0:13  
It's seven o'clock on a snowy Tuesday night in December. Ken Hobbs sits in his truck at a fuel stop just off the highway in Whitby, his iPad and iPhone sitting there chargers on his dash. As he watches the other transports come and go, getting a quick bite of food, or some coffee for the rest of their trips somewhere also filling up their race.

0:42  
Ken isn't allowed to be on the road anymore tonight, even though he only has to drive to Hamilton. You see, Ken has an oversized load. And there are time restrictions on when he's allowed on the highway. He doesn't really mind though. There's too much at stake in this weather.

0:58  
I was the Michigan one time the car in bad weather car turned around on the front to me. And I lost control the truck was much pretty bad. The girls taken away an ambulance. And the same thing happened to me by Milton are the sign of Milton. a newcomer to the country was watching TV as he drove in soulstone. So that wrote my truck off. He went underneath, put him in the guard rails. He lived but he had to buy a new truck, which I didn't complain about. Yeah,

1:40  
one of the other issues that causes accidents is how tired the drivers are getting. The regulations on transport truck drivers changed recently. And they're now allowed to drive up to 14 hours a day, if you

1:51  
stuck, you know, the 15 hours or 14 hours a day to come before this point out in the spec people, you know, to keep on going right and it's just hard. And that's why you see a lot of drivers falling asleep on the highway and getting off the road. And it's just the demand. They want to they want to pay you less and they just want to walk you.

2:19  
That's Ali Abdullah. He's been working as a transport truck driver for almost 22 years. allien can have both seen drivers on the road for far longer than their allotted 14 hours. Transport drivers have to log their hours and logging books. And some drivers have been known to carry too. This lets them fudge their numbers to keep them within regulation. It's highly illegal, but still widely done.

2:47  
Electronic logbook you know there's some drivers are very crooked. And the idea was, you know, this way they end up in a lot of accidents award is they go over the limit in 70 hours for them is not enough they want 100 hours a week.

3:01  
One of the ways the government is trying to combat this is by making electronic logging devices or LDS mandatory in all commercial vehicles. As it stands now, all trucks have until June 12 2021 to become compliant.

3:20  
Well, we get into that now. Because that's what we have to use now. mtos in the government

3:27  
in the states have gone to electronic logs. They haven't done that here. So you can cheat on your logbook all you want as long as your fuels. Your fuel SOPs was there in line, you can lie all you want. And I know that there's companies that are send a driver to Montreal he gets back to say that back wall. When do you buy the four livesay of NATO? Well, they didn't.

4:01  
A big reason for the pressure put on the drivers by their companies is because land transport is now the most commonly used way to transport goods. Canada exports around 55% of all of our goods by road. Because this is all commercial truckers do. The main trucking companies are pretty much spread over the four powerhouses of Canada. Ontario leads the way with almost 42% of the country's trucking companies, Alberta, Quebec and British Columbia all set around the 15% mark. Interestingly, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta combined make up over 75% of all of the paved roads in Canada. Fewer and fewer people are doing this type of transporting though. crossing the border for deliveries often means being away from home for long periods of time.

4:56  
One year away for up to six weeks, two months time. And pendant who you work for, like I only run Ontario, Quebec. And I do just as well as then guys. Yeah, but I've allowed for a long time I know what to go for and what not to go for. Yeah.

5:16  
In an article for trucking news.com 24% of men, and 22% of women feel that trucking offers of work life balance. But the rest, don't. an alley tends to agree with them.

5:30  
You know, you're never home. If you want to make money with us, but you're never home. And if you do the City Walk, didn't want to pay you very well. And this is how

5:42  
it works. For some people though. Ken has been a driver since 1968. And he and his wife have grown accustomed to being apart for long periods of time.

5:52  
She met me as a driver, and I'm home any more than four or five days by boots and bagger at the front door. She's just loving the host herself.

6:04  
The problem the industry is facing right now is that not a lot of people see it that way. The younger generations aren't coming into the trucking industry anymore. And that could be a main factor. According to a 2016 report put out by the Canadian trucking Alliance, the average description of a trucker was almost 47 years old, non immigrant and male. So what do we do? Well, more incentives work. will better training get more people? Right now the training doesn't really seem sufficient.

6:38  
Well

6:40  
since deregulation command change a lot. There's no there's no old school drivers hired out here anymore. It's all people have been pushed through driving schools and like anywhere else haften don't train to just like puppy mills, you know, push them out.

7:02  
Oh, you take a cause, you know, region cause the driving is just like theory and practical. You know, and and even that, you know, once you come out of there, you're still fresh. Giving you a 53 a big tremor like that. You know, and they take you downtown and see. You've got to know what you're doing. A little compensate. They want three years experience where where did these guys get the license and get experience? If you don't hire them normally.

7:39  
whatever they're going to do, they need to do it fast. Report show that by 2020. Canada could face a 25 to 30,000 driver shortage. There is one thing for sure, though, until the industry gets the drivers it needs. The roads will be more dangerous and the drivers will be pushed too far.

8:08  
You've been listening to trucking nuts. This podcast was hosted, written and produced by Emily Wrigglesworth for Ryerson University.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai