Do you know a truck driver?

My husband is a truck driver for a local lumber company. He has been with the company for 21 years. For the past several years he has mostly been on heavy equipment in the woods or building streets or on some sort of equipment job each day. Occasionally he will have to crawl back in a truck and haul logs if they are behind or lumber if gets behind. This company has so many trucks that it is hard for the few mechanics to keep up with the work that these trucks need to have done on them daily must less the big stuff that needs to be repaired.





Each time Danny crawls in one of these trucks he about strokes because of the stuff that is wrong with the vehicle. Until now any faulty equipment tickets, over weight tickets or any tickets that is not the drivers fault, the company had to pay the fine. As of July 2010 new federal laws are going into effect where any CDL holder who gets a ticket for anything...let me stress here anything, the driver and the company will have to pay the fine and points will be issued per violation. In July they will go back on each driver for 3 years and total up the points that he already has against him and if they have 30 points at that time they will lose their CDL. When they reach 30 points they will lose it then. It is estimated that 175,000 will lose their license in July alone. Danny has no tickets against him in the past 3 years thank goodness!





Can you imagine what the trickle down effect will be from this? I know that this will take some crappy drivers off the road but it will also take some really good drivers who are working for companies who can not or will not keep there equipment up to par. The clincher here is the fact that those points go with the driver when he leaves a company and then he can't get a job with another company either. The good drivers for the really big companies who do spend the time and money on taking care of their rigs will be OK but forget the little man again.





Also between now and July if a driver gets a new ticket the point value will triple!!!!! Danny has been trucking this week hauling pulp wood and of course he was stopped this morning by the DOT to weigh him. Thank goodness no ticket!!!!! Another driver was stopped today and was given a warning for a few different little things that he would ordinarily bring home a ticket for. This other driver will not have a job come July due to 2 different tie down violations and a couple speeding tickets with in the past 3 years anyway. Actually most of these drivers will be gone in July due to the points from overweight tickets alone. Truck drivers can't afford to pay for these tickets themselves and the companies can't afford to stay in business if they can't keep good drivers either. What is this world coming to? We need to drop to our knees and pray really hard for our country.



Please go to the CSA 2010 website and read all these stupid rules and let me know if you have someone that you are close to that this will effect.

Danny also has his own bulldozing business on the side and needs a CDL to be able to drive his own dump truck and move his equipment around.