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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

https://mobile.twitter.com/typesfast/status/1450904060253540...

Would love to know more about that. Appointments are full but no one is showing up for them? Companies just can't get drivers?

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I'm not on the scene. I don't work in that business. So take this with some salt. But I have heard that two things are causing issues.

1. California passed a law that all trucks older than 10 years old had to have expensive modifications (I believe for pollution control). Well, the average age of trucks is 14 years. Surprisingly (not), trucks became in short supply in California.

2. They passed this law that Uber drivers were employees, not contractors. Surprisingly (until you think about it), this same law hit owner-operators of trucks. That confuses the legalities of hiring owner-operators, which is a fair number of trucks.

From what I heard, for both of these reasons, trucks and drivers are less available than they used to be in California.

Only anecdotal of course but my aunt is a cross country truck driver that stopped delivering/picking up in CA because of those regulations.

Well that’s weird because one came about in 2008 and the other specifically exempts truckers.

>and the other specifically exempts truckers

Are you talking about AB 5? Because if so, it's nowhere near that simple.

"The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, after hearing the case, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the state from enforcing AB5 .....The court noted that carriers likely would have to reclassify all independent-contractor drivers as employees for all purposes to comply with the California labor law.... California officials and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters appealed the ruling to the 9th Circuit. The appeals court reversed the district court's order...."

I'm not a lawyer, but to a layman it looks like a legal fustercluck.

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

From the summaries I’ve seen, AB5 provides a new temporary exemption (through 2022) for construction truckers from the ABC test that did not exist under the Dynamex ruling, but not for truckers generally.

It seems that if Congress et al wanted to overstep the Interstate Commerce Clause here would be a perfect place to do it.

I don't think those have as much affect. Because point 1 went into affect in 2008 and point 2 truckers are exempt.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/19/facebook-p...

The very fact-check you link to says:

> industry experts said that some owner-operators sought work elsewhere. Some fleets, too, chose to stop doing business with owner-operators in California.

where "stop doing business" is a link to an article about people doing just that.

And the "exemption" you mention is a temporary injunction that may be lifted at any time, which is not conducive to a stable business relationship.

You want to know why trucks are less available?

https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forc...

All the immigrants that were abused for the job are gone due to covid.

I can offer one anecdote, having only yesterday finally received a shipment that had been mired at long beach for over a month. My truck driver went to 3 appointments a week for the last 4 weeks, only to be told every time that there were no trailer frames to load the container onto for him to haul away.

i posted a sister comment with a possible explanation

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