Archive for the ‘Workplace Bullying’ Category

Should the Department of Justice Office of Violence against Women provide financial assistance to the Women in Trucking non-profit organization to protect females entering trucking from Harassment when the primary offenders are sponsors of WIT?

Today, an article in “Trucking Info” titled “Harassment by Men Discussed at White House Meeting by Women in Trucking Officers.” it was announced that Ellen Voie, President of Women in Trucking was granted a meeting with White House advisor on violence against women , Lynn Rosenthal and Judge Susan Carbon, director of the Office of Violence against women at the Deparment of Justice. The meeting was facilitated by Marlise Streitmatter, deputy chief of staff for  U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

While I am happy that this issue is getting much needed attention, I can only hope that these Women in Washington D.C. do some background work before they grant funds to this trucking organization.

According to “Guidestar” a non-profit review website , the salary of the main “Officer” doubled in 2009 which was the year more than one of the WIT sponsors was engaged in discrimination and harassment litigation. No achivements to combatting harassment occured during this period, to the contrary. (Link: Women in Trucking 990 Filings )

By 2010 , the WIT had still not made violence against women in the trucking industry a priority and although we have pushed the issue hard to the forefront there remains an obivious conflict of interest and string of questionable tactics leading up to this request for funding from the federal government.

2010 would have been a grand time to make the topic of violence against women in the trucking industry priority number one but instead the focus was the fanfare on President Ellen Voie getting a tattoo of the WIT logo on her backside at a trucking convention while grasping the hand of her friend and wincing from the pain. The tattoo party did not have broad appeal but harassment in truck driver training carriers does.

The twitter tag I created for the website “REAL Women in Trucking” and companion Facebook fan page called “Real Women Truckers” is @WomenTruckers and this is the bio:

“Violence against Women in the trucking industry is being covered up. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? Demand the ATA MAN UP, show leadership”

It has over 3000 followers and I have been using it for about 2 years to talk about this issue and other violence against women issues such as domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking and other human rights/social justice issues.

Violence against Women is a serious topic worldwide and it is a statement on society. It is not unique to trucking culture but it does occur and raising awareness of the many aspects of how violence is acted upon Women is the first hurdle in holding people accountable. The people who commit this injustice upon women are not only those who commit the offense but also those who try to cover it up and those who would try to benefit from programs and grants to pay their salaries when they have a history of trying to interfere with exposing such crimes and injustices.

The point I have been trying to make with the @WomenTruckers twitter tag is to ask people in the trucking industry to look further than their nightly news at the horrific images of women and children being beat, raped and repressed in other countries and start looking at it in our own country and our own industry. Women most certainly are being used to push political and corporate agendas so I feel it’s time to make a few demands for using our image and the favorable tax incentives given for hiring women. Not special treatment, fair and just treatment.

In my PowerPoint presentation from last fall of 2010 , that is posted here on this site, specifially in Part Two ( Social Media and Women Truckers ) I discussed the Violence against Women division of the Department of Justice. I made references to the NFL Players association campaign to raise awareness of violence against women , links to “The List” campaign of celebrities and other research tools for the topic to encourage action. I mentioned “Truckers against Trafficking” a newly formed organization who has emerged in the past two years with an outstanding awareness campaign to educate truck drivers on the $32 billion dollar industry of modern day slavery. Human trafficking has been reported in all 50 of the United States.

I mentioned in that presentation that the U.S. Women Veterans Administration was studying unique PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) for Women Veterans ( Article: Suicide Rate among Young Women Veterans ) I specifically mentioned this because I feel it is my patriotic duty and this is why.

In the very popular thread beginning in 2008 that has since been removed from the “Women in Trucking” forum. I stated that I felt raising awareness of violence and harassment toward women entering the trucking industry was our duty because returning female veterans would have difficulty fitting back into normal society after being in combat situations.

It was my instinct that these women could find a great deal of freedom if they found trucking but not in the current low standard of training and unsafe sexual climate that currently existed. As many of you know I was stalked online for months by other women from the WIT site and referred to as a “loose cannon” and a “radical feminist” for talking about such topics of harassment and sexual misconduct in truck driver training carriers.

My membership was later revoked by President Ellen Voie following my appearance on the Dan Rather “Queen of the Road” episode where her sponsor CRST Van Expedited was featured regarding a massive sexual harassment case that was underway.

