Dealing with the Messiness of the Human Condition

This post was originally published in the May 2018 edition of Truck News

As a truck driver you may wake some mornings to blinding sunshine under brilliant blue skies but you may end the day in a blinding snow storm unable to see more than a few truck lengths in front of you. On some days you may be straight lining across the country and on others you may be doing multiple pickups and/or deliveries. At the same time you may be feeling healthy and happy or you may feel under the weather and blue. You may have to alternate between working a late shift and working an early shift at the drop of a hat in order to accommodate dock appointments that in turn challenges your ability to manage your time and compliance with laws governing when and how long you can work each day.

There is truth in the truck drivers’ axiom, “if you think you’ve seen it all and learned it all then it’s time to hang up the keys”. Truck driving is a profession in which you will experience a new twist on the same practice, day, after day, after day. Some drivers, myself being an example, are fortunate enough to have had a good mentor in the first 6-12 months of their career. Many drivers receive much less in the way of mentorship. For the most part we are left to our own devices. We are our own teachers, learning on the fly, sifting through the truck stop wisdom of our peers as we grow in the job. Experience on the job is the ultimate teacher but for some it comes at a high cost in the way of fines for infractions, or worse, collisions.

The basic skills of the job are picked up quickly but it’s adapting to the “lifestyle” of the profession, maintaining a mindset of curiosity & commitment, and operating with integrity every day. That is the real challenge. Unlike most workplaces there is no supervisor, manager, or experienced lead hand to watch over you and prevent you from taking a misstep that may be catastrophic. In the past organic growth within smaller carriers provided a failsafe in this regard. Training may not have been formalized but there was a natural state of mentorship in the smaller family owned business. That still exists today but continues to shrink as mega carriers grow through acquisitions, gobbling up the smaller fish in the pond.

Take a look at how the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) views the use of Electronic Logging Devices (ELD’s) as it requests its carrier members to lobby provincial transport ministries in support of the recent Transport Canada mandate to implement ELD’s. This appeared in the CTA’s newsletter under the title, “Let’s Get ELD’s on Trucks Across Canada Soon!”

The long awaited announcement will lead to a decrease in fatigue and distraction related collisions and violations. Experience shows they also make drivers happier, safer and dramatically reduce supply chain demands to push the limits of compliance. – CTA

If drivers are happier and safer as a result of using ELD’s it is a direct result of the individual driver putting her commitment to learning and skills development to use as she adapts new tools to the challenges she faces every day.

As far as improving safety by reducing “supply chain demands” that “push the limits of compliance”, let’s just say it was jaw dropping for me to see that in print. In other words it removes the ability of the system to download inefficiencies to the driver where they have been absorbed at a high human cost in terms of health and wellbeing for years.

There remains a lack of insight on the part of the trucking lobby to the complexity of the challenges drivers face day in and day out. Legislation for ELD’s, speed limiters, sleep disorders, and drug testing is far easier to implement than dealing with the messiness of the human condition. That’s where safety resides. That’s where efforts should be focused.