Note the date on the screen grab of the above Facebook post from operator Jeff Clark. When I saw this two days back I wondered just how long was left in current Acting Administrator T.F. Scott Darling’s “acting” term, only to catch the news yesterday that there is very little time indeed.
Time for a campaign? Clark threw his hat into the ring quite some time ago — the post he links to in the Facebook post is at this link, from February of 2014.
Here’s what he outlined as priority issues he’d want to address should such a thing come to fruition:
1) More resources to go after chameleon carriers shut down by FMCSA that pop up under a new name and number. “Few carriers actually get shut down by the FMCSAl” Clark wrote. “Those that do have earned it” and “damage the reputation of the entire industry” and “drive down rates.”
2) Hours: Allow once-a-week 14-hour-rule flex to 16. Also, eliminate the 1-5 a.m. restart restriction, presumably for good (history, and Congress, has one-upped Clark in the short-term on that one).
3) Mandatory pay for detention “does not go far enough” in Clark’s view. “I believe when a driver is at work that driver should be getting paid. There are many reasons we can’t keep new drivers in trucking. This eliminates one of them. It encourages dock efficiency. Efficiency is good. The driver would have to log this time on duty in order to get paid for it.”
4) CSA: Eliminate DataQs process in favor of court system. “No driver should be punished for a violation that they were not convicted of,” Clark wrote. “The fact that they are is offensive.”
Read more via this link to Clark’s original post.
Listen-back podcast: Tony Justice in 2011
I can well remember the first time I heard from Tony Justice — an email received in early 2011 with Justice sharing an introduction and links to a sampling of tracks from his then-in-production “On the Road” record. From the first listen — it was this track, the rollicking “Peterbilt 379” — it was clear I was dealing with more than your garden variety musical tinkerer.
This driver was making some serious music.
Tony Justice drives for Greenville, Tenn.-based Everhart Transportation. Find more about his most recent record, “Apple Pie Moonshine,” in the story and podcast at this link.I was thinking about those first interactions putting together — and recently adding to — the “Music to truck by” playlist on SoundCloud (find the most recent version embedded below). I remembered I’d met Justice out at the TravelCenters of America location where we talked a bit and he played a couple tracks from his soon-to-be-released record from the driver’s seat of the Peterbilt he was in at the time. Find the audio from those tracks below, a version of Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road” and Justice’s own “Who Needs Heaven.”
What do I hear, listening back? Honesty in presentation, pure and simple. A little window on the past, which continues in the present and into the future, no doubt. If this is the first time you’ve heard Justice’s name, here’s the search page for it here at OverdriveOnline.com, for more of what he’s been up to the last several years.