Ellen Voie and I exchanged numerous emails about the topic of what was occurring in the training carriers, including her sponsor’s carriers and while she was always very good at making me think she understood the problem well, she offered little concrete evidence of an active approach when it came to defending the women affected.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. ~ Henry Ford

My quest over the obstacles I encountered in my personal truck driver training carrier led me into yet another set of obstacles to discover if the stated mission of WIT applied to a person like myself. This is what prompted me to renew my membership for a second year in hope of persuading Ellen to choose between the women of the organization who were seeking assistance or her sponsors.

CRST Van Expedited is just one of the sponsors of WIT that are in current or recent litigation. This particular carrier is one of the most high profile because of the EEOC mishandling which has been written about in a number of legal blogs. This case has put the trucking industry on the EEOC radar and commentary on this case is easy to google on the internet. Then there is the recent Karen Shank V. CRST case which was won by jury trial for a staggering $1.7 million judgment.

I have been aware of the Karen Shank case for at least 2 years but not of the specific details. What I do know is that Tracy Hamm was to be called as a witness for the Karen Shank case and although she did not have to attend the trial she remains a key component. Ellen Voie had communicated to Tracy Hamm at my persistence around the time of the first Salute to Women behind the Wheel at the Mid- America Truck Show in 2010 after her repeated claims she did not have access to the female drivers to ask them about their stories. In this workplace bullying documentary from 2009 Ellen Voie appeared to me that she was discrediting the female drivers claims even though she had not spoken to any of them. ( Raw Sound Bytes from a Trucking Convention ) , Off camera she tried to discredit my story to the filmmaker but I had never worked for her and my own training carrier never attempted to discredit my student truck driver training story. I was not even finished writing my story on the internet when this occured so it was puzzling to me when Filmmaker Beverly Petersen informed me of the comments that were made. I have consulted with this filmmaker about disclosing this information because I feel it is relevant. I was a Woman with no advocate at the time I began this journey and I had put my faith into the WIT organization.

When I was finally able to pressure Ellen Voie to speak to Tracy Hamm, Ellen excused herself from the conversation before Tracy could tell her everything about CRST management conduct. Ellen did not call her back but she did ask Tracy for solutions to problems at CRST. Later I persuaded WIT Director Marge Bailey to hear Tracy out who was not a disgruntled former employee but someone who just wanted to make a difference and drive a truck.

That was in the spring of 2010 and after Donna Smith and myself had offered Ellen Voie an enormous amount of content to “Flex some Muscle” on behalf of women truck drivers stretching from 2008 until we cut off communication after years of her chain yanking with no results in 2010.

It became apparent that WIT was not a true advocacy for women drivers issues, but rather an organization where women can gather. There was no value in advocating for women truckers or women entering trucking on the issues of violence or harassment.  But perhaps now that there is a potential money stream from the federal government this has changed?

What I do is a labor of love and I receive no salary for it. My salary has in fact decreased since I began writing about this topic but this non-profit in question whose records are public show that a salary has doubled during this period and this causes alarm about the integrity of the advocacy.

There is access for this organization to XM/Sirius radio programs to speak and gather information on these topics on the Evan Lockridge Program and the “Freewheelin” Program. The drivers listening to these radio broadcasts only heard Ellen Voie promote her Tattoo Party for WIT in which very few people participated and WIT Director Marge Bailey promote her recruiting /date-a-trucker website over the past 2 years.

To the driving population in the trucking industry, and especially women truckers on our fanpage this was a slap in the face to ignore important issues by an organization who claims to aspire to represent them. Some drivers began to express that WIT was using them as a vehicle to promote their own agenda which seems to be primarily motivated by greed and the ability to become a lobby power in Washington D.C..

I recently wrote about non-profit research on the “Life on the Road” blog. In trucking, it causes alarm when drivers are “nickel and dimed” by various entities when they are seeking assistance so it is imperative to for them to understand that a non-profit can sometimes be very misleading and very little of the funding may go toward the stated mission.

Here are a few facts:

Ellen Voie’s name appears in a Pedophile crime website on how NOT TO handle a situation in a trauma. This is in regards to the insensitive manner the Trucker Buddy pedophile issue was handled with the Mother. (Link: Crimeshots~ How Pedophiles Operate )

This highly sensitive incident would be something one could learn from in the future but in my first phone conversation with WIT Director Marge Bailey February 2010 she went straight on the attack of the Mother who she said had a child that was “not even in the trucker buddy program” As if that mattered!

