What about when they flip their chip trucks over on traffic circles, and random city streets? Will they still be paid for this downtime?

So, now the drivers will be trying to get more trips in. in a professional manner of course. Should make for some good drama when they’re all waiting to dump chips at the mills.

I agree govsux. This worries me. The profit motivation often overrides the good sense get home alive motivation.

Relax govsux..the drivers don’t get to choose how many trips they make. And no. .I’m not affiliated with the company or it’s staff. Trips are set, times are set. ..how they are paid for that same trip will change. Hours allowed aren’t changing nor dictated by trucking companies. I do however question why this information is even being reported…?

29 votes rejecting the pact, 26 votes were in favour and two ballots were spoiled.
Looks like a majority to me. What’s next city bus drivers paid by the trip, school bus drivers paid per passenger trip kilometer. And so on, so forth. This a recipe for accidents, it comes down to greed by the employers, it is that simple , the pay load has increased substantially over the years, the trucks pulling are far more fuel efficient more powerful and larger, Tires last longer. No mention though of the trucking firms paying their fair share of the road maintenance and damage to the roads and highways they are causing with all these large heavy loads.

I agree with much of your post Furtree, but would add that the end user of the chips is probably pressuring the trucking companies for favourable rates, I would assume that that end of the business is very competitive.
metalman.

echoes – correct me if I’m wrong, but from my logging industry days, you’d calculate a reasonable amount of time to get from the bush to the mill and back – say 4 hours, and in a 12 hour day, you can make 3 trips. But, if you manage to do it in 3 hours, you could get in 4 trips, and increase your pay substantially – hence, logging trucks doing 100 km an hour on Chief Lake Rd.

But even if they set the number of trips at 3 – i.e. you don’t get paid if you get a 4th trip in, what’s the stop the driver from spending a leisurely half hour a Timmy’s, and then driving like a bat out of hell to make up for it. Or, if there’s 10 trucks lined up at the loader, driving like a bat out of hell to make up for lost time. Or, he’d like to knock off after 11 hours, so drive like a bat out of hell because once he’s done 3 trips, he’s done for the day?

I suppose he might get caught by CVSE or the RCMP, but at least where I live out Ness Lake way, both CVSE and RCMP only venture out there after the big crash – so they’re pretty much golden to go as fast as they want once they get out of the city.

So now I get to share the road with an 80 tonne machine driven by a need to get his trip concluded in a set period of time. Again, correct me if I’ve got this wrong.

Echoes , why the report ? I will make great reading when our great grand kids read this and ask what’s a truck driver ?

“what’s the stop the driver from spending a leisurely half hour a Timmy’s, and then driving like a bat out of hell to make up for it”

One way to do it is to record parameters such as speed. After a run the company checks the recording and the driver is in trouble if speed has been excessive. I believe that some long-haul companies are doing this. Drivers often don’t like it.

It’s standard in lots of trucking jobs to pay the driver a percentage. I think most logging truck drivers get paid that way. Now days most trucks have GPS systems in them that monitor their speeds.

As someone who knows the industry. You should know that it is Canfor and the other companies that will dictate what they pay these trucking companies. Looks to me like Excel is just trying to stay competitive as most of the fiber hauling companies are already trip rate and Excel apparently has one of the better pay/benefit packages. To the comment about the trucks going 100kms down a road that has a speed limit of 80, Most of the trucks have a tattle-tale device that will let the company know if the truck is speeding in any particular speed zone.

Thx truck69. Good to know.

What is with paying overtime after eleven hrs- should be paid overtime after eight hrs. If they don’t want to pay overtime then maybe they should only work eight hours per day; less driver fatigue.

anyone voting yes to this contract obviously isn’t very smart. so far that makes 26 and 2 wasted votes (that’s not very smart either)

anyone voting yes to this contract obviously isn’t very smart. so far that makes 26 and 2 wasted votes (that’s not very smart either) do they get paid for those trips where they get to the bush or where ever their load is and find the equipment broken down? ie: chipper, loader etc. Or are these just a freebee for the company and a waste of time for the driver?

You’re going to tell them not to barrel down a road that they are sharing with others…aren’t you Keith?

Pretty well all the chips I hauled, about ten years’ worth, were paid by the trip. It was no problem. We made good money. It just prevented the slackers, and there were some, from wasting time.

You slackers would not want to pull over and take a break if your tired would you or maybe stop for a coffee. No just keep driving and run your truck into the ditch and let it sit in the shop for a month to be repaired.

Drivers currently get overtime after 8-hours and not the ten reported here. After this contract it will not kick in until after 11-hours, but all the runs will be going piece meal, and trip rates will not factor in any overtime even if over 11-hours.

At Lomak, or past trip rate schemes, they always factored in the overtime into the trip rates, so this isn’t even comparable with past trip rate schemes.

It eliminates overtime pay for weekend work as well. So finding drivers to work extra weekend shifts at the chip plant, or to catch up on stock piles will be a hard sell for straight time on extra days.

Past trip rate schemes paid extra for wait times at mills, highway closures, and equipment break downs after a half hour grace, but at the regular pay rate. Lomak pays this with no half hour grace period, and Excel will not be paying it at all. The idea here is to over truck a mill and have drivers sitting waiting for a load while they are eating the cost themselves.

Trip rates will be set by the company and can only be appealed by the union after the fact.

The company also nearly eliminated the bank time option, going from a limit of 100 hours of overtime that could be banked, to now only 40-hours of regular time bankable. After having eliminated sick days off in past contracts this leave very little room to cover down time or options when sick. Its designed to make the drivers pay check to pay check, rather than flexible during things like spring break up or equipment failures in the bush.

Meanwhile the contract gives an hourly pay raise of 2% to the shop employees and administration who naturally voted in favor of this contract.

Why would anyone vote for this… I guess fear when the company says they will be closing up shop the next day if it was not signed.