Profile For Bill F.

Any driver seeing a known driver drinking from what is obviously a beer bottle (even though it may be non-alcoholic) is going to be reported. Whether it is reported to the police, the driver's company, or the lot owner, nothing good will come of it. How many times would you want to explain; But it's non-alcoholic beer. This situation is begging to be hassled. Don't do it...

What's not to like. Commercial free, works in mountains, pick your music genre.

Can a motor carrier declare a driver out of service, for any darn thing they want to? Or must they follow FMCSA laws and guidelines put out for the industry. There are no FMCSA guidelines for taking a driver out of service pending the results of a drug test.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the way I see it the company didn't declare him "out of service" per se. At least not as defined by FMCSA. He was still able to operate a commercial vehicle, by law.

The company did, however, refuse to let him operate "their" equipment pending the drug test.

There's a difference.

He used the specific term "out of service" twice in his first post! He had a random. There must have been some issue with it and called him back for a hair test. Which took a week. There are many different issues that could have caused a problem with his sample that are perfectly legitimate.

I am on a medication that shows pos on every test I take. Due to this my test results take longer to come back than other test takers and has led to suspicions being raised about my possible drug use. Even though all my tests are passed clean this time lag has caused me problems. But I have never been put out of service pending results. Some of the FMCSA laws are written specifically to prevent this.

That is why I have been posting, to deaf ears I might add... No hard feelings here

I never once mentioned someone's rights being violated.

You most certainly did. You said:

I believe your company violated FMCSA controlled substance testing laws by doing what you stated.

That's another way of saying his rights were violated. It's really fun trying to carry on a conversation with someone who says something and then immediately denies saying it.

Not only that, but you told him:

Take them to small claims court for that weeks pay and find another job.

I don't need to amplify that. It's already the most extreme solution possible. You told him to quit his job and sue the company over a small issue that wasn't the company's fault in the first place.

I don't think you should be telling people to basically blow up their lives over a small issue. He shouldn't quit his job because his company did nothing wrong. He shouldn't sue the company because he has no grounds for it. He would lose twice as much as he could possibly win in the time it would take him to find another job and get started with them, if he could even do that. Who is going to hire someone who is in the middle of a lawsuit with their last company? They're going to look at the circumstances and say, "Sorry, we've found a better candidate" and he's going to get the door slammed in his face time and time again. Then that lawsuit will be publicly available the rest of his life. Every employer he applies to is going to find that.

So you recommend that he goes through all of that over a little issue that wasn't the company's fault in any way? That is over the top, reactionary, short sighted thinking.

So now you twist my words to lend credence to yours. You try to make me out to be an outraged rights screaming nutter but that is simply not the case. FMCSA laws are not rights and nobody thinks of them that way. Everyone who rages about their rights is referring to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Answer me this Brett; Can a motor carrier declare a driver out of service, for any darn thing they want to? Or must they follow FMCSA laws and guidelines put out for the industry. There are no FMCSA guidelines for taking a driver out of service pending the results of a drug test. Unless that test was required for a claim of drug use suspicion by a certified drug testing agent who personally witnessed behavior that led to a suspicion of drug use. Kind of difficult to do that over the phone.

If the company was a victim in this, so was the suspected driver, who you and others hold in such contempt. I know a lot of people that would really be hurt by losing a weeks pay. And if they are an experienced driver with a good record, they will have ZERO problems getting work. People sue their employers all the time and win.

Take them to small claims court for that weeks pay and find another job.

Well that's about the worst advice imaginable. Seriously, your best judgment on how to handle the situation would be to take your own company, a large corporation, to small claims court because someone called in to say they suspect you're using drugs and they pulled you off the road to test you? I don't even know what to say about someone who thinks that's a logical way to handle this.

Bill, I can see you're one of those people who gets outraged at every inconvenience and you feel everything a company does is somehow trampling on your rights. Try owning and operating a business sometime where you're legally liable for everything your workers do and see what it's like on the other side of things.

Try running a business that receives a phone call saying that a guy you hired and gave an opportunity to is operating an 80,000 pound vehicle with your name on it while doing drugs. Then, when it turns out not to be true, reach into your pocket and pull out a month's worth of profits and hand it to that driver and apologize for inconveniencing him.

If you think you're outraged now, think about that scenario.

If someone is calling in on that driver to say he's doing drugs then that driver needs to get his life and his relationships in order. If he made enemies then he needs to fix the situation somehow. It's not on anyone else to manage his life and relationships. The company did what they were legally obligated to do to protect themselves and the general public from a potentially dangerous situation. They don't owe anyone anything for doing that.

I am not the least bit outraged. And I never once mentioned someone's rights being violated. You do this on a regular basis Brett, over amplify what somebody posts with pure speculation.

It's funny how when some of you start thinking about someone's rights being violated all logical sense seems to drain completely out of your skulls.

Take a moment to think this through, will you? This person said someone called in on him claiming that they had some sort of knowledge that he was taking drugs.

What do you expect the company to do? Ignore it? Just blow it off like it's a sham or something?

I guarantee you that if he would have gotten into an accident after the company had ignored that call, the same people who are saying the company owes this guy money would have been screaming to the Gods that this company should be put out of business for not looking into this.