This is not the first time I have heard this line of reasoning from these Women. “Well she wasn’t even a member”, but you see I WAS a member and I was stalked online by other WIT members and to this day there is interference to prevent my posts to be published on the topics of violence against women in the trucking industry in trade publications and blogs. Even carriers who have contacted me to ask for a banner exchange have later been contacted by WIT to discourage them. In one case telling the family owned carrier that they must go through WIT to get Women to apply for their trucking jobs. The carrier refused the strongarm tactics and rude manner of the calls but how does that help Women exactly?

When asked to support “Jason’s Law” H.R. 1803” an industry unifying safe trucker parking bill they went further than just ignoring the topic, by accepting informational brochures and hiding them under their convention table at GATS in Dallas Texas. No one told Ellen she needed to hit the campaign trail for Hope, it was only to ask for a gesture of kindness for the young widow Hope Rivenburg who traveled with 3 babies to the convention to collect signatures personally. Being a former Wife of a trucker, Donna Smith and I assumed that Ellen Voie would embrace Hope Rivenburg but we were mistaken which was very dissappointing for both of us.

This is not to say other members of WIT have not committed their personal time to worthwhile unifying driver issues but it was not because of the organization. So why now is she suggesting that she is going to Washington D.C. to ask the Department of Justice for Violence against Women and the Department of Labor for grants or funds to set up a 24 hour crisis line for drivers?

In a nutshell what she is saying is she wants the federal government to give her funding to set up a driver abuse reporting line when in fact the carriers who commit the most driver abuse are her sponsors!

This is not the first time she has said she was seeking funds for a drivers crisis line, in fact the idea came from Donna Smith of “Ask the Trucker” and myself but it was not intended to be managed by someone with a history of covering up abuse from carriers to drivers or downplaying it and shifting blame.

This “shifting of blame” is an Human Resource method I have written about a number of times over the past 3 years. It is the adversarial management style , the “US vs THEM” manner that many harassment and retaliation issues are mishandled. Poking at the conscience of trucking insiders as I have done and leading them to the solutions is only one part of this task.

Making them take action, even if that means spending money to enforce policies they already have in place or have been working on to insure they are working is the hardest part. Slapping a logo on a website for an organization that has provided ZERO concrete achievements since its inception only serves to further intimidate drivers.

Is this on purpose? Is that why the WIT wants to be the steward for driver crisis line it previously stated was not what they were set up for? That they were not an advocacy group? Why the sudden interest in Violence against women grants from the Department of Justice?

Food for thought: A driver with OSHA concerns (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) related to the trucking industry contacted me about a “tell-all” undercover documentary he intended to produce. In his industry networking for interested parties to collaborate he contacted WIT and told me he spoke the Ellen Voie at length on the project. He said he felt there was something just not right about the website and her responses given that she portrays herself to be “For Drivers”. Shortly following his conversation with her he was contacted by a eager funding source for his project but in the contract stages the fine print stated the financiers had final editing rights to the project. He took it upon himself to investigate who was truly behind this funding source and GUESS WHO… according to him it was the ATA and it was his impression that they were “tipped off” to the project intentionally.

Sexual Misconduct, Harassment, Violence against women in the trucking industry is related to OSHA these are labor issues and anyone who knows about human resources and workman’s compensation insurance claims should be able to see the correlation of how costly it could be for carriers to experience an increase of such claims. Mental distress, retaliation these are among some of the contributing factors that could affect judgments which in turn could affect workman’s compensation insurance premiums.

Is this why the FREE to corporate sponsors 30 page document WIT is peddling is not available to individuals? I don’t know this for certain but I will venture a guess that it should be seen as a valuable incentive to understand and this is why I published information publically.

Human Resource departments and other personnel that handle claims against carriers are supposed to save the carrier money. Unfortunately, this sometimes means to intimidate people with valid claims of abuse which is the short route to a solution. The road less traveled is eliminate abusers, Like unprofessional trainers, co-drivers, dispatchers and poor recruiting.

Create a company policy that works and train more staff on how to deal with victims of trauma rather than attacking the person reporting abuse without doing a full and thorough investigation of the events.

