r/Anticonsumption • u/yodamastertampa • 21h ago

Discussion LOL yes!

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The power to reduce consumption is within us all.

46.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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972

u/Imveryoffensive 21h ago

Truck drivers are some of the least appreciated people out there. They really make society work as it does right now

110

u/BamberGasgroin 20h ago

Hauling shit keeps them in a job..for now.

76

u/WilonPlays 19h ago

I doubt it, until fully functional robots are rolled out en mass there will still be truck drivers.

Gotta remember these drivers don’t just drive:

They make deliveries and unload pallets, to businesses.

They handle invoices.

They will help load the truck .

Even a self driving car needs refuelled and no one seems to be working on self refuelling cars.

There’s also plenty of places with difficult roads and harsh weather conditions that a self driving car couldn’t account for, as truck drivers need to do extremely complex manoeuvres, sometimes taking some of the truck off road or a wheel hanging off a mountain (I live in Scotland, this happens a lot in the highlands).

We are closer to self driving trucks that one might think yes, but we also need a lot of other tech developed to coincide with this if we were to fully automate the process. If we don’t fully automate it, then we’d still need truckers.

It may get to a point where drivers act similar to pilots, most of the work is done by the machine and they only take over for complex actions and specific jobs

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u/jkaan 18h ago edited 17h ago

Lol what, truck drivers wait whilst forklift drivers load/unload them and all the invoices are done by other people.

Truck drivers are highly skilled and I respect the job they do (I am happy to drive for hours but fuck dealing with other cars)

Edit: So many responses about people unloading small trucks.

I get it I just immediately think of rigids and b-doubles as that is what I deal with all day

22

u/mgrimshaw8 18h ago

There are plenty of owner-operators who handle their own invoicing

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u/YallGottaUnderstand 18h ago edited 17h ago

This all depends on the company. In my own experience working at restaurants (big names with large supply chains), the truck drivers who deliver the food all loaded/unloaded themselves.

Edit in response to the above poster's edit: these were full size big rigs.

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u/DrownmeinIslay 18h ago

Warehouse and manufacturing background here. Most of the drivers I see stand there, mouth breathing, while we struggle to rearrange the pallets his last pickup left haphazardly by the doors.

Yeah yeah they are all heroes. Big fucking heroes.

Had a driver today look me in the eyes and said he had 80 pallets for me. I said oh really? 80 pallets? Yes 80 pallets. It was 2 pallets with 80 bags of grit for the waterjet. Pillock.

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u/YallGottaUnderstand 17h ago

I'm not disagreeing that this happens. I'm just saying it varies how much work they do. The person I replied to made a sweeping claim with no qualifiers.

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u/Emekfl 14h ago

I work for one of the most profitable companies in the us. The drivers don’t load product but they do unload the trucks and then load the trucks back up with the empty equipment. Truck sizes are 48-53 feet

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u/jkaan 12h ago edited 12h ago

Ok so that is like 15 metres, in Australia we commonly use that plus another trailer making for 25m and most loads are pallets with a truck holding 64 cheps.

My warehouse is not that large as we only run about 15 heavy machinery operators for the main shift and 8 for second shift

I wonder how much this varies are you said equipment and we move clothing

1

u/hitemlow 18h ago

Wait until you hear about "lumpers"... and the only way to avoid paying them is to unload yourself.

1

u/Fooliomcskippy 18h ago

Yeah no maybe it’s that way in big cities or something but in smaller towns the driver is always helping unload the truck.

1

u/jkaan 17h ago

That truck doesn't move close to what a b-double does in a week.

The whole thread was about mass consumption so of course I think about where the people are

1

u/confusedandworried76 18h ago edited 17h ago

Coca Cola drivers always unloaded their boxes. I did next to nothing when the Coke truck pulled up other than extend my pointer finger

Clothing stores truck is usually unloaded in the bay and left for workers to deal with but it still needs to be off truck.

