Illegal Immigrants In Trucking??

There are very few illegals in trucking. Proof of citizenship is required to get a CDL.

It is next to impossible for immigrants (legal or no) to get a work visa for a truck driving job. Trucking is classified by the U.S. Department of Labor as an "Unskilled Labor" job. Now before you get your panties all in a wad over that, there was considerable thought put into that classification, and they did that to protect your good American truck driver job from having your wages completely decimated by a large influx of foreign drivers.

in re[ply,, I have recently found a visa for internationals to drive in the US with full licence approval, the visa (I wont name the visa type) allows federal authorisation to get a car then a cdl in the space of a week if the driver so wishes. stuart from Australia

So yeah, all this xenophobic "dey terk our jerbs!" BS is pretty much just a bunch of blowhards making noise. If you actually want to look at who terk yer jerbs, look at the labels on your clothing, and the doorframe plate on your truck. See where all your textiles are now being made. See where your vehicles are now being assembled. It ain't in America.

Sorry, but illegals DO take jobs. They may not take many trucking jobs but with more states granting illegals drivers licenses you can bet your azz that they are taking local Class B jobs.

But, hey, we can't complain about that. We can't complain that US citizens are competing against people that shouldn't even be here. Why, that's xenophobic!

Why do they have to be illegal?

There is a program set forth by our wonderful government that allows drivers from Mexico to legally driver here in the US.

For those of you that are going to school with Celadon or work for them. Before I moved on from there, they were moving their yard in Laredo, TX to make room for a school to teach driving. And one of the requirements for an instructor was they had to speak Spanish.

When I still worked there, they put messages out to their long time drivers. For anyone that spoke Spanish to contact either the main office in Indy or the offices in Laredo.

I was told later by a driver that he was offered a job teaching in Laredo.

He turned them down.

And as far as being caught.

There was a story on the news a few weeks ago. A driver was driving thru PA and got off at the wrong exit. He went right thru a town with a weight limit road of 10 tons. He was stopped. He didn't have a CDL. He could hardly speak a word of english. He blamed the wrong turn on his GPS which only spoke english. Which he did not understand.

The load he was carrying was mostly steel pipe for the oil field.

They called a tow truck company to tow the truck to impound. The wrecker that they sent was having a hard time pulling it. The DOT weighed the truck. It weighted out to over 90,000 lbs. The tow company brought in their BIG wrecker.

The driver was fined 17,000 dollars. He tried to call the company he "worked" for but the number had been disconnected as the story went. The driver was put in jail. He was there for 7 days before someone bonded him out. Maybe the family, the story didn't say.

Well he missed his court date and hasn't been seen since last I heard.

Yeah you might get caught. But how many don't?

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own.

The Blue Angel.

I am a citizen of Saturn's 14th moon Enceladus, and Prime hired me.

I am a citizen of Saturn's 14th moon Enceladus, and Prime hired me.

That's because Enceladus is a US territory. Thank God for the US space program

;)

Not trying to be controversial, but here's a couple photos a buddy sent to me of a big truck with a Mexican registration painted on the door driving in Georgia last week. The four wheeler was secured with a chain over the rear axle hooked to the tractor frame. The guy used a tire over the fifth wheel to keep it from wrecking the undercarriage.

Let's just say that law enforcement doesn't see everything out there on the road...

bobtail tractor" title="4-wheel SUV loaded and chained on a bobtail tractor">

A "Mocumentary": A Day Without A Mexican (2004). What happens if all the Mexicans in California disappear?

Well I haven't heard the "paranoid about Mexicans ruining trucking" thing for a while. It's a long-standing tradition in the industry. I've been hearing about it on the CB since '93 and I'm confident it went on long before that. But it's a fair concern, as are all concerns about anything that might hurt the career prospects in any industry. I would say there are other more pressing concerns for the future of trucking.