The American Trucking Association has it’s stamp of approval on program called “Troops 2 Truckers” and we should all realize it is our patriotic duty to welcome returning veterans into the trucking industry, this includes returning female veterans. Rape, and retaliation for reporting abuse in the military that occurred by other members in our military is the focus of a lawsuit against the Pentagon. ( Link: 17 Veterans Sue Pentagon Over Rape Cases )

There is also another suit brought from Peace Corps volunteers against the organization for similar issues of mishandling rape and retaliation for reporting abuse. ( Link: Peace Corps Volunteers Speak Out on Rape )

Like truck driver training we are talking about intense unsupervised training situations where people of unknown origins are expected to conduct themselves to a very high standard but very little training for this is provided.

This is a tough issue and it is completely irresponsible to allow a proven corporate apologist with definite conflicts of interest do intake for trauma victims that will be funded by grants by the Department of Justice or by the Department of Labor when in reality many driver abuse cases reported on internet trucking forums originate from WIT sponsors.

Here’s a suggestion: WIT should cut ties with sponsors involved in any harassment and discrimination litigation until they can prove they are worthy to join a driver advocacy organization. WIT should cease to seek  sponsorship dollars from a carrier following the public announcement of mistreating drivers.

This was the case when a female student from CR England was abandoned by her carrier that I wrote about here on this site and on the “Real Women Truckers” Facebook page. The story was made public by a veteran male driver on Facebook. The carrier only reached out to get the woman a bus ticket home after they became aware that other drivers were sharing the topic on the social networking site.

I spent several hours on the phone with this lady who was left living in her car at a Wal-Mart parking lot and was devastated after the way this carrier treated her. I sent her money to eat and tried to get her off to another training carrier so she could take another shot at trucking.

This story was very public like some others I have been involved in and was yet another opportunity for Ellen Voie. So, did WIT reach out to this woman? No, but she did take action by selling the offending carrier a sponsorship. A carrier well known to drivers for it’s unethical lease program now has the WIT seal of approval. How exactly does that help the woman sleeping in her car in a parking lot? Are we to believe all the internal carrier issues are now solved upon purchase of a sponsorship to WIT?

If this female student truck driver had access to a driver crisis line that was directed to Ellen Voie, Marge Bailey or others from the Drivers advisory board what guarantees would this Woman have that the sensitive details and names of those who committed the abuse towards her would not be shared to the carrier sponsor?

Getting REAL means stop trying to cover up abuse and start addressing it with long term cost effective solutions not short term Band-Aids. After all we are talking about women being beat up raped, thrown off trucks during training and sometimes abandoned in a strange town when they have no money to go home and sometimes no home to go to.

If you want to be part of the solution show leadership and get informed. Why should the federal government Department of Justice- Violence against Women commit funds to an organization whose sponsors are the main offenders?

One last footnote, recently the Injury Lawyers USA announced a helpline for Truck Drivers and Taxi Cab Drivers who have been hurt on the job. ( Link Helpline for Truck Drivers ) make sure you understand that retaliation, workplace bullying and mental distress leading to PTSD could be considered under workmans compensation.

Technorati Tags: Department of Justice, Ellen Voie, Harassment, Lynn Rosenthal, Marlise Streitmatter, Non-Profit, Peace Corps, Ray LaHood, Sexual Harassment, Susan Carbon, Trucking, Trucking Topics, US Women Veterans, Violence against Women

Related posts

• Ellen Voie answers questions about the CRST Sexual Harassment case Part III (21)
• WIT President Seeks to Benefit from Harassment Judgment in Trucking (2)
• Recruiting & Retaining Women as Truck Drivers (4)
• Practical Truck Driver Training Solutions: Part 1 (6)
• Practical Truck Driver Training Solutions Part 2 (9)

“Social Media & Women Truckers – Part Two” focuses on Violence against Women in the Trucking Industry & notable Social Media campaigns that have changed the rules on humanitarian issues and activism.

Being successful in social media does not require a sales team, a research and development department, a marketing firm or “guru” but it does require effort to make a commitment to positive transparency.

Taking action to respond and interact can be time consuming BUT it can be executed rather effectively from just about anywhere with the use of smart phones.

Managing a Facebook and/or Twitter campaign during a lunch break via cell phone is very much a reality. Therefore, never underestimate the velocity of an individual as opposed to an organization. There is no way to gauge how far the message can travel and you never know who is listening. Furthermore, never ASSume anyone at all is listening or cares about what you are saying.