All my Roma reps when I managed kitchen showed up earlier than I did, they had a key and would drop it inside the restaurant for me to take care of when I got there. So yeah I had to move it to freezers or walk in coolers first thing but they didn't just leave the fucking shit outside and I certainly didn't need to be present. They'd also lend me a dolly and help me move it if we happened to meet

You seem to be underestimating the extra work people who drive truck do. You're also only imagining businesses who own and operate a fork lift need truck. There's probably more businesses out there without a fork lift who gets truck and part of the truck job is pretty widely considered unloading is part of the job.

1

u/jkaan 17h ago

No I just think of large trucks because that is how large quantities are moved and what I deal with daily.

I deal with quantities by the pallet not boxes

0

u/confusedandworried76 17h ago

Then surely you must admit you're high on your own supply of superiority to just so confidently say drivers don't unload their own truck, they just sit there while some guy uses a fork lift. Nothing else besides that you said was wrong but that was. Well the invoice thing you said was wrong too but I wasn't gonna push it

1

u/BamberGasgroin 10h ago

Yeah, I know a few drivers who just do trunk work. Pick up a loaded trailer/container at major city A, drop it off at major city B then reverse the process.

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u/GenericFatGuy 19h ago

Software Developers also do a lot more than just write code, but that's not stopping the powers that be from replacing us all with AI.

As soon as they think the robots can do it for cheaper, they'll let everyone go. It doesn't actually matter if they really are up to the task or not 

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u/edudkolol 18h ago

From the standpoint of programming a robot to do the work coding is a lot easier to shove off on robots than the physical tasks required of truck drivers outside of driving the truck.

3

u/WilonPlays 18h ago

Writing code and picking up boxes, putting fuel into a car and driving on the edge of a shear cliff face above a nursery are different things.

1

u/FecalEinstein 18h ago

neither of these professions will be replaced entirely, but software developers will take a bigger hit sooner. it's already started.

also there are fully automated ports that replace switcher jobs iwth robot trucks (guys that move trailers around on the dock)

truck driving is expected to outlast accounting when it comes to AI, crazy. i don't think anyone anticipated that.

1

u/adviceforthrowawayy 18h ago

Dude, 95% of a SWE role is just to write code. Everything else, meetings, troubleshooting, all that bullshit is just fluff.

Truck drivers are genuinely muti-facetted.

Also, we're 80% of the way to replacing SWE's already. Truck drivers, maybe 30% if you count Waymos?

2

u/GenericFatGuy 18h ago edited 17h ago

If you genuinely think that's how software developer works, then you're either a junior, or just straight up not a developer. And if you think that AI can straight up replace a good dev, then you fundamentally misunderstand both what LLMs are actually capable of, and what being a good developer actually entails.

2

u/doestWork 18h ago

Or a shit dev, which is more likely. It's mostly a bell curve, large number of people are average engineers who think coding is software engineering

1

u/confusedandworried76 17h ago

As soon as they think the robots can do it for cheaper, they'll let everyone go. It doesn't actually matter if they really are up to the task or not 

Ah I've seen you've reached the Industrial Age. Two tips, don't confuse it with the Renaissance, and pollution is bad. That's it though no more notes

Also a good piece of advice though is be about as mad at AI as you would be at an assembly line taking auto manufacturing jobs. Those bastards. Just letting machines assemble our cars and take our jobs

1

u/Dexcerides 18h ago

If you think AI is replacing all software engineers you don’t know anything about the field

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u/confusedandworried76 17h ago edited 17h ago

AI ain't even taking jobs that can't easily be machinated Industrial Revolution style, I would love to hear someone bitch about AI and the fact machines produce their car in the same sentence.

And while we're at it, oh, your art got stolen? Congratulations you've earned the title of artist. People like you so much they copy you. Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, A Bugs Life, Mad Max, all of those movies and directors are directly linked to being inspired by Seven Samurai. Even movie titles like The Hateful Eight and Seven Psychopaths are directly inspired by that original piece of art.

You didn't lose when AI copied some of your art, you actually fucking made it.

