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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Something not mentioned in the article, and I'm sad to see NPR ignore is that the trucking industry turned predatory in the past few years (mainly because I'm sure they reported on it in the past).

Certain logistics companies have been pushing drivers into "owner-operator" scenarios, where they are responsible for gas, insurance, maintenance, and lease payments, while not being given the flexibility to drive for other companies. Leaving some drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay didn't cover expenses).

I'm betting they are going after 18 years olds specifically because they are kind of primed to into debt for a career because the college admissions process kind of primes them to think this is normal.

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My local NPR station, KCRW, actually did a great series on this years ago covering Long Beach / LA port:

https://www.kcrw.com/news/articles/cargoland-a-brief-history...

Here's a site they created dedicated to it:

http://cargoland.kcrw.com/the-pirate/

Since listening to that, a lot of the recent news I've been seeing, including this article, haven't been a surprise to me.

I remember they talked specifically about how predatory the trucking industry is. They interviewed both the truckers and some of the representative from companies exploiting them. (Business model didn't sound all that different from Uber. Drivers pay for their own trucks, work as independent contractors, while large operating under control of companies.)

I can't actually locate it on this site so it may have been reported in some follow-up stories. Or perhaps in details of actual story audio.

Planet Money has a great report in this: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged

Yep the whole "owner operator" thing is just another scam. It seems like I'm seeing fewer of those on the road lately but that may just be that I'm seeing fewer of them not that there actually are fewer.

> Certain logistics companies have been pushing drivers into "owner-operator" scenarios, where they are responsible for gas, insurance, maintenance, and lease payments, while not being given the flexibility to drive for other companies. Leaving some drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay didn't cover expenses).

So basically the trucking industry looked at Uber and Lyft and said "Oh, hey. Neat."

No, from what I remember 10yrs ago when Uber was still starting it was already quite popular to push people into 'fake B2B' arrangement.

I remember truck drivers, paramedics and others pushed into 'fake B2B' for years and there is quite a lot of regulation in EU that if you have a single customer as a single proprietor you might be checked if it is 'fake B2B'.

Being an "app company" just made it easier.

As far as I recall, the roach coach that stopped at the place I worked at in 1980, twice a day, was 'staffed' by such an independent contractor.

We call them food trucks now and some of them really are independent I think, like the ones that cluster in Portland. But what I refer to served food that was not nearly as good.

> Leaving some drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay didn't cover expenses).

aka "gig economy".

> while not being given the flexibility to drive for other companies. Leaving some drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay didn't cover expenses).

This seems to me that the drivers should just file a self-written W-2 as a statutory employee and let the IRS figure it out. Not allowing an 'owner-operator' to work for other companies pretty clearly puts the 'owners' into the category of statutory employee.

That’s easy to say if you can trivially find another job. If they’re concerned about that and don’t want to be in a tax case (which seems extra unappealing for someone who spends most of the day driving) they probably won’t - and that’s what those companies are banking on.

You don't need to do anything. The IRS will fight this one for you.

The question is whether they are confident enough that this will be true, not lead to retaliation, and some consequences will happen. If not, a lot of people might feel they’re trapped.

I dunno.. maybe the government should start an advertising campaign, but that would imply that they would be able to put individual interests above those of their corporate overlords.

Truck drivers with a clean driving record can trivially find another job.

Now if they are locked into some Uber-like scam where their employer financed "their" truck purchase it may be more complicated.

That’s what the situation in this thread sounded like: those companies must have some kind of lever to force exclusivity and I’d assume it’s something like a loan.

California regulatory requirements basically shut down drivers owning their own trucks: the cheap old diesel trucks aren't in compliance anymore. So there's a lot of scummy leasing arrangements for the newer more expensive trucks.

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