As an industry there needs to be more accountability aimed at government funded truck driver training fleets for the conduct that occurs. Very little is expected of truck driver student candidates to behave as good citizens YET many do take the initiative to try to raise the standard, only to find themselves being retaliated against for speaking up about driver abuse.

In other areas of trucking which requires experienced drivers there does not seem to be any recognition of how truck drivers are trained and why many do not make it past 2 years in the industry.

Even trucking professionals do not seem to understand “Where truck drivers come from?” in the here and now. The enormous turnover rate in training fleets affects the quantity of experienced qualified drivers who would apply to private and specialized fleets.

Until the entire industry holds those who are doing this accountable, you are all culpable for what is going on out here on America’s highways.

*** Relevant links (Gold Letters) in this powerpoint will help locate additional information ***

Technorati Tags: Activism, Retaliation, Social Media, Transparency, Truckers, Trucking, Violence, Women

Related posts

• What’s the problem with the CR England? (2)
• Practical Truck Driver Training Solutions Part 2 (9)
• About (17)
• Wild West Women (8)
• Social Media & Women Truckers – Part One (0)

I’m required to work 70 hours a week and if I’m lucky I get one day off…away from home. Many others complain about working 40 and only having 2 days off. If I text and drive it can cost me my career, yet you can do it and it just costs you a fine.

While I am doing my best trying to find a safe place to park for the night so I can get my legally required 10 hour break, you are kicked back relaxing and watching TV while you have your RV parked at the truck stop.

When I stop to put fuel in my truck, I have to wait in line while you hold up the line playing lottery scratch offs, I’m on the clock, you are just having fun. When you are snuggled up in your warm bed in the winter, I’m freezing my butt off because my truck is considered a nuisance to people like you, so I cannot idle it to stay warm or to keep it cool in the stifling summer heat.

I help to provide this country with everything it needs to keep functioning on a daily basis, while you seem to want to interfere with every aspect of my job, however you would be the first to complain if me and my coworkers decided to stop doing our job.

So please answer me this question America, how is it that the American truck driver is considered a second class citizen, one that should be banished from public view?

You regard us with no sense of importance; animals in fact have more rights than we do. You continue to take away more of what little rights we have left and then claim a moral victory under the guise of safety for the American motoring public.

We make sacrifices to keep food on your table, gas in your car, clothes on your kids, and a roof on your house. All the while making it harder for us to provide our own families with any of those things, I guess somewhere in your sense of humanity you find it fair, you somehow feel you are entitled to label us, mock us, and degrade us.

Then you wonder why many of us want nothing to do with you when you come up and ask us for help when you are stranded on a highway in the middle of nowhere………so ask yourselves, are America’s truck drivers really a problem, or are we an asset?

J.Haggard
11-11-10

Jason has been in the transportation industry for the last 15 years, he spends much of his time communicating with state and federal officials regarding laws that adversely effect the everyday life of professional truck drivers. He has worked as a company driver and as an owner operator hauling everything from boats and produce to furniture and Department Of Defense freight. He is also a strong supporter of Jason’s Law (named for Jason Rivenburg) and educating the general motoring public about how to safely interact with commercial trucks on the road. When not in a truck or dealing with trucking related issues he likes being Dad to his two children, working in his small electronics repair business, or fishing Minnesota’s many different lakes.

** R.E.A.L. stands for Reaching Out, Encouraging others , Achieving personal Success and Leadership **

We encourage all drivers to utlize social media as a method to raise the standard in the trucking industry and thank Jason for permitting us in reprinting his facebook note for the public.

Technorati Tags: America, Jason's Law, Parking, RV, Truckers, Trucking

Related posts

• What’s the problem with the CR England? (2)
• About (17)
• Wild West Women (8)
• What does “Women in Trucking” stand for? (6)
• Social Media & Women Truckers – Part One (0)

The Environmental Protection Agency partnership with the American Trucking Association for a “Greener” Tomorrow may look, … well “Green” to outsiders and paper pushers but how does it affects human beings?

Most people could care less about truckers whose job requires them to live without luxuries like daily showers and toilet facilities in order to provide comfort to everyone else. Think about that for a second.

What if you could not take a shower, use a toilet or wash your hands when you wanted to and you had to perform your job everyday in these conditions.

Not only that but you had to sleep in your car and you were not permitted to use the air-conditioner in the summer to sleep OR use your heater in the winter.

