US truck drivers push for better working conditions: ‘We’ve lost our patience’
US truck drivers are pushing for federal action to address what they say are deteriorating working conditions, decreasing pay and rampant fraud.
Caleb Fernandez, a long-distance truck driver since 2017, said he often spends hours waiting to load or unload his truck’s cargo without getting paid for the time. It can be drawn out to several hours, which will often disrupt his entire schedule for the week and he doesn’t receive any compensation for those hours.
“I think that I’ve got my schedule down and then just one customer can completely mess it up. Even if there’s an appointment, they just don’t show much that they care about wasting my time,” he said. “My whole week gets wrecked because of one customer that just didn’t care about the time. It’s a chaotic life.”
On 1 May, a group of about 75 truck drivers with Truckers Movement for Justice held a protest outside the US Department of Transportation (DoT) offices in Washington DC to demand action on wage theft in the form of a lack of overtime pay and unpaid wait times for delivering or taking on loads, and a lack of transparency of freight bills that have contributed to cuts in drivers’ compensation.
The group said they met with senior officials from the DoT in 2021 as part of Joe Biden’s trucking action plan, a set of initiatives meant to increase the supply of truck drivers by creating new pathways into the profession, but that they have yet to see any movement on their three core demands.
“We’ve lost our patience. This has been going for years and has only gotten worse with the lack of federal action. We don’t need taskforces and studies,” said Fernandez, who also serves as deputy secretary for Truckers Movement for Justice.
Pay for truck drivers has dwindled in recent
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