Semi Driver Training, Fed Standard

[cannuck]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/new-federal-semi-truck-driver-regulations-to-come-into-effect-in-january-2020-1.4987477

Thanks to the "newly arrived Canadian" who murdered 13 and maimed 16 innocent victims as part of our "open borders" and "politically correct" approach to running Canada, the Feds and Provinces have FINALLY agreed to set some kind of standards for people who drive 30 to 60 tonnes of hardware down our highways.

The upside is that this is long, long overdue.  Further, it is Canada for once operating as a country and not deferring authority to the provinces.  What few people seem to realize is that one of the massive economic advantages the US has over Canada is a very good Interstate highway system - whereas we have essentially one road that is in my places only two lanes wide to move our freight.  While there are differences state-to-state in the US, the "standards" in Canada change dramatically from province to province - and there is only one way around (i.e. use the US Interstates).  We need some kind of federal consistency for driver training, safety certification (more-or-less in place now, but not Federal) and equipment specifications (again, still a bit of a hodge-podge).

The downsides are many.   The already ridiculously greater cost of freight service in Canada (making us uncompetitive with the US) will now increase only here.  We share the highway systems with the USA and Mexico, and drivers holding those licenses will have fewer barriers to entry and the industries South of 49 will have lower costs.  We need INTERNATIONAL standards under the Can/US/Mex trade agreements.   We come close with IRP and IFTA for registration and fuel tax, but still no cigar on standards for equipment and drivers.

Worse yet: it doesn't address the actual problem.  While new drivers are a start, it is the existing drivers on our roads that are still a problem.  Mexico and the US will be somewhere below our standards for new drivers (the demand due to high turnover means there are a LOT of new drivers on the road all of the time).  BUT, on top of that, you can just wander into Canada with another country's driving license (that may be real or forged) and simply drive in Canada!!!!!

One of the leading reasons for this is the ethnicity of the largely criminal organization(s) that have taken over the trucking industry in Canada.  Sidhu was a good example of how this works.   Here was a new driver that had met (possibly) Alberta standards.  Now, to most of us, that means driving test passed due to demonstrated skill.  I have no idea (yet) as to what happened with Sidhu, but it is common knowledge that people from his culture have a habit of doing here what they do at home: bribe an examiner or even put their own examiner into the system to flaunt the intent and standards of the law (and/or regs).  So, here you have a brand new driver from a culture that doesn't take the rule of law seriously at all not starting out his career in a small straight truck, but loaded to max gross (63.5 tonnes) in a B Train (that he can drive WITHOUT having been tested in multiple trailer, high gross driving).  Why am I so down on him in this case?  Simple:  he had two log books.  For those not familiar with HOS rules: it means that he and/or his employer intended from day 1 to drive more hours per day/trip than is legally allowed (for extremely good reason). 

At the extreme I have seen in ON a fleet of 50 dump trucks, all brought to the repair center by different drivers, but only ONE driver's license for the whole lot.  As you might guess, once again Sikh operator.  EVERYONE in trucking knows what is going on - everyone it seems except governments.   It would be duck soup to shut this lot down for regulatory and criminal violations, but we are so busy being PC that we open the borders, invite them in, let them ILLEGALLY operate and simply take over an entire industry and seldom bother to investigate or enforce what little rules are in place.

Sorry I can't link stats, as I don't think the ethnicity question can be found in any data base of accident reports - that wouldn't be PC.

 

[Goddess]

My man is a trucker and you are 100% correct.  He has all the same concerns that you do.  The number of truck drivers who do not speak English and wear flip flops while driving, is staggering.  And yes, there has been very little regulation of licences - any foreign driver's licence is good enough for Canada and many in the industry suspect the licences are either forged or drivers are given jobs because they are the same ethnicity as the trucking owner, not because they are actually experienced truck drivers.  You are correct - the industry has been taken over by one particular culture and they have absolutely no concern for public safety.  My man says he does a walk-around check of his rig every day before he leaves the yard and it disgusts him that he is the only one who does that.  He is tired of having to drop trailers for men who can't because they are wearing flip flops.

Humboldt was going to happen sooner or later.  It's very sad that it took that incident to shine a light on the industry.

[cannuck]

Sad part is that it is NOT shining the light where it can see the real problem.  Our government(s) simply hide it all behind this mindless PC crap.

BTW: we call the kind of driver you are referring to "one way drivers" (and a fair number of other names, that are DEFINITELY not PC).  Most can struggle down the highway going forward (busses full of kids notwithstanding) but are totally incapable of backing a single trailer, never mind a B train.

 

[bush_cheney2004]

10 hours ago, cannuck said:

Sorry I can't link stats, as I don't think the ethnicity question can be found in any data base of accident reports - that wouldn't be PC.