Lack Of Jobs In Our Economy Today

The decline of blue collar jobs started an influx of potential drivers into the industry over the past few decades. But nowadays it's not just blue collar jobs we're losing. It's jobs at every level. Technology has actually eliminated a lot of jobs that used to pay quite well and nowadays even college graduates are having the hardest time they've ever had finding work. Here's a chart showing unemployment rates amongst college graduates in recent years:

Self-Driving Trucks

If you would have asked me a couple of years ago what the prospects of self-driving trucks were I would have just laughed. Not because we weren't capable of pulling it off, but because the bureaucracy would not have allowed it. But the push for self-driving vehicles is making inroads. States are beginning to approve self-driving cars and trucks won't be far behind. Will the trucks completely drive themselves? No, not anytime soon. But drivers will begin kicking on the "autopilot" along the same lines as pilots do. If you look at wages for professional pilots, it's hard to fathom that truck drivers make more than the overwhelming majority of pilots. True, the pilots at the highest levels make more than truckers, but even those flying regional airlines are often making $25,000-$40,000 per year even with thousands of hours of professional experience and a cabin full of passengers. Simply kicking back and monitoring a self-driving truck obviously isn't going to help the wages for drivers any either.

Delivery Drones

Recently you had the First FAA Approved Drone Delivery Made In The U.S.. This technology was no surprise. We knew drones were here. But the fact that the Federal Government approved this flight shows that even the old-timers running our Government are open to the idea of new technologies doing things in new ways. Just like self-driving trucks, the technology isn't really the biggest hurdle. Bureaucrats are. But as is the case with self-driving cars and trucks it seems the Government is willing to step out of the way and allow these technologies to become viable commercial entities in the near future.

The Expanding Of The Panama Canal

They've nearly completed the expansion of the Panama Canal which will allow much larger ships to carry goods to the East Coast and Gulf Ports. There are a wide array of opinions on how the Panama Canal expansion will affect U.S. trucking industry but it seems that delivering more goods to ports closer to the final destination could reduce overall freight miles and reduce the average length of haul for loaded trucks. This doesn't necessarily mean less trucks on the road or fewer jobs, but it could certainly mean a regionalization of warehouse and factory locations and a shift in the number of Truck Driving Jobs in various sectors of the industry, especially intermodal.

Our Own Trucking Companies Are Keeping Wages Low

So you've heard there's a tremendous demand for drivers, right? Why is that? There are a million theories. But what it boils down to is that trucking companies are keeping wages at the lowest rate which will allow them to recruit the number of drivers they need. If they need more they can raise wages a bit. If they have plenty, they can lower wages a bit. This chart shows just how much truck driving wages have declined in recent years when adjusted for inflation:

So as you can see, truck drivers have plenty to worry about when it comes to the future of jobs and pay in this industry but I really don't believe Mexicans or any other foreigners coming to take those jobs is much of a threat. Bringing in cheap labor from outside of our borders would help keep wages down for sure but the laws make that an extremely difficult proposition. Not only that, but it doesn't solve the myriad of other problems like the increasing congestion on our roadways and the pollution from huge diesel engines. Several of the above proposals do indeed address those concerns though and are far more likely to be a threat in the coming years than an influx of foreigners.

But what it boils down to is that trucking companies are keeping wages at the lowest rate which will allow them to recruit the number of drivers they need. If they need more they can raise wages a bit. If they have plenty, they can lower wages a bit.

This sounds a lot like airline seat pricing!

But what it boils down to is that trucking companies are keeping wages at the lowest rate which will allow them to recruit the number of drivers they need. If they need more they can raise wages a bit. If they have plenty, they can lower wages a bit.

This sounds a lot like airline seat pricing!

Exactly!

People will say, "The trucking industry is having trouble recruiting enough drivers..."

And I complete the sentence with, "....at the wages they're currently paying."

That's the reality of it. Free market wages. If trucking companies were paying $110,000 per year would there be a shortage of drivers? Certainly not. So it's not something you have to overthink. It's purely a matter of keeping wages as low as you can get away with and still be able to keep your trucks rolling. That's not a bad thing, mind you. That's just the free market working the way it should.