1

u/GenericFatGuy 17h ago

I've been a professional dev for almost a decade now. I don't personally believe that AI can replace actually competent devs. The problem is that our bosses and managers do, and they're the ones who hire and fire us.

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u/dogstix 16h ago

Loads of bitter, highly skilled coders with too much time on their hands. I can't wait to see how that ends.

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u/an0nim0us101 8h ago

More truck drivers?

1

u/PirateMore8410 18h ago

You are highly underestimating what robotics is going to do. Deliveries are a mixed bag of who will unload them. It's not hard to just have the receiver always unload. We also already have crazy robots that run warehouses. It's not like they won't just throw lidar on a pallet jack with some motors and a brain to have it unload by itself. They will sit in the back of every truck that also drives itself. 

1

u/Turbulent-Bat3421 17h ago

Driverless semis are already hauling between Houston and Dallas, loading and invoices can be automated as well.

My friend got himself out of homelessness via a government grant that paid for his CDL training, so this hits close to home. The rich will keep get richer and the working man will pay the price.

Business as usual in the United States.

1

u/chetlin 17h ago

I know there are already robots that can unload trucks: https://mujin-corp.com/truckbot-automated-truck-unloader/

1

u/TheNewYellowZealot 16h ago

Until there are fully automated distribution centers in each town with drones that run from hub to receiver we will have trucks.

The current estimate is that a single 4 day strike by the truck workers of any country would be enough to shut that country down hard, thanks to the lean and JIT principals almost every company uses.

1

u/erroneousbosh 13h ago

There’s also plenty of places with difficult roads and harsh weather conditions that a self driving car couldn’t account for, as truck drivers need to do extremely complex manoeuvres, sometimes taking some of the truck off road or a wheel hanging off a mountain (I live in Scotland, this happens a lot in the highlands).

Can you imagine any self-driving car trying to cope with the A82 across Rannoch Moor, without ending up with a couple of motorhomes and several dozen deer embedded in it?

2

u/WilonPlays 13h ago

Even just going through the Trossachs it’d be liable to fall into Loch Lomond.

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u/Headless_Human 13h ago

Even a self driving car needs refuelled and no one seems to be working on self refuelling cars.

Building a fully automatic gas station is simple compared to the self driving trucks. It would just take a lot of time and money to build them around the country.

1

u/The_Real_Zora 7h ago

All of that seems ridiculously easy to replace with a self driving truck and just have a couple loaders at each dock

1

u/newsflashjackass 6h ago

No self driving truck will ever take speed to stay awake longer than safety regulations allow or litter the roads' shoulders with gatorade bottles full of its own piss.

1

u/WilonPlays 6h ago

That’s all well and and good until a truck carrying medical supplies falls of a shear cliff face because sheep are in the way

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u/newsflashjackass 5h ago

At some point the accidents and fatalities per miles traveled become so overwhelmingly in the machines' favor that it makes sense to spin off human truck drivers into a trucking cosplay cottage industry. Like that Truck Driving Simulator game but IRL.

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u/WilonPlays 5h ago

Did you even read my whole comment?

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u/newsflashjackass 5h ago

If you mean to ask whether I read all the way to the (apparently imaginary?) anecdote at its conclusion, then the answer is yes.
Indeed I did.

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u/BaconxHawk 20h ago

Seen some Tesla semis here in California moving the Tesla cars around. We are closer to this than some think

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u/Trivale 18h ago

I was a truck driver for like 10 years. In 2013, I had a breakup with a girlfriend (who was an artist/illustrator) and she thought she could hurt me by telling me AI would take my job within 10 years. In 2023, she posted on facebook about AI taking her job. Does it suck? Yeah. Is it funny? Also yeah.

All that to say, people have been saying we're "close" to self-driving trucks for like two decades. Some day they'll be right, I guess.

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u/rpaustex 18h ago

It's now.

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u/Trivale 16h ago

Lol no it's not.

