:what-the-hell:
US companies/the government will send 18 y/o drivers careening off the highway (statistically) before paying a reasonable wage to skilled drivers. Can't wait to see what other regulations get sacrificed to moloch for the economy.
Also check out this 2017 expose on how utterly fucked trucking can be https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/
Los Angeles — Samuel Talavera Jr. did everything his bosses asked.
Most days, the trucker would drive more than 16 hours straight hauling LG dishwashers and Kumho tires to warehouses around Los Angeles, on their way to retail stores nationwide.
He rarely went home to his family. At night, he crawled into the back of his cab and slept in the company parking lot.
For all of that, he took home as little as 67 cents a week.
Then, in October 2013, the truck he leased from his employer, QTS, broke down.
When Talavera could not afford repairs, the company fired him and seized the truck -- along with $78,000 he had paid towards owning it.
Talavera was a modern-day indentured servant. And there are hundreds, likely thousands more, still on the road, hauling containers for trucking companies that move goods for America’s most beloved retailers, from Costco to Target to Home Depot.
Surely the teens will be paid ample compensation and not be strong armed into exploitative contracts once the probationary period is over
"Here, we see the capitalists 'fucking around' in their natural habitat. This parasitic species has found a way to externalize most of the consequences, also referred to as 'find out,' onto its host, the proletariat. In this case, we can expect to see the death of members of the host species unfortunate enough to be traveling in close proximity to these underprepared youths. In addition, there is likely to be destruction of tools of production and disruption of the flow of resources and specimens of all classes as the carnage of social murder plays out.
Will the proletariat realize the harm being done to it, and force the capitalists to 'find out' once and for all? Only time will tell. The natural world is fascinating place of struggle indeed. "
Traumatising teens with shitty working conditions and treating them as disposable sacks of meat will surely end well. I mean, it's not like it turned millenials into quivering sacks of resentment and depression... Right?
America will literally bring back child labor before letting rate of profit down
Putting 18-year-olds in the driver seat of a big-rig makes it sound like we're trying to do both.
it's fine, don't worry, when they kill someone in an accident because they've only had their license for 2 years and they've been awake for 18 hours, they'll be tried as adults!
Yeah it's wild because in the article they point out that the "probation period" actually requires a second qualified driver to be in the passenger seat at all times. I would bet anything the government is subsidizing the second driver and the companies are biding their time until they can screw these kids over big time
How long until CDLs are eliminated because trucks are just cars with more wheels?
There's been a bunch of articles about the US trying to recruit drivers from South Africa. link Maybe I should get the license and immigrate