 

 

Can be found on YouTube and "Sikh News":

Punjabis Control 40% of Trucking in California and 60% in Canada

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/punjabi-canadians-roll-into-trucking-rerouting-a-traditional-industry-1.4139608

 

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by bush_cheney2004

[Dougie93]

1 hour ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Can be found on YouTube and "Sikh News":

Punjabis Control 40% of Trucking in California and 60% in Canada

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/punjabi-canadians-roll-into-trucking-rerouting-a-traditional-industry-1.4139608

 

 

That is dope, raise the debt ceiling King Dollah, Flight to Quality Information Empire of Liberty FTW

<gang sign>

[bush_cheney2004]

1 hour ago, Dougie93 said:

That is dope, raise the debt ceiling King Dollah, Flight to Quality Information Empire of Liberty FTW

<gang sign>

 

We get CDL (commercial driver's license) hiring advertising quite often...old truckers are retiring and there are not enough Canadian or American young folk entering the industry as contractors or independents.   And soon there will be autonomous big rigs roaming the highways.

Truck driving school was a favourite option for laid off employees, but not any more.

I do recall a fierce NAFTA 1.0 battle over Mexican trucks crossing the border, now overcome by time and events.

One of my fave CanCon TV shows is "Highway Thru Hell"...great northern adventures in Alberta and BC towing disasters.   One of the old timers quipped that even though they had a license, newbie truckers do not know how to properly install big rig tire chains.

Edited January 23, 2019 by bush_cheney2004

[Dougie93]

Whatever, market forces will prevail, let them.

[bush_cheney2004]

2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

Whatever, market forces will prevail, let them.

 

Indeed....trucking is the backbone of North American economies.   The safety and regulatory aspects of the industry have not protected trucking labour from intense competition.   I wasn't surprised to read that the accused Humboldt fatal collision driver was not distracted...he allegedly just blew through the stop sign.

Truckers have their own sub-culture and highway code, but maybe those days are over.

 

[Dougie93]

Life is risk, I once was cut off by a German trucker on the autobahn when I was going 194 mph.  Saved by the Brembo's.  And perhaps the God of the Hebrews therein.

[bush_cheney2004]

Long haul trucking use to be a very romanticized exercise in open road freedom, where a man (or woman) had plenty of time to ponder the meaning of life in a Peterbilt, Freightliner, or Kenworth cabover.   Not so much any more.

[Dougie93]

2 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

Long haul trucking use to be a very romanticized exercise in open road freedom, where a man (or woman) had plenty of time to ponder the meaning of life in a Peterbilt, Freightliner, or Kenworth cabover.   Not so much any more.

You can ponder the meaning of life anywhere, the God of the Hebrews defends Her Majesty and Her Majesty defends the right.

I still find driving to be quite relaxing, just stay off the 401.    And when in Europe, make sure you try the autobahn, cause it's mind blowing.

[Dougie93]

In terms of contemplation in America, I would say the optimal vantage point is Big Bend National Park, Republic of Texas.

[bush_cheney2004]

Canadian motor vehicle traffic fatalities and injuries have trended sharply down over the past 20 years according to StatsCan:

https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2016.html

No reason is provided, but less tolerance for drunk driving, more passive restraint systems, and other design advancements must be in play.   Big rigs are safer too.

I don't know if there has been any drastic changes to Fed/provincial standards...maybe maximum logged hours between down time.

[Dougie93]

2 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

Canadian motor vehicle traffic fatalities and injuries have trended sharply down over the past 20 years according to StatsCan:

https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2016.html

No reason is provided, but less tolerance for drunk driving, more passive restraint systems, and other design advancements must be in play.   Big rigs are safer too.

I don't know if there has been any drastic changes to Fed/provincial standards...maybe maximum logged hours between down time.

Where I live now, people drive like old grannies, they still get into fender benders cause they're clueless dingbats, but I don't see many high impact crashes.

[bush_cheney2004]

1 minute ago, Dougie93 said:

Where I live now, people drive like old grannies, they still get into fender benders cause they're clueless dingbats, but I don't see many high impact crashes.

 

Agreed...there are more riders than drivers, and the connection to the road is less, so the void is filled by electronic play things.  Many people cannot drive a stick shift, even thwarting some car thieves.  

Spectacularly gory crash scenes on film were the mainstay of mid 20th century high school driver education classes.   Some of the students with weaker stomachs would toss their cookies...great fun !

[Dougie93]

When I was young we peeled out pedal to the metal drinking beers and smoking joints and never wore a seat belt.  No problemo.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Dougie93

[Michael Hardner]

Automation will take away many of these jobs in the future.  It will be interesting to see how the masses of unemployed truckers align the situation with their culture.

