Cutting our Emissions is a Moral Obligation

This post was first published in the April 2019 edition of Truck News.

It was interesting watching two opposing forces at play in February. The United We Roll convoy and the student Climate Strike protests. One group being in support of fossil fuel expansion and the other diametrically opposed. But what we often ignore is the common thread they share. The fear of what the future has in store for them.

Looking at this play unfold as a driver is a balancing act. At a glance you would think that the oil & gas sector and the trucking sector are tightly tied together. Well they are, in terms of supply and demand. After all I do burn a thousand litres or more of diesel fuel every week just doing my job. In this way I support the quality of life my fellow Canadians working in oil & gas currently enjoy and they support mine. I have no interest in intentionally undermining that relationship. But as a driver I have a significant impact on the amount of fuel the truck I drive burns, affecting carbon emissions, which in turn affects the quality of life of my grandchildren.

There is no doubt in my mind that we have to curb our use of fossil fuels. I don’t state that to be contentious. I see it as our responsibility to future generations. At the same time I recognise we cannot turn off a tap. We have built our modern society on the fossil fuel industry but we are now well past the point of disregarding the negative effects of emissions and we must move past any belief that expansion of the industry can build a “greener” future for all. At the same time we will continue to depend on diesel fuel in the Canadian trucking industry for many years to come. But I believe it will be, should be, and needs to be, greatly reduced. We only need look around to see how plans to do exactly that are underway, especially in terms of electrification of last mile delivery.

I know what it is to lose everything when the sector you're working in simply evaporates along with your financial security and personal aspirations. We need a transition plan for the many thousands of workers in the oil and gas sector. I have learned over the course of my life that the skills we develop over the course of our careers are transferable. Does that come without fear and uncertainty of what the immediate future has in store for you? Of course not. But with some additional training and the support of your fellow citizens it can be done.

Future generations face far greater uncertainty in which only our collective effort can make a difference. This is exactly why tens of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe participate every Friday in Climate Strike protests rather than attend school.

The oil and gas sector along with the transportation sector are the top two emitters of carbon in the Canadian economy and those emissions are growing year over year not shrinking. So what is it that we are doing to support our young people in order to ensure that they have a viable future and the quality of life that they deserve? What is our plan to insure that this comes to pass? Do we have a plan? I don't think that we do. This is the greatest failure in terms of recruiting new people to the trucking industry. We should focus on how we can change the world for future generations not on how great we have been in the past.

As individual drivers there's a lot that we can do to change the world. It’s as simple as burning less fuel. That goes hand in hand with reducing costs and increasing profits. It also goes hand in hand with improving our safety culture through training and moral leadership. We can all win in this battle if we focus on our common needs.

MELT is a Good First Step

This post was first published in the March 2019 edition of Truck News.

I’m tired. There are a lot of things in the trucking industry that can wear you down as a driver. But nothing drains me more than the jabber that rains down about safety. You see, I think that rather than being expected as a driver to deliver safety at the tip of a bayonet, that is regulations and fines, I should be delivering safety as a result of the exceptional training and treatment I receive as a professional driver.

I’ve written about this before. Truck driving is one of the top ten occupations with the highest numbers of deaths per thousand workers. Without a strong industry and regulatory focus on my personal safety how can I be expected to deliver on a commitment of keeping others safe around me? Without a workplace culture that is virtuous in its moral and ethical approach as to how the requisite safety skills are delivered to guys like me, how can the trucking sector make strides towards a safer workplace? Remember, my workplace IS the commons we all share.

So we’re looking at Mandatory Entry Level Training (MELT) as a federal responsibility. Good. I’m in agreement with that. But don’t forget that each individual truck driver in Canada will accumulate more driving time in the next 2 weeks than the time that is currently spent to certify a new commercial driver to operate in our public space. What happens after that is dependent on how the individual driver is treated. It’s not about the ability to stick to a set of rules. It is about delivering a high moral sense of purpose to all drivers. The rules are tools enabling drivers to build a safer workspace.

MELT is only the first step on a journey that ends at the conclusion of a driver’s career. It is a beginning, nothing more. This is where the lip service and hand wringing that trickles down from the top starts to wear out guys like me.

You see, once a driver has been on the road and accumulated that first 10,000 hours of experience, it becomes all about attitude. Four or five years of life and learning has passed by. The majority of a drivers time is now spent thinking about their day rather than the moment to moment experience at their fingertips. A drivers muscle memory has been developed in terms of the physical skills needed to safely operate a heavy piece of equipment. A driver has made some career decisions over this course of time and decided to stick it out. The majority of drivers have reached a point in their career that being treated well for doing what they do well is the most important thing to them in terms job satisfaction. Yes, they want to be paid well too.

It is at this point in a professional driver’s career that we usually find, or have found, a carrier that is a good fit. We find a sector of the industry that speaks to our passion for driving and challenges us with additional skill sets. Every professional driver that reaches this point, usually about 5 years in to their career, has a passion for driving and safety.

What professional drivers in Canada don’t have is a network to feed back their experience to the regulatory bodies that govern their workspace. Drivers don’t have the training infrastructure needed that provides ongoing career training and national standards for the carriers they work for. Drivers need MELT. Drivers need apprenticeship training after MELT. Drivers need certification and recognition as a trade. Drivers need ongoing training over the course off their careers.

Professional drivers and carriers of integrity know what has to be done to eliminate collisions on our public roads. We just need the public will to get it done. Living with the unresolved problem and seeing the simplicity of the solution is what tires me out.

Lessons Learned From a Broken Window

This post was first published in the February 2019 edition of Truck News

My last road trip of 2018 was supposed to be a simple one, a straight run between terminals from southwestern Ontario to Winnipeg and back. But sometimes even the simplest of plans goes off the rails for the most unlooked for of reasons, that’s the nature of the trucking business. When that happens it’s a reminder that theory always meets reality at the same point that the rubber meets the road in this business. This is the story of a broken window.

I was rolling along Ontario highway #17, northbound, about 40 km south of the town of Wawa on December 27.  I was heading into a winter storm that had been forecast. That in itself was not a big deal. It was not the first heavy winter weather I had ever encountered and it won’t be the last. I was well prepared for it and in a sense actually looking forward to the driving challenges ahead of me. At this point I rolled down my driver’s side window to clear some snow that had started to accumulate on my mirror. The window would not roll back up. Great! I pulled over at the first available safe space on the roadside and proceeded to try and free up the window in order to close it after determining it wasn’t something as simple as a blown fuse. This is the point where the train went off the rails. I broke the window in my efforts to free it and close it. The safety glass disintegrated into many thousands of pieces. I wish I had a picture of my face when that happened. It would have illustrated stunned disbelief.

So for a few minutes I sat on the side of the road with no window in my driver’s side door in the sub-zero temperature with a winter storm building around me and stretching for several hundred kilometres in front of me with the only thought in my head being, now what?

I did what every driver has to do at this point, drive. I put on my toque and winter jacket and headed for Wawa ahead of me, formulating a plan in my head as I drove. The one godsend was that this happened on a business day during business hours. On arrival in Wawa I dropped my trailer at the Esso truck stop, bobtailed into town and picked up some clear vinyl and tuck tape at the local building supply. I fashioned a patch over the window opening and at this point contacted dispatch and filled them in on my problem. I knew I could get to Thunder Bay that day so all I needed was for dispatch to set me up at the Freightliner dealer the next morning to fix me up. That was the plan we put together. It worked. I rolled into Santorelli’s truck stop with 7 minutes to spare on my clock that night. My temporary window held up through the heavy snow and kept the cold at bay. By noon the following day I was leaving the winter wonderland of Thunder Bay with a new window in place.

This little story is repeated time and time again across the trucking industry in so many different forms. It speaks to creativity and ingenuity. These are qualities that you find within every successful trucker out here on the road. They are the stories that you only usually hear around the table in the truck stop as we share our experiences. This is the reality of where the rubber meets the road. Drivers have to roll with the punches and often formulate contingency plans on the fly, dealing with issues as they arise.

This isn’t something a driver learns through mandatory entry level training. Creativity and ingenuity are innate qualities good drivers possess and are developed through mentorship, coaching, experience, and empowerment. There remains a lot to unpack from this little story.

Looking Beyond Skills-Based Training

This post originally published in January 2019 issue of Truck News.

Are we hung up on skills based training in the trucking sector? I think we are, and that is the root problem when it comes to hiring and retaining drivers. You see it’s great to learn a new skill. It’s exciting, and because the learning curve is steep over the course of the first year we remain keen about our new profession. The thing is that once wr accrue that first few thousand hours of experience and what is new becomes rote like, our mind turns away from its focus on developing skills to the mundane routine of our daily grind. It is at this point that we lose the bulk of our new drivers.

The long haul truck driver faces a unique set of challenges in todays connected world. Drivers are asked to take on a role that must remain mentally focused on a single task for hours on end without deviation. At the same time the skills the industry places so much focus on developing are becoming increasingly redundant with the expansion of technology through ‘driver assist’ systems and automated power trains. In fact we actively market the concept of anyone being able to drive a truck because of advanced automated systems. This puts a new focus on the mental challenges the long haul driver faces. Much of the joy we derive from our work as drivers is at risk. The term “steering wheel holder” is taking on a whole new meaning in our industry.

The point I am striving to get across here is a subtle one that is difficult to understand if you have never actually done the job of long haul driving for any length of time.

