for more appealing trucking jobs in terms of work-life balance. The way freight shipping has “optimized” itself on all modes (rail, road, air, marine) has screwed over labourers AND customers, in the name of reduced expenses and more profit.
All those problems are not unique to the trucking industry.
Capitalist enshittification is the real problem.
It’s a new arms race … we need to pair them all up with equally less trained civilian drivers … because corporate controlled transport companies enjoy cheap truck operators that can deliver goods with little pay and maximize profits … in a few decades our highways will look like this (but with more snow) …
“Decades”, “More snow”
True … I’m in northern Ontario and I think we’ll be seeing more ash falling like snow in the coming decades
Instead of training the drivers, put the goods on trains.
Enforcement.
Unfortunately, that costs money, and governments don’t want to spend money, so they’ll look for “innovative solutions” instead of just fucking doing the job.
Speaking of trucks, speed limiters should be mandatory on all trucks of a certain size and larger. Max speed should be 80-85 kph.
No reason a 53 footer should be traveling down a inner city highway at 120-140/kph trying to pass cars or other trucks.
Where in Canada do you live? In Ontario and Quebec trucks need a speed limiter of 105km/h or 65mph. BC also recently implemented this rule.
Many impatient drivers have whined that they can’t go fast behind a truck going 105km/h passing another going 103km/h.
I believe I have heard about the rule being implemented recently within BC. Which is great!
Myself I am located in Ontario, but seeing first hand on highways I don’t believe trucks have any limiters on them here. They pretty much drive in all lanes as well weaving in and out all over the place.
Many times I am pushing on average 110-115km/h down the Hwys here (such as the 401) and a 53 footer barrels past me at around 120-130km/h
Not sure about others, but I for sure don’t feel safe, let alone thinking about my kids on the same hwy. No reason so much weight should be traveling at such high speeds.
Being limited in speed doesn’t preclude trucks from using all the lanes and weaving in and out. Also a truck can go slightly faster on a downhill even if the speed limiter shuts off the throttle.
That said I know of a couple instances where for sure I know the truck didn’t have a limiter on when they should have. One was a Heinz truck a couple years ago, on the 401 east of Cobourg, ON. They passed me at around 125km/h. 30 minutes later I saw them on the road shoulder either broken down or pulled over by police. Trucks with disabled speedlimiters are the exception rather than the norm in my driving experience.
If you’re doing 115km/h it would absolutely not be safer to have the trucks maxed out at 30km/h slower than you. Arguably the safest speed on a divided highway is whatever the flow of traffic is (to minimize passing and lane changing).
Hopefully someone from one of the european countries can chime in on this.
From my own experience driving in Europe in areas like Spain and Germany larger trucks are limited to 80km/h Max and cannot pass each other on hwys. Unless its a very specific section and especially not on uphill sections at all.
From what I seen as well is when one truck trys to pass another the truck being passed drops speed to allow the overtake to happen as quickly as possible allowing the truck to merge back into the far right lane.
Though trucking is alot more regulated in the EU in terms of size and length of trucks and trailers, as well as safety and speed.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Twenty years ago, you’d find trucker Jacques Picotte pushing his limits — driving 16 hours straight, with only water and a bag of chips in the cab before resting at a pit stop.
It recommended better and more consistent training at truck driving schools across Canada, the adoption of a graduated licensing system, and increased use of telematics — technology such as electronic logging devices — that collect valuable data on drivers’ behaviour or performance on the road.
Those minimum standards were established in response to the 2018 Humboldt Broncos crash, where a collision between the junior hockey team’s bus and a semi-trailer killed 16 people.
One of MELT’s weaknesses is that it’s implemented provincially — but truck drivers typically travel across the country and even the continent, said Alexander Crizzle, associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
Geoff Wood, senior vice-president of policy at the Canadian Trucking Alliance, said many of the report’s recommendations are being implemented to varying degrees in the country, while broadly agreeing with its overall call to action.
The paper cited an aging workforce, demand for higher pay and difficulty attracting youth and women to the profession as the main reasons for the shortage.
The original article contains 947 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
