Jin, a truck driver from Hebei, committed suicide.
While driving through an over-limit checkpoint in the Fengrun District of Tangshan City, he was sentenced to a penalty of 2,000 yuan and a fine of 2,000 yuan because the Beidou positioning on his car was offline.
A few hours later, Jin drank pesticide and said in his suicide note, “I will use my death to wake up the leaders to pay attention to this matter”.
He left behind a family that was counting on him for support.
Some onlookers are surprised that a $2,000 fine can be the last straw for truck drivers.
And when we get closer to this group will find that the pressure on them is not only a fine, but also the high cost of car maintenance, increasingly low freight income, as well as sports cars in various parts of the “invisible expenses The “hidden expenses”.
Two days after the fermentation of Jin’s tragedy, that has long been the default of truck drivers, gradually more people know:.
“truck drivers in the industry is like a piece of donkey meat, who saw all want to come up and bite. “
01, “truck driver is fat meat, who want to bite a bite”
Truck driver this job is really bitter in what? Most often mentioned is the destruction of health.
Work intensity, often have to stay up late driving; running long-distance eating and living in the car, long-term separation from the family, but also with the community out of touch; on the way to face a variety of dangerous road conditions and other unknown risks.
So running freight is also known as a life for money, “spend 20 years to make money, and then 20 years to cure”.
And Jin’s tragedy, as well as the subsequent voices of other truck drivers, in essence, set off a more tragic thing –
Sometimes even if you are desperate, you can not earn any money.
Run a few thousand dollars of freight flow seems substantial, but remove the highway toll, fuel, vehicle maintenance, follow the labor and other hard costs, the income to hand is not much.
The net income of 120,000 a year, not counting the cost of buying the car itself.
What is more unacceptable is the “layers of barriers” in the transportation process – the renegade Cargo owners, difficult loaders and unloaders, oil thieves in the service area …… will let themselves “bleed out once The “blood”.
I recently brushed up on a short video platform, a 38-year-old female driver who called herself Sister Qian.
Her life record always makes me feel like I’m watching a realistic version of the “Western Paradise”.
Until the goods are unloaded and the freight is in hand, you can breathe a sigh of relief.
Before that, anything can go wrong.
Once, she got up early before 7am to go to another city to pull the goods. After driving more than 100 kilometers to the pickup location, suddenly notified by the owner: because the buyer and seller have not yet agreed on the payment, there is no way to load the goods.
Drive back, the round-trip gas money will be wasted; do not drive back, this area is too remote and can not pull what other work.
Although you can claim the “empty car fee”, but is bound to go through some tug-of-war.
In desperation, she can only call again to try to persuade the owner “how much can pull is how much”.
It is easy to load the goods, driving at any time may still “break the bank”.
First of all, there are all kinds of fines.
In the controversy of Beidou, the decision of “fatigue driving” was the most complained about by the drivers, and it was also the area where they were fined the most.
The four-hour driving break of 20 minutes is certainly for driving safety, but in practice, whether there will be traffic jams and whether there are service areas along the way are factors beyond the driver’s control.
In February this year, a truck driver was driven away by security guards when he entered the service area at night, and he was stressed that “I was driving fatigued”.
In the view of the service area, the post-holiday rush leads to tight parking spaces, preventing large vehicles from entering is reasonable.
But for truck drivers, if they can’t get into the service area, it’s “fined for fatigue driving” and “because of parking in the emergency lane was fined” of the second choice.
And for those who have entered the service area of the “lucky”, but also still can not rest at ease.
They need to face the next “challenge”, is to steal fuel The “oil rats”.
In order to prevent oil thieves, truck drivers are usually driving to sleep, with the car “stand guard”.
One did not keep an eye on, thousands of dollars of oil may be siphoned away.
Sister Qian once in a service area, but also photographed next to the rear wheels of the truck bolted to two wolf dogs.
“Oil rats afraid of wolf dogs barking will not dare to steal, so that people can sleep a little better. “
It was hard to get to the pickup site, other problems came – unloading.
Cargo owners are not anxious on their own turf, but for truck drivers, the goods in the car for one more day, they will pull a day less work, the loss is real money.
Sister Qian once delayed waiting for the loader, and finally the customer called and said he could not come to move until the next afternoon.
In order to urge the other party to unload the goods early, or pay the pressure fee, she argued half a day, soft words and hard words have been said.
As a result, the opposite side of the phone was forced to make a direct killer: “Now is certainly not unloaded, if you are anxious that you pull the goods back to their homes. “
Even to this point, the next day when the unloading notice, Qian sister still can not even brush her teeth to rush over.
“The boss said if you don’t come quickly, his crane is going to drive away, you can’t unload the goods. “
For truck drivers, time is really money. So when it comes to unreasonable treatment, it usually ends up being a compromise.
So why everyone wants to make some money from them – this is simply the best to pinch the soft persimmon.
As long as the word “delay”, it is equivalent to pinch their lifeline.
02, increasingly low freight
The reason why the truck driver so “good bully”, is essentially in the cost of consideration.
For example, when loading and unloading goods by the workers on the spot, is to buy a few packs of cigarettes thing.
Sister Qian once shot a small skit, off-camera “loading and unloading workers” asked her to either give a hand or give a cigarette, she gave the response is “You love to unload or not”.
But from the feedback in the comments section, most truck drivers in this situation will still choose to “break the money to avoid disaster”.
The logic is also very simple: “rather than spend with him here to fight, it is better to run the next job. “
And now, to the out of the “point fee” a lot, but more and more difficult to make money.
Drivers complain the most is not the hard work of driving, not with the various people fighting, but “freight is too low”.
A teacher who has been driving for 30 years mentioned that today’s fuel prices, road tolls are rising, but their income from a run is lower than 20 years ago.
Comments also said: they give up driving trucks is not because they are afraid of hard work, but the morning and night but can not earn any money.
Once upon a time, truck drivers usually rely on fleet or intermediaries to contact the source of goods, cargo owners want to transport goods can only find these information agencies, their own decision on the price is not much.
And the Internet platform has changed this model, cargo information and bids are sent on the platform, the driver to see the situation to grab a single, the owner of the price is more than three, the opportunity to take advantage of the pressure.
The truck driver Gao once complained that he grabbed a job on the platform with a price tag of 3,000 yuan, only to call the other side and be severely pressured by the price.
And he had to compromise because he hadn’t pulled in work for a few days.
Especially those who are ready to turn back after pulling the goods “backhaul”, the price can be lowered to even lower – -The car is empty anyway, it is better to quote a low price, at least to earn back the gas money.
Of course, in a normal market environment, the transparency of information should have normalized prices.
And really let the freight rate is low to the driver’s complaints, or because “more cars and less goods”.
Now in the card class, the most despised by peers is the kind of low price to grab others live “0 down payment loan to buy a car party”.
“Because the body carries a car loan, the result is clearly 5000 yuan of work, he can quote the price to 3500, even the cost is not enough. “
But the owners of loans to buy cars also have their own hardships – more than 10,000 loans a month, running jobs to lose money, do not run to lose more.
Some truck drivers in order to earn more freight, choose to run the “green pass”.
Green pass is the transport of vegetables and fruits and other fresh agricultural products vehicles, not only the price of freight is higher, but also free from a lot of high-speed charges.
But at the same time it for the time and storage quality requirements are also higher, often the driver is desperate to run to the place, the results because “a basket of vegetables were flattened” “The top layer of chestnuts dried up” was deducted a lot of freight.
Some drivers say straight after running a few green pass, or turn back to run ordinary freight: “The uncertainty on the road is too great.
“The uncertainty on the road is too great, and the owner can always find reasons to deduct freight. “
Especially after the Beidou online, either because of fatigue driving was fined, or because not delivered on time was deducted from the freight, anyway, the money is impossible to get intact. “
Where did it go wrong?
Is it the receiving party that follows the rules, or the regulations that require drivers to drive safely? Or is it the loan truck driver who is desperate to feed his family?
And perhaps no one is wrong, but it all converges into the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the truck driver, ready to worry that it will fall.
03, “I can only run down”
After Jin’s accident, other truck drivers are also concerned.
They began to call attention to the plight of drivers online, complaining that they were forced to give out more and more money and earn less and less profit.
For most ordinary people, even if they know the plight of truck drivers, it is difficult to eliminate the malice towards this group.
After all, they are indeed the “worst car” group, obviously driving the most dangerous big guy, but also fatigue driving, overloading and other violations of the disaster area.
But this is also because, the significance of driving safety for truck drivers, and ordinary people are actually very different.
With more and more restrictions on the regulations around the truck, the public for the logistics of the timeliness requirements are also increasingly high at the moment, their income has been a variety of “goose over hair “type of expenditure to squeeze less and less.
Safety is not only safety itself, but also with freight, highway tolls and other factors together with the driver as a weight, placed in the heart of that measure “cost-effective” scale.
If you can grab some time, to avoid some losses, then let the safety thing slightly backward, “seems to be acceptable”.
At the same time, another voice also began to appear on the Internet.
“Drive a truck can still make money, otherwise you would have gone to do something else. “
As an outsider in the freight industry, we seem to be easy to imagine truck drivers as mobile workers who sell their labor.
Logistics make money on the drive to transport goods, do not make money to do something else.
But the real bottom of the laborers actually rarely choose to drive a truck.
A single A2 driver’s license will take 5 or 6 years, and the registration fee will cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The vast majority of drivers who work for the company will pay for a car of their own in installments after saving money for a few years.
This group is actually more like the self-employed – that hundreds of thousands of dollars of cars, is the cost they put in.
The truck driver occupation was once a higher-paid occupation in physical work, many people even to raise money, borrow money to squeeze in a share of the pie.
Falling freight rates and tightening rules are only these few years, but enough to trap these drivers in a dilemma.
Especially for those who took out loans to buy a car, open your eyes every day on the money owed, you can only try to earn back the cost by running the job.
Even if you know that it is getting harder and harder to make money in this business, but you have to do it hard – this is the mentality of most truck drivers.
In July 2018, Fujian police uncovered a series of fraud cases targeting truck drivers.
The suspect, Lu, managed to scam more than 20 drivers out of their information fees by disguising himself as a cargo broker.
And his scam is actually very simple – posting false cargo information on WeChat or APP, and pulling the other party black directly after receiving a transfer from the truck driver.
At the time, some people below the news expressed disbelief as to why these drivers would so easily transfer money to a stranger.
For truck drivers, however, this is one of the most instinctive reactions.
Another response may represent what more of them were thinking.
“Because I have to run on and take every opportunity to make money that I can and keep running. “
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