Truck wheel nuts have to be super tight for obvious reasons and truckers use long pipes to extend the leverage but there are always some stubborn nuts that do not want to come off just like cars. Doing wheel nuts in the rain is the worst. Everything is wet and it is easy for something to slip. Often the wheel brace can slip off the nut making you fall off balance and fall on your arse. Once my hands slipped off the extension bar and bar went flying into bush in side of the road. It took me about 15 minutes to find it with the torch. That was on the Hume highway to Albury one night.
Up until a few weeks ago I worked for many years for a large retailer that has to on a daily basis unload pallets from trucks with a forklift and I got to know a lot of the truck drivers and can tell you that they are not well paid. They typically get somewhere between $22 and $30 per hour (depending on the company) as a permanent employee (a little bit higher for casuals) as their base rate. Then penalty rates for overtime. Many of them drive long hours a day so they do tend to get some of their pay at penalty rates. However I can tell you most of the truck drivers I spoke to were driving 60-70 hour weeks and earning maybe $70,000 - $90,000 pre-tax per year. They were not well paid. The only truck drivers I spoke to that were getting say $40 or $50 per hour were the ones that owned the truck and were subcontracted. However as subcontractors they did not get annual leave, sick leave or superannuation. Also they had to pay for the maintenance of the truck from their own pocket. Possibly were you were working was a place that paid exceptionally well.
A lot of you people live in well serviced areas, you have rail, paved highways, airports all within a 100 km of you. Spare a thought for those who rely upon trucking for their food and anything else that they use for day to day life like toilet paper or soap, spare parts or newspapers, it does not arrive any other way. I've seen a few of these threads popping up lately, one the other day questioned the damage done to roads by trucks, well with an annual registration cost of over 30 grand per anum I think most are more than well on their way to paying their way. People in built up areas don't give a thought as to how most of their goods get to the shops that are all over the place, for those in remote areas trucks are still the only way they get anything, refrigerated or even just things like fencing or tools, any and everything for some people arrive by trucks. People die every day on our roads, 9.9 times out of ten a truck is not responsible, 9.9 times out of ten though a Truckie dies delivering a good to other people he or she does not know and for a minimum wage. Cattle to a market, Food to a remote community, Mail to someone somewhere, The thing is though that those who are doing the most remote stuff for a minimum wage are those who are working for themselves as owner operators. They are the ones servicing remote community's for the minimum wage and getting screwed by the mulit culti nationals along the way. They are the people getting squeezed out every so surely by the big guns and unions who are relentlessly pushing REGULATION. Truckies ruin the roads, Truckies killing people, Truckies getting ripped off, Truckies are Druggies, Truckies do this that and the other...... Look a little deeper at the larger story in future before accepting everything you read or hear. Maybe it is a case of the independent Truckie becoming a dying breed as a result of a concerted effort by others ????
Just can't get my head around why we don't use rail more, way too many trucks on the road while the train lines run beside the roads and aren't being used, seems a no brainer.Am I missing something.BTW I have no problem with truck drivers but don't get me started on the lycra army .....
Inefficient, unreliable and expensive. When there are tight customer delivery deadlines to meet, it is near impossible by rail. Different gauges in different states means interstate freight is a nightmare, and gets held up in sidings and ports for too long. Inept state governments running the rail lines means maintenance backlogs on rolling stock adds to unreliability, and lack of track maintenance often means reduced loading so the tracks can handle the weight. Often, freight needs to be trucked from origin to rail-port, then rail-port to destination anyway, so triple handling adds to costs, time, and inefficiencies. When I worked in the Illawarra coal mining industry, we could book a coal train with 24 wagons destined for the coal terminal - often only 12 wagons would arrive, and arrive late. No wonder the big mining companies built and run their own rail networks.
^^^^Joh built the railroad for the Central Qld coal fields.. Three locos pull 3 miles of wagons...Post 27 IMO has got it right, Excuses on rail don't work with me... Innovation and Technology that is the answer for suburban and interstate railways, China might show us how? Regards Errol 43 Political Atheist
^ For bulk product (eg coal, iron ore) rail wins hands down. For non-bulk it is slower and more expensive door-to-door (or ship to interstate warehouse) and road wins hands-down.
Not excuses - reasons. If rail was better, don't you think business would run with it? You have obviously never been involved in transporting goods by either method.
