'It's like being an indentured servant': Truck drivers reveal the worst parts of their jobs

Their jobs are highly dependent on how the rest of the economy is doing

Most companies can roughly control how their businesses perform with better advertising, products, and the like.

Read more: Truckers can't pay off their fuel cards — and it's a 'sure sign' that more trucking bankruptcies are coming

But, beyond providing better levels of service, truckers are dependent on whether or not people just need stuff.

That became clear in 2019. A year before, the trucking industry was riding high, with rates and pay sky-rocketing, but that's crashed down as manufacturing and retail indicators slow.

Read more: The 'bloodbath' in America's trucking industry has officially spilled over to the rest of the economy

Transport research groups reported that the volume of trucks purchased in July fell to its lowest level in nearly 10 years. Loads in the spot market tumbled by 37% this July from July 2018. And the Cass Freight Index says year-over-year trucking volumes have slipped for eight consecutive months.

Because of that, some truck drivers say the industry is presently in a "bloodbath." Around 2,500 have lost their jobs as companies large and small declare bankruptcy, and other major companies scale back their levels of service.

A trucker's lifestyle is inherently unhealthy

Long-haul truck drivers face "a constellation of chronic disease risk factors," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in 2014.

Truck stops, the only places drivers can efficiently park and eat while on the road, are more likely to stock cheeseburgers and Salisbury steaks than salads or fresh fruit. A few but increasing number of truck stops offer gyms. One is seated for up to 11 hours a day, and there's clearly no standing desk options for truck drivers.

Read more: Truck drivers fear for their safety on the road — but the vast majority of them face a much bigger threat

Nearly seven-in-10 truck drivers were obese and 17% were morbidly obese, which is defined as 100 pounds over your ideal weight, according to CDC research. Among all working American adults, one-third are obese and 7% are morbidly obese.

"We need decent restaurants or food that is something beside stinking McDonald's or Subway and things like that," 51-year-old Steve Manley, who has been driving for more than 20 years, previously told Business Insider. "Trucking will leave you with a messed up back and many other problems if you are not very careful."

They have to wait for hours, unpaid, for their trucks to be unloaded or reloaded

Truckers lose $1.3 billion annually waiting at warehouses for loads.

"At some of these companies, it's like being an indentured servant," truck driver Bill Hieatt, who has been a trucker for 20 years, previously told Business Insider.

Truckers such as Hieatt are expected to spend hours at warehouses waiting for their shipments to load or unload. Warehouses often do not have their shipments ready for truckers, even when they're on time, and that results in truck drivers being "detained."

Those shippers, which might include small businesses and major retailers, should load or unload in a two-hour window in accordance with industry standards. After that, shippers are expected pay an hourly rate for every hour that a truck driver is detained at a warehouse.

Except they usually don't. According to a survey, administered by the freight marketplace DAT Solutions, of drivers from 257 trucking companies, only 3% said they receive detention pay for at least 90% of their claims to the shippers.

The job is horribly isolating

Many truckers have told Business Insider that, because truckers are away from home for weeks at a time, their relationships with their spouses and children were strained.

Rob Shulin, 57, has two 30-something children. He was a truck driver for their entire childhoods.

"I was never around for Father's Day, birthdays, and most holidays," Shulin previously told Business Insider. "Now that I am home, my kids are grown and gone. A very lonely feeling indeed."

Read more: Being away from home for weeks on end can put truckers' mental health at risk, and there's no solution in sight

And further, it's simply isolating. Of the mental health concerns that truck drivers experience, loneliness tops the list. Nearly a third of drivers say being alone all day and away from their family is a "significant issue affecting their mental health."

One trucker named Rob told Business Insider last year that he had not hugged someone in months; the last person was his mother.

"She met me as I passed about 100 miles from her house, to drop off some food and see me while I got fuel," the 52-year-old previously told Business Insider. "I visited for about 15 minutes. Then, I had to go. Because my drive clock was running, and I had 1,200 miles to go within 36 hours. And Mom got to drive 100-plus miles back home."

Few truck drivers are unionized

When truck drivers have gripes related to their work, they can't complain to a union representative or strike, unlike many blue-collar workers.

Fewer than 10% of America's 1.8 million long-haul truck drivers are unionized. And independent truck drivers, called owner-operators, are outright banned from forming unions.

That makes it difficult for truckers, who are spread all over the country and often working solo, to advocate for their rights. Today, many truck drivers feel that their voices aren't heard when policies that affect them are created.

Independent efforts for truckers to strike have largely failed, like this year's Black Smoke Matters movement.

Read more: Thousands of truck drivers are organizing a strike in a Facebook group called 'Black Smoke Matters' — here's the origin of the provocative name

Some strikes outside of trucker unions have succeeded. Between 1973 and 1974, independent truck drivers organized over CB radio to shut down trucking across the US for multiple days in protest of skyrocketing oil prices. Truckers won their demands after the shutdown, and the strike gave rise to the influential Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association.

Partially thanks to that, their pay has fallen dramatically

A Business Insider analysis showed that median wages for truck drivers have decreased 21% on average since 1980. In some areas, they've declined as much as 50%.

Read more: Truck driver salaries have fallen by as much as 50% since the 1970s — and experts say a little-known law explains why

The average truck driver in the 1970s was well-paid. It was the sort of high-quality, blue-collar job that many lament no longer exists today. In 1977, the mean earnings of a unionized truck driver stood at $96,552 in 2018 dollars. At least 80% of drivers were unionized at this time.

A trucker's median income today is $43,680.

"To be able to be a truck driver used to be quite a good blue-collar, middle-class job, but over the past 40 years, it has kind of dwindled away," Gordon Klemp, principal of the National Transportation Institute, previously told Business Insider.

Unions also lost much of their power. Membership in Teamsters, which was once one of the most powerful unions around, has declined dramatically. In 1974, Belzer wrote that there were 2,019,300 truckers in Teamsters. Now, there are 75,000.

People assume the worst of them

In the US, some 71% of freight by weight is moved by a truck. If all truck drivers stopped working, grocery stores would run out of food in three days.

Still, truck drivers are plagued by a number of stereotypes associated with them: that they're lazy, uneducated, engaged in sex trafficking, cause accidents, and so on.

"We are the ones doing the all the work, meanwhile everyone reaps the benefits as we keep America moving," Casey Smith, an Orlando, Florida-based truck driver, told Business Insider. "I really wish we as drivers ... could get the respect and appreciation deserved. We sacrifice not seeing family, staying up eleven hours a day driving or 14 on duty, eating poorly, watching out for reckless cars and robbers."

Despite all that, truckers aren't paid much but have to work a lot. "Some drivers can't afford a shower for $14, pay their bills, or even a decent meal," Smith added. "We have to eat ramen noodles."