Remember Old Ebenezer Scrooge in ‘A Christmas Carol” interrogating poor Bob Cratchit for needing to stay warm as he toiled away at his desk?
Morals and Ethics sacrificed for profits and awards is what you find when you scrape past that façade of the ATA partnership with the Smart Way EPA Program, not solutions for the environment.

Would you feel you were a safe driver in these conditions? How would you feel after sleeping in your car when it is 90 degree outside? Imagine you will be expected to cover 500 or more miles the next day to deliver a load of childrens blow up swimming pools and they had better be on time!

Rhianna Weir , writer for the Madison, Wisconsin trucking examiner wrote an article this week aimed at the non-trucking community that Saturday July 24, 2010 people take an hour out of their day to sit in their car, which is about the same area of space found inside the sleeper section of a semi truck. Challenging them to idle their car, SUV or pickup truck for no longer than five minutes and then try to relax for just one hour.

The first thing the non-trucking community needs to understand is that the American Trucking Association does not represent drivers; it represents carriers who are interested in profit not people. They are interested in media coverage to appear compliant and interested in formulating an image that seems genuinely concerned but these are strategies, anything that could affect profits by way of capital expenditures is not going to be embraced.

When public pressure gets turned up on safety issues a “partnership” will soon follow which helps control media creating a favorable image, a compliant and obedient image and this takes the spotlight off of the real issue.

In trucking when this happens it is the drivers who suffer because no one properly represents them and the nature of their job makes them unable to fight back.

Bill Hutson, a driver for 30 years and founder of a non-profit called Table Talk Ministries aptly puts it, “No matter how you squeeze a turnip a trucker pops out” and this seems to be the strategy of the ATA when they applaud themselves and the carriers they represent in their partnership with Smart Way Transport.

In this video from “Big Truck TV” it is clear that the ATA created this partnership for a very deliberate purpose but if you are an actual truck driver this video might make you vomit.

The truth is that some recipients of the Smart Way EPA award who are truck carriers represented by the ATA are able to reduce the idle emissions by inhumane and unsafe practices such as harassing drivers, charging drivers to idle but not providing solutions such as “Auxiliary Power Units” commonly referred to as APU’s .

These carriers are permitted to get way with saying “we are testing them” but they are not required to provide them despite rebates and other incentives like those which are funded through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The federal Department of Transportation regulations require 10 hours of rest for every 11 hours of driving. During these times, truck drivers often idle their engines to rest comfortably as would any other normal human being when they sleep.

Trucking idling laws fail to consider this and that many truckers are employees and do not have the option to buy expensive APU equipment and install them. Lease Owner-Operator truck drivers also generally have in their contract that they are not permitted to “alter” the trucks they are making payments on and this includes installing an APU. Smart Way EPA lets carriers receive awards who DO NOT provide solutions for employee drivers, this is unsafe & inhumane.

Performance scores are listed on the Smart Way Transport web site , a higher score or more favorable score would make a company more attractive to prospective shipper partners who care about environmental impacts and their own reputations but what if the carriers were reaching the score levels by inhumane means?

Smart Way encourages carriers to improve their score by adopting various fuel-efficiency and emission control technologies, policies, and strategies to their fleets but do they understand how these methods are practiced before they throw their annual shindig in Las Vegas, Nevada to hand out awards?

With so many states adopting new idle restrictions it seems that getting a photo opportunity accepting a Smart Way EPA award for a press release would be a trucking fleet President’s wet dream.

According to the SmartWay Transport web site, “A score of 1.25 represents outstanding environmental performance. These Carrier partners are already utilizing most of the commercially available fuel saving strategies and are actively evaluating the latest emerging technologies. Partners with scores of 1.25 are awarded the honor of displaying the SmartWay Transport Partner logo, EPA’s symbol for superior fuel efficiency and environmental performance.”

In practice, from a driver stand point, “fuel saving strategies” comes out of the drivers pocket. Being charged to idle or harassed for idling is one strategy used by some of the carriers who appear as award recipients on the Smart Way EPA website. Trucks drivers suffer with a fan if possible or pay for expensive motel rooms if they can find one that has truck parking, most do not and if you have a pet you are in really big trouble.