It is incredibly important to hold on to your independence and remain empowered over how you use your time, apply your skills & experience, and interact with the equipment you operate. These core factors of job satisfaction are being undermined by the same technologies that are imposed on us under the auspices of making our lives as drivers easier.

I am not against the adoption of new systems, practices, or technologies that are intended to improve safety and performance. But there is an overarching feeling out here on the road that freedom and independence, the hallmark values that define what it is to be a long haul trucker, are on the chopping block and that will lead to this great profession becoming yet another McJob of the 21^st century.

So why do I think a focus on skills based training is a big part of the problem? It’s because we have been developing a black & white rules based approach to safety through enforcement that is static in its nature but the responsibilities of a driver are dynamic and constantly in flux. We spend far too little time on the nuanced application of skills in a constantly changing work environment and how we can interact with new technologies and systems to solve the problems we face rather than an approach that sees us passively monitoring technology as it does the job for us.

We are not encouraging innovation in the cab. In fact we have already developed a mindset that has elevated the new automated truck as a piece of equipment that is beyond the understanding of the average driver. How is this attractive in any way as a career option? Have we inadvertently converted the responsibilities of a professional trucker to that of a steering wheel holder? Are we trying to attract people to a career that anyone can now  do after receiving a 105 hours of skills training with very little to no attention being paid to the mental challenges a driver faces on a daily basis?

There is a deeply human side to truck driving that we are putting aside as we struggle with the rapid transition to new technologies. It’s that transition where our struggle resides, not in learning the physical skills of the job.

Communication the Biggest Barrier Drivers Face

This post originally published in December 2018 issue of Truck News.

I did something at the end of October I haven’t done for a very long time, I attended a trucking symposium. Sponsored by the Women's Trucking Federation of Canada (WTFC) it brought together drivers and staff from operations, safety, and the executive suite in the same room.

I came away from the day’s meeting with a lot of information of high value to me as a driver. I also came away from the meeting with questions.  A few years ago I spent a considerable amount of time attending industry meetings and became somewhat disenchanted. It's not that the information I gleaned from these meetings wasn’t valuable or that the presenters weren’t professional and well-informed. The problem I saw was that the intention to create positive change on the front line wasn't trickling down to the drivers. WTFC is trying to change that narrative from the bottom up. In light of that this inaugural meeting was named Bridging the Barriers.

There were a couple of things that stood out for me at the meeting. The first was the presentation on trailer theft and truck hijacking. It was an interactive session and training that every driver should receive. It was great to have a 30-year police veteran share his experience as to how these hijackings come about and what you should do if you are a victim (driver) in order to come out of it safely.

The presentation on cannabis and drug & alcohol testing was also interesting. It amazes me that the government can mandate this testing and we rarely if ever question its efficacy. The trucking industry spends tens of millions of dollars every year on drug testing.

So when I put these things together in my head I'm left wondering about something that I have written about in this space many times before. Why do we not have a federally mandated standardized Apprenticeship Training Program for truck drivers in this country?

As important as it is to our personal safety, truck hijacking is not part of a standardized safety program but standardized drug testing is, with questionable results in my opinion in terms of improving safety outcomes. Why are we not questioning that investment?

It appears to me, after participating in a seminar titled Bridging the Barriers, that the greatest barrier we face is the communication barrier. Getting the information to the drivers on the front line is the greatest challenge we face. Until we overcome that obstacle how can we address any of the other major issues that we face?

It's not reasonable to expect long-haul drivers to attend trucking seminars on a regular basis. We simply don't have the time nor can we do it on our own dime. But that doesn't mean we should just throw in the towel.

As drivers we should be investing in organizations like WTFC. The price of membership is less than what the average driver spends on a dozen large coffees in the course of her work week. The return on that small investment is that you have drivers representing you to the rest of the industry in a positive way and bringing to light the issues we face on the front line every day.

That being said, we can't expect that throwing only money at a problem is going to solve it. We have to participate in the process in some way. This is the objective of WTFC. The goal of this organization is to build a network of informed drivers. This is the best way to amplify our voice as drivers in a positive way. We need to bring the driver experience to the forefront of our industry.

As professional drivers we need a unified lobby if we want to have a strong voice at the table. I would urge drivers to take a close look at WTFC as a channel for being that change that you want to see in our industry.

Trucking Industry Needs to Acknowledge role in Climate Change

This post first published in November 2019 issue of Truck News.

We don't talk a lot about climate change or climate science in our business which is at odds with the fact that the transportation industry is a massive consumer of fossil fuels. What we do talk a lot about is reducing our fuel costs and becoming increasingly more efficient and profitable.

We also talk a lot about how we can attract young people into the trucking industry and how difficult that is in this day in age. What we don't talk a lot about is how climate change is the existential issue of our times to the same young people we are trying to attract.

Why would a young person today want to be part of an industry that is seen to be contributing to climate change without taking responsibility for it?