[cannuck]

3 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Automation will take away many of these jobs in the future.  It will be interesting to see how the masses of unemployed truckers align the situation with their culture.

It is a constant matter for discussion withing trucking forums, but reality is this is still a long way off.  As it stands, automating a tractor/trailer unit to run down a clear road, with well defined lane and shoulder markings is duck soup.  Head out on the road in a blizzard and your automation becomes essentially useless.   It will come, some day, but that day is not today.

US trucking is quite different from Canada.  They can only run tiny gross weights on the Interstate system, as the roadbeds but especially the bridges were designed in the '50s when nobody could imagine a tractor and trailer grossing out over 80,000 lbs.   There are many variations state-to-state, but compared with here, where the distances are similar but the units running down the road are more likely to be 140,000 lbs. or LCVs, plus throw in some LONG bits of unrestricted access 2 lane with heavy weather, then add mountains with conditions that the "Highway from Hell" avoids and a sprinkling of ice roads going WAY up North that are beyond what ANYONE South of the 52 nd could imagine - and it is a very different world.   One in which there is simply no room for a culture that has no respect at at all for safety and rule of law.   Nor a technology that depends on clear, well marked and quite predictable roadways.

[eyeball]

6 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Automation will take away many of these jobs in the future.  It will be interesting to see how the masses of unemployed truckers align the situation with their culture.

It'll be more interesting to see how the masses of unemployed ignorant crackers will do. Its probably a good thing robots aren't a race.

I wonder what colour they'll paint them?  Probably all flashing red lights and yellow striped safety tape and they'll have an annoying beep beep beep when they back up.

I already hate the fuckin' things.

Edited January 23, 2019 by eyeball

[Michael Hardner]

5 hours ago, eyeball said:

It'll be more interesting to see how the masses of unemployed ignorant crackers will do. Its probably a good thing robots aren't a race.

Cruel humour that.

[PIK]

I run a company that has trucks coming in all the time. They are mainly foreign drivers and they cant drive. I have to send one of my trucks to unload then because these new drivers can't back up. Roads are becoming unsafe.

[cannuck]

On 1/26/2019 at 2:06 PM, PIK said:

I run a company that has trucks coming in all the time. They are mainly foreign drivers and they cant drive. I have to send one of my trucks to unload then because these new drivers can't back up. Roads are becoming unsafe.

We call them "one way" drivers.  When they arrive on site, you can tell from their use of the language that they haven't been here very long and did not exactly come from the higher casts of society at home.   I have watched them crash into things, back a loaded tanker over an embankment, etc. because the people who first encountered them didn't realize to totally incompetent as drivers.

The truth about Sidhu is coming out now.  72 violations (52 fed, 20 provincial) over the previous week, most to do with hours of service IF anyone had bothered to police the industry.  Drove through not only a stop sign, but a stop sign with a flashing light!  The idea that you can "train" this behaviour out is ludicrous.  There will simply be a string of schools pop up across the country, owned by the same people running the trucking business these days, who will graduate "drivers" little or no different from what happens now.

This is not a driver training issue, it is an open borders one.  Precisely how PC will kill our country (and a lot more of our people on the road).

Edited January 30, 2019 by cannuck

[Argus]

Did anyone see the episodes of Ice Road Truckers where they sent the drivers to India? Several of them quit within days. The roads are horrifically dangerous, and the drivers are basically insane, paying no attention to speed or safety rules. We're talking about overloaded buses and trucks barrelling along narrow, winding mountain roads with crumbling edges which have no barriers on the sides. Some of these are available on Youtube.

Since there is a shortage of drivers, guess where a lot of the drivers (like this guy) are coming from?

[Rue]

On 1/22/2019 at 9:48 AM, cannuck said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/new-federal-semi-truck-driver-regulations-to-come-into-effect-in-january-2020-1.4987477

Thanks to the "newly arrived Canadian" who murdered 13 and maimed 16 innocent victims as part of our "open borders" and "politically correct" approach to running Canada, the Feds and Provinces have FINALLY agreed to set some kind of standards for people who drive 30 to 60 tonnes of hardware down our highways.

The upside is that this is long, long overdue.  Further, it is Canada for once operating as a country and not deferring authority to the provinces.  What few people seem to realize is that one of the massive economic advantages the US has over Canada is a very good Interstate highway system - whereas we have essentially one road that is in my places only two lanes wide to move our freight.  While there are differences state-to-state in the US, the "standards" in Canada change dramatically from province to province - and there is only one way around (i.e. use the US Interstates).  We need some kind of federal consistency for driver training, safety certification (more-or-less in place now, but not Federal) and equipment specifications (again, still a bit of a hodge-podge).