Now the first assumption is that if you have a pet in the truck you are exempt, that is not true in all states and if your company has idle restrictions they might still charge or penalize you for idling your truck. It is actually illegal in most states to have an animal in a hot vehicle but not illegal for an employer to do this to their employee. Also, driver’s do not have the option to put say $20.00 in the tank and use the receipt on their taxes for the fuel they burn in their company truck. Seems weird if fuel cost was all that mattered but even if the drivers were paying from their own pockets, the idle calculations still occur and maybe this affects qualifying to awards, just sayin..

Trucks drivers who are employees, which many fleets are on the Smart Way list are generally issued trucks to drive. It would make sense that if there was a limited amount with APU’s or bunk heaters, they would go to solo drivers who must park at night. Unfortunately it does not work that way. You can beg, plead, threaten, turn in hospital receipts from getting sick from trying to not idle and it will do you no good. More often than not you will be harassed verbally and over the Qualcomm about idling your truck with a complete disregard that the temperatures outside are so extreme that it would be unsafe to NOT idle your truck.

I suspect that measurement of idle time internally at trucking carriers may be linked to the SmartWay program so that they might qualify to be award recipients so let’s examine how this is being manipulated. I have copy and pasted and explanation from the website “The Rip Off Report” of how idling is calculated on each truck from “Baldy” of Pensacola, Florida.

He writes: “The onboard computer or “Qualcomm” measures engine running-time, speed-time (overspeed), and idle-time (among other things) and breaks this down into percentages. When it says that you are 30% over-idle, it means that 30% of the engine-running time was idle-time. Turning off the engine does not decrease the idle-time. It only keeps it from getting larger. The only way to lower the idle-time is to run more miles (run-time) than you sit idling (idle-time).

Example: If you cranked up your truck just after the weekly reset (mine was on Monday morning) and idled for 30 minutes without moving the truck, and then turned the truck off for the rest of the week, your idle-time for that week would be 100%. If you did that, and then ran down the road for 30 minutes before turning it off for the week, your idle-time for the week would be 50%.”

In a nutshell every second the engine is on it is calculating idle time against the tires rolling on the ground so even at a stop light the meter is running. If you are a solo driver running 5 or 6 days a week and you can drive 11 hours a day, you still have to remain parked and still a good deal of time.

Trucks have very little insulation, a fixable design flaw and like technology advancements like I brought up in “My Green Idle Idea“, the trucking industry does not embrace anything that costs money when they can find a way to make drivers pay for it.

The general public does not like truck drivers, they are afraid of them and they do not understand them so it’s perfect to pull this kind of crap because no one will bat an eye.

Fuel Saving Strategies noted by SmartWay should be understood to mean that a truck driver who is an employee or Owner-Operator who either is not provided a solution for idling or is forbidden to purchase an APU unit for their truck is actually paying for the carrier’s trip to Las Vegas to accept the SmartWay EPA Award. How do you like them Apples? The average paycheck per week being about $700 for driver in some companies I have heard as much as $300 has been charged to a driver from a single check. That’s a lesson most drivers do not want to experience twice.

A driver sitting with no load or during a rest period must idle in summer or winter or they can become sick, and most certainly will be operating the truck in an unsafe manner when they can roll again. Carriers who set idle policies do not take weather into account such as the case of the driver who posted about being charged to idle during a snowstorm and being told to buy more blankets even after becoming sick. Read Story Here

Some drivers report having their DAC reports ruined after complaining about being charged to idle or protesting idle policies. Citations given to drivers for idling in states who have adopted new laws are rarely paid for by carriers and with new CSA 2010 regulations drivers remain unclear how this will affect their records.

Until the general “Green” loving public can wrap their heads around how they are being bamboozled with “better air quality” campaigns that cover up safety shortfalls and inhumane practices against truck drivers this issue cannot be resolved.

Let the good times ROLL in Vegas for the SHAM called “The Smart Way Transport Partnership”
The slogan is accurate, “The Smart Way to save money, fuel and the environment” but here is the translation, “Save Money by Killling a Trucker, the Smart Way”.

Additional Reading:

Rhianna Weir Challenge
Preventing Truck Drivers from being Comfortable Underway Again
Smart Way Transport Partner List
Smart Way Award PDF
Fleet Owner – Smart Way names Excellence Award Winners
Rip Off Report Charging Employees to Idle
Smart Way Carrier Score Explanations

Technorati Tags: American Trucking Association, ATA, Environment, EPA, Idling, Smart Way Transport, Truckers, Trucking

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