As an industry Insider I know that this is not the case. There are many trucking companies adopting technologies to reduce emissions and fuel costs out of a sense of social responsibility as much as out of a need to be fiscally responsible.

We also know that young people want to be the change they want to see in the world and that ‘need to change' is becoming increasingly urgent because the effects of climate change are going to impact their lives directly.

It's time to stop thinking of attracting young people to our industry just to drive trucks. We need to be able to show that it's possible to make a positive change in the world from the inside of a truck cab.

At times we can be our own worst enemy. As we have adopted technology that is more fuel efficient we have also presented it as something that is superior in performance to that of an experienced driver.

It is not enough to say to us (drivers) come and sit in the midst of our fancy technology and see how wonderful it is, enjoy the ride. We need to be able to interact with technology, to make it more than what it is, to be able to enhance our lives and the lives of others, to feel that we are making the world a better place through what we do everyday.

All of that may sound idealistic, even utopian, but we all want to make something of ourselves and contribute to the world around us.

When it comes to the issues of climate change action AND improved fuel efficiency I believe the driver is the key. This is also where the solution to the driver shortage can be found.

For this to happen we need to first realize that driver training goes far beyond skills training and implementing rules and systems that govern individual actions.

Over the years I've learned that in order to enhance my performance I need to have the autonomy and be empowered with the responsibility to make decisions out here on the road. When treated with trust and respect most of us respond with commitment and loyalty. That has been my experience. I have been fortunate in that respect.

Somehow we need to pull all of these things together. We need to take a leading role in reducing carbon emissions and sing that from the rooftops. We need to open up our industry to new blood by letting people know that they can be the change they want to see in the future, that their personal contributions in the trucking industry can have significant and immediate impacts. We need to treat people well. We need national training programs that are universally available to drivers and carriers that support the full trucking experience.

That not asking for much is it? But it’s where we need to go. Settling for less at this point in time is not an option.

Kindness as a Driving Skill

This post was first published in the October 2018 edition of Truck News.

Kindness isn’t something we would normally discuss as a required ‘skill’ when it comes to driving. We discuss ‘road rage’ a great deal in our business and recognize that anger sitting firmly in the mind of a driver is not something that leads to skillful operation of a motor vehicle. So we are well aware that anger is a detriment to road safety and actively discuss its negative effects but we rarely, if ever, talk about kindness as a skill to be taught that will enhance road safety.

Maybe teaching kindness is too much to ask. Perhaps talking about it is enough to get us to consciously include it as part of our daily life. What would that look like out on the road?

The best example I can point too is the friction that exists today between drivers and cyclists. If you follow the news in southern Ontario you’re well aware of the number of collisions between vehicles and cyclists, the result being that a number of cyclists have been seriously injured or killed. This is totally unacceptable and completely avoidable. The simple and obvious solution is to build cycle tracks to accommodate the growing cycling community. By separating cyclists and cars/trucks/buses we eliminate the possibility of injury and death. Instead of doing this we paint stripes on the existing roadways to separate cars and bicycles then ask all road users to be courteous to one another and everything will work out just fine. It’s not working.

The big problem we face on all our roadways is a prevailing ‘me first’ attitude on the part of drivers. As operators of heavy equipment – and yes, if you are a car driver this means you too – we have a responsibility to cyclists and pedestrians. This responsibility exists because politicians and designers of our road infrastructure have decided that the best option for all of us is to share our roadways and the simple fact is that when a collision occurs between a vehicle and a cyclist or pedestrian the loser will always be the cyclist or pedestrian. In a world where kindness, compassion, and courtesy guide how we interact with our fellow man fault should not be a factor. As vehicle drivers we are asking other road users that operate without the protection of a metal box around them, to place their lives in our hands. So the safety bar is set higher for us as drivers. Our responsibility is to keep others safe. Period.

To be kind as a driver is to adopt defensive driving skills and to put them into play 100% of the time when behind the wheel. This requires a great deal of introspection and self-accountability on the part of every person that holds a driver’s license. It’s not an option. It is our moral obligation.

Obeying traffic laws and developing habits that leave ample space for other road users to make a mistake without killing themselves is a generous act in my opinion. Bringing patience to your driving experience is the first step in becoming a kind and courteous driver. Putting time on the back burner of your mind is a necessity. If you are always in haste as a driver a fatal mistake is always waiting in the wings. Impatience is a sure way to elevate the level of risk to those around you and to yourself. Putting aside all of your distractions, including thoughts of anything but driving, is another simple act of generosity and kindness.

I know that many people will read this and disagree with me on many points. This is exactly why we need to talk more about it. As long as we are asked to eliminate road deaths and road violence by simply following the rules we can’t ignore our emotions and how they play out on our roadways and in our neighbourhoods. Yes, kindness is a skill and something we need to teach.