Biggest Frustrations

Hi, I'm curious to get everyone's biggest likes and common frustrations about what they do? And what you do, for context? (i.e., driver for small fleet, big fleet, owner/operator, fleet manager , spouse at home managing things, Terminal manager - whatever it is you do in the industry)

Feel free to share whatever it is – weigh stations, transponders, routing, FMCSA , questionable carriers, all of it!

What's the purpose of these questions?

Biggest frustration, 4 wheelers.

I am working on improving tools that a large number of trucks/fleets use in the industry. What those tools are, is irrelevant - but there's no better way to improve these tools than asking those who use them. It helps me to make something that works better for you (and, in this case, will lead to safer highways and more efficient trips)

One of my biggest frustrations is people who are complete outsiders to trucking writing articles about trucking. They are everywhere. It's so obvious after just reading the first few sentences. I'm guessing they are people trying to work at home writing content for websites. They are so terribly informed that it's embarrassing to read what they produce.

I fear you may be another link in this never ending chain of people who think they can solve the truck driver's problems. Haha! You don't know truck drivers! As soon as you've improved whatever irrelevant tools you are working on, we will have developed another hundred or more problems we don't like about our job.

Give us a job to do and we will make it happen. Give us a minute or two to start thinking and we will come up with several complaints. We're truck drivers - that's what we do.

My biggest frustration besides 4 wheelers is the lack of training and what appears to be basic common sense exhibited by today's generation of "truckers". The frequency of wtf moments out here nowadays is plain crazy!

OMG! RedGator, how are you?

It's great to see you in here again. How have you been? Please, give us a rundown on what's been happening with you.

Okay, I just saw your other post telling us about yourself. Man, it's great to hear from you!

I am working on improving tools that a large number of trucks/fleets use in the industry. What those tools are, is irrelevant - but there's no better way to improve these tools than asking those who use them. It helps me to make something that works better for you (and, in this case, will lead to safer highways and more efficient trips)

Those tools would actually be very relevant. Some examples of "tools" that well intended but nevertheless extremely harmful individuals and groups outside the industry created would be:

mandating that we only have 14 hours in which to drive 11 hours. Furthermore that 14 hour clock can only be paused once a day in special circumstances. As well as our 70 hour clock. And of course mandatory 10 hours of off duty time, preventing us from getting naturally occurring sleep when we are tired.

Another would be limiting the speed of our trucks, disabling manual mode on automated transmissions, lane departure software, attempting to design and implement driverless trucks.

How bout crash mitigation systems, inherently flawed, unsafe and an unreasonable burden. They often trigger over many non traffic items that cause whiplash, PTSD from unexpected traumatic breaking, unsafe maneuvering and loss of control of our vehicles.

Another would be closing rest areas, limiting and reducing/removing parking areas, no idling laws,

Yet another would be DEF systems, and their mandatory use.

Electric trucks, mandatory emissions controls, attempting to phase out ICE platforms

The implementation of lower speed limits for trucks in the communist controlled states of WA, CA and OR.

Mandatory ELD devices that are inherently faulty and strip us of the power to edit our drive lines.

The list could go on for miles. The point is that those outside the industry, that are not drivers, do not understand that their lives would cease to exist as they know it if we drivers decided not to go to work for a few days. You are dependent on us, for everything you consume, touch and discard.

Yet, we drivers keep doing it day after day in spite of the litany of insane regulations, devices, technology, absurd and irrational behavior from consumers and government alike towards us. Always they describe it as a new "tool", for our own good of course.

One of my biggest frustrations is people who are complete outsiders to trucking writing articles about trucking. They are everywhere. It's so obvious after just reading the first few sentences. I'm guessing they are people trying to work at home writing content for websites. They are so terribly informed that it's embarrassing to read what they produce.

I agree, and it's about to get much worse with AI. I've been using AI as an assistant for everything I do, from writing emails to writing computer code. After using it for a while, I can almost instantly recognize articles written by AI.

Everything AI writes is rather neutral. It always gives you things to consider on both sides of the equation and leaves you feeling like you have more questions than answers. Everything is like a broad overview of a topic. The scary part is that AI is wrong sometimes. Confidently wrong. It will give you completely false answers with supreme confidence and back them with what appears to be rock-solid logic.

When I started this website in '06, a ton of people built websites on topics they knew little about because advertising was how you made money. It didn't matter if you knew what you were talking about as long as you had a lot of traffic. Traffic equaled money. So reverse-engineering Google's algorithm was all that mattered.

Then, two things happened; the advertising model went almost to zero, and google became more sophisticated and could weed out most of the weaker players who didn't have excellent knowledge of the topic. That helped, but Google's weakness remains its focus on incoming links. If a website gets a lot of incoming links, it will normally get a lot of traffic. So link building became the big thing. Write a bunch of useless articles and then spam thousands of website owners begging for links. I get 3 - 5 requests for links every day.

Now, with AI, you see a massive resurgence in articles written by people who know nothing about a topic. Websites like this one will remain extremely valuable because AI has no first-hand experience with anything. Getting advice from an experienced professional will be hard to come by once again.