By Douglas V. Gibbs
In California, it is the law that as you drive, you must keep your hands free. For example, if you want to use your cell phone, it better be with a hands free device.
They have extended that law to truckers, including disallowing truckers from using their CB Radio while in motion.
For my line of work, that also means we can't use our press to talk radio.
In my industry, we don't get paid by the hour, we get paid by the load. I start work about four in the morning, and get home normally between 5:30 and 6:30 at night. Last Friday I got home at about 9:00 pm. We don't take lunches or breaks. To do so costs time, and that could result in the loss of a load to another driver, or losing too much time just to get the last load in. Therefore, we eat as we work, and we work as quickly as we can. If we have to shovel a load forward, those thousands of pounds being moved by shovel can kill our day (along with your back).
While on the road, how we stay in contact with our dispatch is through the hand-held two way press to talk radio. The phone is too busy, with customers calling, and such. Besides, it is cheaper for the company to use the press to talk walkie talkie phones.
Normally, what we do is we drop off our load, then hurry up and get on the road, and once we are on the way back we call dispatch to let them know we are on the way. As we approach the quarries, we tell her we are in town, and she tells us what quarry to go to, what material to pick up, and what city it is going to. The exact address will be on the delivery ticket the computer spits out.
One of our drivers got a ticket not too long ago for using the hand-held, and the company is fighting it. Not being able to use the hand-held hurts business.
If we can't use the hand-held radio as we approach the city where the quarries are located, then that means we have to pull over somewhere to call in. More and more cities are limiting access to rigs, so finding a place is difficult. By the time you pull over, radio in, then get back on the road, you've lost at least fifteen minutes. Now, if you are running about four loads a day, which is fairly typical, that is the loss of an hour. Normally, the last load of the day gets squeezed in with little time to spare, largely because of traffic patterns, and because getting four a day if you are getting fairly long runs, requires a lot of hustle as it is. Losing that hour a day because I can't radio in while driving will result in me losing that fourth load. That load can be worth quite a bit. By the end of the week I may very well lose $500 because I am losing a load a day because I can't use my two-way while on the move. That's $2,000 dollars a month - and I am already making a third of what I was making ten years ago when I was in the construction industry, and work was good.
Understand this. I could be losing $2,000 a month in wages because some idiot bureaucrat has decided it is too dangerous for me to call in on my hand-held press to talk phone while driving.
But if I decide to try to protect that wage by using the hand-held anyway, then I will pay the penalty if caught, and still lose money.
Do they care?
Of course not.
Now, you add to this by looking at it from the point of view of the company. The company, as a result of this stupid hands-free law, is losing money, customers, and work because his drivers have to pull over to talk to dispatch. So, to cover all the loads, the company has to send out more trucks. That increases the cost of doing business, which increases the cost of the materials, which increases the cost of the construction, which trickles down to everyone else in the cost of purchasing properties, or the cost of any good because rent is higher for a business because the structure cost more to build because the price of materials went up because the truckers couldn't use their hand-held radios to call in to dispatch.
That's the kind of stuff the liberal democrats don't think about.
It's like how in the seventies they required cars to be more fuel efficient so we wouldn't use so much gas. So the cars were made smaller, and more fuel efficient, and now that the cars were more fuel efficient, people drove more, and in the long run the use of oil increased. And the liberals were confused. They don't take the reality of human nature into account. They don't look beyond their own stupid models that are filled with no real world experience, because hardly any of these professional politicians have ever held down a job, or lived in the real world.
Then these people accuse those "fat cat" construction companies of wanting to make more profit by raising their prices. No! They raised their prices because they are trying to survive under the weight of all of your stupid nanny-state regulations!
Government bureaucrats don't get it - especially this administration. Heavier government influence is bad for freedom, for the economy, and for the worker. These government pukes don't understand the bottom line, profit margins, or the damage they cause with their heavy government regulations.
It's like when they accuse the oil companies of making all that profit. Their profit margin is small compared to most other industries, and besides, there is not usually some fat cat smoking a cigar at the top. The profit largely goes to investors, like Grandpa's investment for his retirement.
The "fat cat" argument is just an act, anyway. These leftists know what they are doing. They are socialists, and it is all about placing you under more government control.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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