Instead, when the company does their due diligence and it turns out he's clean, suddenly you think the company should pay him? Why would the company owe this driver money? What did the company do wrong in this instance that they should pay him?

In fact, why shouldn't the driver owe the company money instead? I'm sure whoever called in must have identified him by name. So obviously someone who knows him either had a vendetta against him or honestly thought he was taking drugs of some sort. It wasn't the company's fault this happened. If anything it was the driver's fault. This cost the company a ton of money when their truck went out of service and they had to pay to have this driver tested. Who is going to reimburse the company for the money they lost due to no fault of their own?

I answered based on his telling the truth. Call me naive. What would you suggest if they called again next week, and the week after? Can we now empty any truckers wallet with a phone call? Nothing logical about that.

The carrier could simply chalk this up as a random drug screen. Or they could easily say "No, we infact we did have reasonable suspicion", when may of not of had a shred of evidence. Hard to say without getting their true facts. Either way it's their right to test. Like it or not.

I believe your company violated FMCSA controlled substance testing laws by doing what you stated. A trained tester has to observe the suspicious behavior before testing you.

Now, they can most likely get by this by stating, company policy, yadda yadda yadda. You just have to ask yourself is this a company you want to stay with after experiencing a week of no pay for no error on your part. They may be violating their own company policy by doing this, but you won't know if you don't make some waves. Either suck it up or make a stink.

(b) An employer shall require a driver to submit to a controlled substances test when the employer has reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver has violated the prohibitions of subpart B of this part concerning controlled substances. The employer's determination that reasonable suspicion exists to require the driver to undergo a controlled substances test must be based on specific, contemporaneous, articulable observations concerning the appearance, behavior, speech or body odors of the driver. The observations may include indications of the chronic and withdrawal effects of controlled substances.

Copied from FMCSA website:https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&ty=HTML&h=L&mc=true&=PART&n=pt49.5.382#se49.5.382_1307

The carrier cannot call it a random drug screen after they have already defined it as reasonable suspicion, that is a ludicrous statement. They also cannot redefine a clearly stated federal regulation. Look up the meanings of the words; specific, contemporaneous, articulable, and observation. It is their right to test complying with federal and state law and legitimate legal company policies. Any violations of these laws leaves them open to litigation. How would you like to lose a weeks pay over a likely anonymous phone call? I would be seriously ****ed but would talk to them calmly. A good driver can always find employment. Take them to small claims court for that weeks pay and find another job. If the case is as stated, I bet he would win.

I believe your company violated FMCSA controlled substance testing laws by doing what you stated. A trained tester has to observe the suspicious behavior before testing you.

Now, they can most likely get by this by stating, company policy, yadda yadda yadda. You just have to ask yourself is this a company you want to stay with after experiencing a week of no pay for no error on your part. They may be violating their own company policy by doing this, but you won't know if you don't make some waves. Either suck it up or make a stink.

(b) An employer shall require a driver to submit to a controlled substances test when the employer has reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver has violated the prohibitions of subpart B of this part concerning controlled substances. The employer's determination that reasonable suspicion exists to require the driver to undergo a controlled substances test must be based on specific, contemporaneous, articulable observations concerning the appearance, behavior, speech or body odors of the driver. The observations may include indications of the chronic and withdrawal effects of controlled substances.

Copied from FMCSA website:https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&ty=HTML&h=L&mc=true&=PART&n=pt49.5.382#se49.5.382_1307

So raising driver wages through unionization would help driver wages, would have little or no influence on the profitability of trucking companies, and would hurt the economy in general. Because there are 3.5 million drivers that stand to benefit but 315 million (or so) Americans that would be hurt by higher truck driver salaries, nobody is in any kind of a hurry to unionize trucking. Add to that the fragmentation of the industry which would make unionization a million times more difficult than in an industry with only a few major players (the Airlines for example) and you come to the only conclusion you really can - unionization of the trucking industry is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

The premise of your argument is that of trickle-down economics. Paying workers more, overall, would help the economy, not hurt the economy. Putting money in the workers' hands allows them to buy more goods. The rising tide lifts all ships. Taking the money out of the hands of CEOs and putting it into the hands of the people who do the actual work helps the people who do the actual work. A related idea is that of taxation. Raising taxes on the wealthy is another way to get the money flowing up instead of down. This money could be used to fund our ailing highway infrastructure and to provide more rest stops for trucks.

"You see, Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas."

Krugman Article--Tax Policy Dance

If taxing the wealthy doesn't hurt the economy, neither will raising wages hurt the economy.

The other issue is the increasing productivity of American workers in the time frame that you mention. Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. Therefore, “it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.”

American Productivity

George Carlin said it best: "You have owners. They own you." If the April 12, 2019 wildcat strike I've been hearing about in Black Smoke Matters comes to pass, those owners may have to take a step or two back.

Reagan cut taxes and the economy boomed. 8 years of Obama liberal lunacy and the economy actually contracted (got smaller) for the first time in our history. Trump cuts taxes and the economy booms. And linking to a Krugman piece, the idiot who predicted our economy would actually crash because of tax cuts. What a joke.

No University research needed. We are living it.