They don't want bosses who understand. They want bosses who are willing to push your buttons and fuck with you. A boss who understands your problems won't lean on the whip hard enough to inflict real pain.. They want you scared, hurting and running as hard as you can. People go to high-priced business schools to learn this.

Most drivers are already willing to work hard and there are severe legal penalties for companies that try to make them work too hard, as in hours of service violations.

Besides, I'm a business major and a senior at Indiana University and I have yet to take any classes on whip cracking.

I also took quite a number of college business management classes.

There is theory, and then there is life.

Example: Adam Smith's invisible hand is really just a slap in the face!

Seriously, there are lots of bu$$%holes in management positions who are completely
uninformed and inadequate, and who cost the company money and often, cost the
company everything. Seeing that so often drove me to become a manager myself
just to be able to prove to myself that a)it's really not that difficult to manage (depending
upon how big an idiot YOUR boss is, and how much independence you have to get 'er done)
b) the best way to manage is to respect the people who work for you, and to show them that
you can do their job, too, and fully understand it.

Guess what? It really was that simple. I was quite successful and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Business theory is just that: theory. But the world is peopled with people.

but it isn't just the trucking industry this is happening in.

The companies want the sycophantic yes men who will never, ever question anything unless it affects the bottom line and while it usually costs more to have employee changeover they really don't care, it definitely is a case of next and there is no shortage of "next" - all coming in at low wages.

not only do they want 'yes men' but they also want assholes who will keep workers from becoming too comfortable.
One of the keys to productivity that was identified many years ago and has been proven over and over is to keep the workers stirred up through constant change. (White-Westinghouse IIRC)

How does it make the trucker's job more difficult, while wasting resources?

Perhaps if a group of drivers let upper management know this affects the bottom line (which seems to matter more than anything else) that is what will make them look for improvements to their business model. Strength in numbers!

At the company I work for we haul some trash. The trash loads go to a landfill. A driver took a newer truck into the landfill, backed up over a mattress when he was going to dump the load, and got all kinds of springs and wires tangled up in the drive shaft causing some damage to the truck.

Management decided that the solution to this incident was to not let any newer trucks go into the landfill. So if you had a newer truck and you had a trash load, you either had to return to the yard and put the load on an old truck and then take it to the landfill, or meet someone at the landfill who had driven an older truck there and do the swap.

So instead of penalizing the driver who made a mistake and calling it a day, they penalized every trucker in their fleet and wasted a lot of time, energy, and fuel in the process, sometimes using two trucks to do the job of one.

They recently pulled their heads out of their asses on that one, but not after over three years of having it crammed up there.

My current situation and source of anger and frustration is that my boss is a dick and will do shit like in the previous example for fun. He was recently promoted to the job and he was so well liked by all the drivers that the general manager called a meeting telling us about the promotion and...that we had to respect the guy. It was like your momma showing up at school and telling all the kids to be nice to you. The man does not elicit any respect on his own. He also has zero commercial driving experience let alone any driving experience in our specialized fleet.

So what do we do?

If it helps any ... as already said upthread ... it's not just the trucking industry.

I work in an IT department in a medium large company and every year it seems like they add another shot of dumbfuck-juice to whatever they're serving the management. The good news is I think I'm getting to the point where it doesn't faze me so much anymore, and I can even laugh at the idiocy sometimes.

That said .. back to your issue ... is there anything magic that happens after you hit 20 years? Like a pension or something? 'Cause if so just hang in there for that and try to find amusement in the actual idiot thinking that you're the idiot.

I am so sorry to hear this...

I'm glad you're venting about it--it sucks to keep stuff like this inside.

Hang in there, sweetie...

Eyes on the prize and all that...

This sort of thing is, I think, common among many industries: Management doesn't know/understand what workers do. Its surely true among governmental agencies: Heads of agencies, put in their positions for political reasons, have no idea.

Trucking industry surely should do better.

... if that helps any.

That sucks big time. Where I work all the people that make the big decisions have no idea what the people that do the "real" work do, so they come up with all kinds of crazy ass ideas that once implemented usually make things worse. It gets pretty ridiculous at times.

Peace

I wish you had posted this in GD, Tobin.

You have really generated a great discussion here and I wish it could be more widely seen.

Sorry you had a rotten day.