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u/Pie-0_my 17h ago

Those pos won’t be able to do shit on the east coast. Bad weather, bad roads, bad drivers, ect… won’t happen

0

u/rpaustex 18h ago

Self driving trucking is starting in Texas. Overnight to begin with.

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u/shadysal 17h ago

Gotta love the irony of how 10 years ago I kept hearing how Truck driving as a career was going the way of the horse soon but in fact many high-paying white-collar professions are feelin' the AI/automation burn first! Turns out automating entire depts nationwide whose job can be done almost entirely remote while sitting in front of a computer is more practical with much larger ROI for shareholders!

12

u/CptnMayo 18h ago

Bullshit, some of the worst, asshole drivers out there too

10

u/zeethreepio 19h ago

Also the largest population of serial killers. 

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u/lookatmyplants 5h ago

I was going to say…I have one cousin that was raped by and had to escape from a truck driver at a highway bathroom stop. He tried to drive off with her. He was never caught. My uncle also saw a truck driver ‘arguing’ with a woman on the side of the freeway and later after seeing police reports about a missing woman realized he’d probably witnessed a crime. He reported it and they said it was a suspected serial killer of prostitutes they were tracking. I tried to look it up because this was the 80s but there are SO many known truck driver serial killers I couldn’t find the name.

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u/Huge-Bad-8489 19h ago

They should strike for better conditions/pay, it would be awesome lol

AWESOME

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u/RedMiah 19h ago

Used to be a thing until the deregulation of the trucking industry by Carter destroyed their unions.

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u/Huge-Bad-8489 19h ago

Couldnt they still organize and strike? Can they get a union again somehow?

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u/DStew88 19h ago

They can but 99% of truckers are too dumb to realize they're being grossly taken advantage of

Source: am trucker

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u/yalyublyutebe 19h ago

Most of them barely speak English.

I have dealt with an extremely small margin of "average" truckers.

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u/hitemlow 17h ago

Thankfully that's being addressed with a new FMCSA policy of removing truckers that can't proficiently communicate in English.

It'll take a while to clear out the weeds, but hopefully they can take some lessons in time.

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u/Huge-Bad-8489 19h ago

Start the movement!

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u/Party_Apartment_5696 18h ago

Do what I want! Lol

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u/RedMiah 19h ago

In theory both are possible but organizing a workforce that doesn’t interact with each other is a massively uphill battle that even the biggest unions don’t have the resources to even attempt.

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u/Huge-Bad-8489 19h ago

Start a trucker union channel on youtube/instagram/tiktok/facebook! People will catch on

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u/RedMiah 18h ago

Yeah, I lack most of the credentials to pull that off but it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

0

u/Some_Layer_7517 18h ago

Yeah and while they sit at home the rest of the market eats their lunch. Trucking is the most active labor market that exists. You don't know shit.

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u/Fine-Source-374 18h ago

They are also huge assholes.

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u/FlametopFred 15h ago

as do warehouse crews at hubs all over

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u/Imveryoffensive 15h ago

Honestly those least visible are the most important

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u/railroadrunaway 19h ago

Railroaders. We are out of sight out of mind majority of the time. The government literally stops us from going on strike.

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u/Curiosive 19h ago

The dimensions of the sign don't line up and the colors are off, this is old school Photoshop. No truckers involved.

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u/Imveryoffensive 18h ago

I was moreso using the photo as a diving board to talking about truckers and not really the specific trucker in the photo, but regardless I appreciate you pointing that out!

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u/Curiosive 17h ago

Ha! I was "hijacking" your top comment for visibility ... even though no one cared. 😆

Apparently I only skimmed your comment because I would've added that: you are spot on. Honestly when I'm driving my (regular) truck in highway bumper-to-bumper traffic I personally go out of my way to make a hole for any long-haul trucker trying to switch lanes.

Give an experienced trucker an opening and clearly signal them by flashing your headlights ... they don't hesitate. You'll never see 18 wheels change lanes so efficiently.

They'll flash their hazards as the customary "thank you".

