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Comment by savanaly | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to think of reasons why it would be this way and what I can come up with is that if you were to pay by the hour instead of by the mile it would be an incentive to the drivers to take longer to complete routes. A classic principal-agent problem in other words. Is there any non-obvious reason besides that that anyone knows of?

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Doesn't seem that hard to mix the two.

We know a route from X to Y is $miles . Detours happen, but Google is getting to the point of calculating realtime incidents. But time could be fairly compensated, as could the miles on a vehicle.

If you took a way longer route, it's on you. But if you're traffic jammed, it's not your fault, and should fairly be compensated.

You know, that's what Unions are for.

Unions fixed this issue a long time ago.

Then Reagan de-regulated and lots of companies from right to work states moved in and killed the market. The union shops like Yellow Freight mostly operate in blue states and are profitable.

Trucking deregulation occurred between 1978-1980 during the Carter administration.

Plus, the way it was regulated makes modern regulatory capture look consumer friendly. If you wanted to start a trucking company, you had to submit a business plan with a list of committed customers and already set in stone pricing. The Feds would literally hand your plan to everyone with a route in the region, give them a few months to review it and then your potential competitors got to vote on whether you should be allowed to operate that route. Predictably, it was basically just outsourced sales for the exiting companies.

It's not the trucker's fault they're traffic jammed. Does that mean it's their employer's fault?

It's not the employee's fault if a restaurant is "dead" for an evening. But the employees are required to be there, and thusly, are paid.

Same here. If the truck driver was free to go home, or whatever, sure dont pay them. But traffic jams are in transit between places they are told to go. It doesn't have to be the "fault" of the employer. But the employee is captive, and working, and absolutely should be paid with regards to time.

From the employee perspective that makes sense. You articulate why they should be paid. But is that enough?

I think you have to reason about the other side of the equation, where someone has to pay you.

It rains. I have to walk to work I the rain. I should get compensated. But is my employer on the hook, to give me the happiness I would've had if it hadn't been raining?

Truckers are not in position to negotiate better working conditions. If you don't take the deal, somebody else will. There does not need to be more.

Could always form a union. Low skill jobs income has declined with the decline of unions representing them.

Long haul truckers are very often (usually?) owner-operators that own the truck themselves and pick up hauling contracts; they aren't employees.

Otherwise there are teamsters, which are very heavily unionized.

Is there anything in between? Small to med cooperatives of long-haul truckers?

Guild, then.

Nope. Look at trucks on interstates, most are from the South or Midwest right to work states on the east coast.

On the other hand, trucking companies for the most part are lacking drivers. Turnover is rampant. Drivers will hop to another company for a better per-mile rate, or better scheduling, or newer equipment. Good, safe, dependable drivers are in demand.

And they don't want idle trucks any more than the driver does because if the truck is idle they aren't making money either.

" Good, safe, dependable trucking companies are in demand."

You could also phrase it this way. Maybe drivers wouldn't jump if they got treated better,

We have had guys quit and leave a full truck on the side of the road. Then you have to fly someone out to get it and finish the route.

Shadows of the constant "shortage of engineers" threads on HN. There are parallels if you look--the same dichotomy: Companies saying they lack employees, high turnover, job hopping, yet employees say they are dis-satisfied, have little power over their working conditions, their office situation, the terms of their employment, etc. because there's always someone willing to take their spot.

those arguments from both sides seems to be mutually exclusive. One of them must be wrong!

One guess is that most truck drivers were freelance (and many still are), owning their truck and getting paid per mile. Perhaps the rest of the industry standardized around that model regardless of the relationship the truck driver has with the parent company.

The reason why it is this way is because it is better for the employer if the employee must shoulder the financial burden of dead time.

It would be better for the employer if the employee paid for the oil checks on the trucks, or worked for the minimum wage. So why isn't that the case? "Because it's better for the employer" is simultaneously the explanation for everything and nothing. In reality, these situations arise from a lot of complex interactions between employer, employee and regulatory body, which is what I was trying to get at.

The consequence to the employer for missed maintenance on a truck is damage to the asset or loss of use when the truck is pulled off the road by DOT inspectors.

The consequence to an employee getting stuffed is that the driver has less time to sleep or jerk around in the back of the truck.

Guess what the company doesn't give a shit about?

You're certain that it's out of spite/indifference, more than say economics?

Definitionally. I doubt spite is a major factor, but the management is almost certainly intentionally indifferent.

Economics doesn't care about the morale of the workers in this context as it contributes nothing to the bottom line.

I'm in agreement, inasmuch as I hope management cares little for anything they believe doesn't touch the bottom line.

Would you prefer if management cared more about that, instead of the bottom line?

> It would be better for the employer if the employee paid for the oil checks on the trucks, or worked for the minimum wage.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure if they could make that happen, they would!

We have managers and dispatchers to take care of that.

The real reason is that it pushes off risk. Why would a trucking company pay a guy to sit in traffic? WTF is the guy going to do anyway... he's sleeping in the truck behind a gas station somewhere in Armpit, PA.

With today's apps, it's possible to solve that problem while still paying fairly. Maybe even without apps.

But why ? why not dump the risk of delays at the weak party in this transaction ?

Isn't this situation directly analogous to e.g. Uber? That isn't hard to understand, is it?

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