Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unions and the supply chains

AB5's focus was gig workers, not truckers. Trucks got swept into it with the 3 pronged approach.

As stated - about 2% of trucking is union, mostly LTL and that's not a niche filled with owner ops - leased or true O/O operating their own MC, auth, plates and Ins.

AB5 was less about union transportation and more about California crying about "living wage and employee rights" in the gug economy.

No one actually asked gig workers tho and they complained. IIRC, after AB5 went in, CA had a referendum and excluded Uber/Lyft specifically from it.

Most pre trips are done from the left seat as it is.

The only positive thing out of this mess is Ole Joe and the Dems are going to pay the price when soccer moms can’t buy little Timmy what he wants for Christmas.
GreggH

Pre tripping was a little rigid for me.
Too often, woke up with 2-3 hours sleep, squirted the dirt, and took off bleary eyed. Drinking cold coffee.

Other than that, pretty much every pee stop, fuel, load/unload, kicked the tires.
Lights, 4 ways at least once sometime daily, always as part of hooking up.

Pre trip is just the point required because some point is necessary.
If I was pulling it a few hours ago, nothing is changing faster sitting than moving.

One OCD thing.
Every single time the truck sat.

Release tractor brakes,
Ease clutch out, pull against that pin.
Then trailer and go.

Same with container locks.
Checked them every time.

People have been known to pull pins.
Anybody seen doing it should be drug behind a truck.
Slowly.

At the height of Union participation in this country (circa the 1960s), union membership was around 30% of the work force. Today it's about 7%. There's a reason for that. I deal with a union here, a relatively benign one, unlike the grade a THUGS the AIM union was when I worked for Lockheed-Martin. Basically, "pay me more so I can work less"... Here, they are pricing themselves out of the market place with over-inflated wages and benefits. There might have been a place for them 150 years ago, but it's time to move on....

Always, always always check that 5th wheel with a tug. I know I did.

Park it, pull the trailer brakes, ease forward to put some pressure on the jaws, set tractor brakes. I’d like to see the guy that can pull that handle..........!