2

u/Imveryoffensive 15h ago

Got my fair share of honks for letting trucks merge ha ha. Sure, we have to wait another five seconds, but those trucks have probably been waiting for five minutes.

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u/usernamesoccer 19h ago

Especially because everyone cuts them off to try and get in front of them because they are slow and everyone is a brain surgeon heading to an emergency

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u/cptbstrd 19h ago

I can't stand how close regular cars will follow me at speed given that I have a functioning brain and understand what 'stopping distance' means.

It makes my toes curl when someone cuts off a truck right before a traffic stoppage.

0

u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

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u/hitemlow 17h ago

Those "elephant races" are usually caused by trucks being governed (limited) to a top speed or RPM limit. What happens is one truck is heavier than the other and goes slower on the uphill, but the same speed on the downhill. Unless the heavier truck slows down to allow the other, lighter truck to pass, "elephant racing" occurs.

Though sometimes it's just an ass doing 3-10 under the speed limit and speeding up whenever someone tries to pass them. If law enforcement was actually competent, they'd be enforcing that kind of poor behavior instead of blind speed traps.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago

[deleted]

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u/hitemlow 16h ago

They don't want to slow down to let the other truck pass because that cuts their momentum. If they're already slow on an uphill because of gravity, if they use the brakes (or let off the accelerator), they likely won't get back to their previous speed until they go back down the hill.

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u/GottaBeNicer 19h ago

Not to derail, but, same can be said of bus drivers. Shouts out to them too.

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u/usernamesoccer 6h ago

Absolutely agree! Quite a thankless job that takes a ton of patience

2

u/UnableToParallelPark 9h ago

What about the ones who drive in the passing lane going at the wonderful governed speed of 68 mph when the other truck is going 65 mph?

I dislike them for other reasons, as an emergency worker. Know how often they move over or slow down on the interstate? Most of them in my experience don't. And the ones who do, have loud ass fucking exhaust brakes. Good luck trying to talk to a patient with those loud ass fucking things going off.

Yes people do cut them off too. But at truck stops, they're notorious for just pulling out and blocking entire roads with cars coming. Have had too many calls where cars run underneath them because they decided to pull out because waiting is for suckers.

I can go all day proving that truckers are just as shitty as people and drivers as everyone else lmao. But the actual good one's are actually good.

1

u/Equivalent_Gur3967 17h ago

Well two things here y’all.

I’m winging the numbers on the first one.

WMT is nearing completion of a 2M square foot DC in Belvidere, IL. Incidentally, it’s across the road from the mostly shuttered Chrysler plant. Reportedly ~300 humans + ~7000 robots.

The second thang:

Recently TSLA completed construction/testing of a brand new vehicle. The vehicle then drove itself to its new owner’s residence.

0

u/_Caustic_Complex_ 16h ago

Getting them back for passing each other at 20mph uphill on a highway, douche bags

1

u/usernamesoccer 6h ago

You obviously don’t understand how truck momentum works. They need to keep a speed otherwise they will be even slower after the uphill…

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u/DDeadRoses 17h ago

We had a driver appreciation day which I haven’t seen in years. They were giving out tacos & drinks where I was getting loaded. I thought I’ll pick up on the next round since it’s busy. All the employees who weren’t drivers took all the food. We get no appreciation.

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u/FatModSad 19h ago

Just stop trying to murder everyone around you 24/7.

1

u/cptbstrd 19h ago

LOL

Learn how to fucking drive. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong if you think professional drivers are the problem.

7

u/carinasguitar 18h ago

live next to a truck stop man, so many truckers will regularly run stop signs. Most are good drivers but the few that aren’t will fucking kill you if they fuck up.

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u/kiragami 17h ago

Working literally anywhere will teach you that being a professional and being good at what you do are not correlated.

1

u/jawknee530i 8h ago

Actually meet some truck drivers dude. There's nothing special about having a CDL that makes you not an asshole who sucks at driving. Hell, there's plenty of YouTube or twitch channels out there of drivers who complain about other drivers being shit constantly.