The downsides are many.   The already ridiculously greater cost of freight service in Canada (making us uncompetitive with the US) will now increase only here.  We share the highway systems with the USA and Mexico, and drivers holding those licenses will have fewer barriers to entry and the industries South of 49 will have lower costs.  We need INTERNATIONAL standards under the Can/US/Mex trade agreements.   We come close with IRP and IFTA for registration and fuel tax, but still no cigar on standards for equipment and drivers.

Worse yet: it doesn't address the actual problem.  While new drivers are a start, it is the existing drivers on our roads that are still a problem.  Mexico and the US will be somewhere below our standards for new drivers (the demand due to high turnover means there are a LOT of new drivers on the road all of the time).  BUT, on top of that, you can just wander into Canada with another country's driving license (that may be real or forged) and simply drive in Canada!!!!!

One of the leading reasons for this is the ethnicity of the largely criminal organization(s) that have taken over the trucking industry in Canada.  Sidhu was a good example of how this works.   Here was a new driver that had met (possibly) Alberta standards.  Now, to most of us, that means driving test passed due to demonstrated skill.  I have no idea (yet) as to what happened with Sidhu, but it is common knowledge that people from his culture have a habit of doing here what they do at home: bribe an examiner or even put their own examiner into the system to flaunt the intent and standards of the law (and/or regs).  So, here you have a brand new driver from a culture that doesn't take the rule of law seriously at all not starting out his career in a small straight truck, but loaded to max gross (63.5 tonnes) in a B Train (that he can drive WITHOUT having been tested in multiple trailer, high gross driving).  Why am I so down on him in this case?  Simple:  he had two log books.  For those not familiar with HOS rules: it means that he and/or his employer intended from day 1 to drive more hours per day/trip than is legally allowed (for extremely good reason). 

At the extreme I have seen in ON a fleet of 50 dump trucks, all brought to the repair center by different drivers, but only ONE driver's license for the whole lot.  As you might guess, once again Sikh operator.  EVERYONE in trucking knows what is going on - everyone it seems except governments.   It would be duck soup to shut this lot down for regulatory and criminal violations, but we are so busy being PC that we open the borders, invite them in, let them ILLEGALLY operate and simply take over an entire industry and seldom bother to investigate or enforce what little rules are in place.

Sorry I can't link stats, as I don't think the ethnicity question can be found in any data base of accident reports - that wouldn't be PC.

 

I teach a lot of new Canadian students and in particular Seikhs and I know many drive trucks illegally to pay their student fees because they confine in me. They have told me many things like working way over their twenty hour student visa limits, using other peoples' truck driver licenses because they look very close (beard, turban), paying to get the licenses without having to do the test, etc. I also know about the drugs they take to stay awake and how they tell me they are falling asleep while driving. They are worried about their safety/

Friday a student came to my class late and I told him I did not want to hear his excuse about being delayed on the 401. He showed me on his cell phone two large tractor trailers jacknife in front of the car he was a passenger in destroying two cars in front of him. He ran out with his camera and all you could see was a severed arm wedged in a cracked window and the rest of the car a pancake.

I think your comments are unfortunately dead on from what these students tell me and many are desperate to pay  student fees so break the law. Others are looking for quick money or  to pay debts, etc. There are no excuses  and no I do not think your comments should be construed as discriminatory-just discussion in a frank and candid manner no different than what these students tell me.

I defer to truck drivers and the police on this issue. Its real and getting worse.

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Rue

[eyeball]

42 minutes ago, Rue said:

I think your comments are unfortunately dead on from what these students tell me and many are desperate to pay  student fees so break the law. Others are looking for quick money or  to pay debts, etc. There are no excuses 

At the risk of making excuses there are reasons.

In a world where economics trumps virtue when trying to survive if not succeed why should we expect people will do the right thing, the goodness of their hearts?  How does that jibe with being told we should think with our heads in lieu of our hearts?  There is a reason why the world is a disturbed conflicted place.

What's the excuse for not having adequate monitoring and enforcement systems in place that would stop people from compromising safety or environmental standards in the pursuit of making a profit?   What's the point of establishing this as a policy if we're not willing to extend it everywhere throughout the economy?

As a fisherman that works under the watchful eye of cameras and data collection systems intended to better manage and protect the public's stake in its natural resources I applaud the spread of such monitoring methods to make trucking safer.  I look forward to the day when any occupation/industry that impacts the public's interest is similarly monitored for compliance.

I still say monitoring the management of risky industries from the top down would be the best way to ensure more virtue in the economy but the powers that be seem to believe in a trickle up theory of decency and transparency.  Of course there's a good excuse for that.

Edited January 31, 2019 by eyeball