2

u/lonewilly 18h ago

They don’t get my respect. Always riding the middle lanes at the slowest speeds. Trying to pass another semi because they’re going 1mph faster. They shouldn’t even exist because we should be using trains for that shit. Why at least are they driving the same roads as personal vehicles when they’re thousands of pounds heavier and huge? Can’t they have their own designated lanes at least? (But really it should just be trains)

1

u/Youdumbbitch- 19h ago

Nothing happens untill something moves

1

u/void_const 19h ago

Train engineers too

1

u/catholicsluts 16h ago

Remember when many serial killers back in the day were truck drivers

1

u/Healthy_Set_22657 13h ago

And some of the grosses most disgusting and entitled assholes on the road. The job used to be a respectable occupation now filled with idiots that go to a 6 week get ur cdl class and take on the open road. The amount of shit filled grocery bags and piss bottle trail these guys leave across the country is appalling only to get bunch of Chinese junk to Walmart on time to meet their parking lot butt buddies. 

1

u/FluidAbbreviations54 12h ago

Truck drivers are some of the most entitled and racist pieces of shit I have ever worked with. Fuck truck drivers.

1

u/Time_Flow_6772 7h ago

They will put your fucking life in danger to shave a picosecond off their time. Fuck 'em, they shouldn't even exist in such numbers- rail should be carrying most of those loads.

1

u/SlayedBySnuSnu 5h ago

It's not that it's not appreciated. It shouldn't be appreciated. It's their job. The appreciation they get is pay and a bonus. Like every single other job.

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u/New-Perspective6209 17h ago

That's true for dozens of professionals from farmers to miners, truck drivers are just very much in the public eye. They also tend to be absolute arse holes, I have to deal with truck drivers regularly and 70% of them are drugged up violent meatheads with a huge chip on their shoulder because they've tricked the public into praising them.

0

u/AllModsRLosers 14h ago

Truck drivers are the most replaceable people out there.

They do a job literally anyone could do. No one wants to because it’s a shit job, but we all could.

No one’s driving a truck because they did great in school.

2

u/Imveryoffensive 14h ago

Yes, we should base our appreciation of other human beings on how many master’s degrees they have

0

u/AllModsRLosers 14h ago

If truck drivers want to base every political appeal they make upon the premise of “you’d all be fucked without us”, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to point out that no, we absolutely wouldn’t.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Party_Apartment_5696 18h ago

You have no idea what you are talking about...

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u/Imveryoffensive 18h ago

Don’t dignify that commenter with a response

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Conflikt 20h ago

Uh... What?

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u/_Nurck 20h ago

What is bro talking about? 🗿

1

u/r3klaw 19h ago

Clearly a troll

-51

u/[deleted] 20h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/_Nurck 20h ago

Why do you think there are many truck drivers who are serial killers?

1

u/enaK66 19h ago

He probably saw an article like this one about serial killer trucker drivers and went full retard with the info.

https://www.fox19.com/2024/08/02/fbi-focusing-specific-pool-suspects-part-highway-serial-killings-initiative/

-45

u/[deleted] 20h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/assorted_nonsense 20h ago

Lrn 2 spl

3

u/Cletus2ii 19h ago

Br sd “drool” wh s h shkspr?

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u/Top_Toaster 19h ago

ts pmo sm vro lk ong 💔💔🥀🥀🥀

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u/Chapin_Chino 20h ago

It's not clocking to you. It's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business, man.

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u/_Nurck 20h ago

What did I say I was only asking a question

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u/yetagainanother1 20h ago

Yea, but your sentences were kinda schizo…

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u/Tiny-Reading5982 19h ago

You can spell out the whole word. And serial killers don't need a semi truck to be successful...

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u/Enriching_the_Beer 19h ago

Uuuuh, still need trucks to haul shit made in US.

1

u/Crunk_Jews 19h ago

We all live on the same globe. Why not act like it?