not a right wing thing ime. In fact I’ve only seen that view expressed by southern black men and women, but that’s a product of my time in NOLA (where for some reason black people don’t trust a lot of institutions) I’m sure.
Anyways, lol at not donating your organs.
nbd cramp in my calf this morning means I can’t walk right for an hour. fucking getting old bullshit
I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not here
typical bama fan intellect
I’ve been subjected to like 20 years of your takes, dude
Oh so this is a dementia thing?
Guess I can’t talk, I still can’t walk because of this cramp. This… does not seem good.
Just wait till you take a step and your knee wobbles for no reason.
Wait til you hit your 50s:
What’s wrong, why are you hobbling?
I [sneezed/slept wrong/reached behind me in the car] and threw out my back.
Bit of Poe’s Law there.
But I suspect that it was sarcasm.
Lol in my last doctor’s appointment she warned me DON’T EVER REACH BEHIND YOUR SEAT IN YOUR CAR! This is such a large health hazard at my age it’s on the checklist - exercise regularly, eat lots of vegetables, watch your cholesterol, and if you love your family for God’s sake DON’T REACH BEHIND YOUR SEAT IN THE CAR!
@BusinessGenius do you see truckload pay rates / driver quality of life improving over the last couple of years?
I work in IT for a hazmat / tanker carrier, I have some visibility into how we’ve had to make changes over the years. Like you and @boredsocial said, every manner of trucking is different and I know nothing about those other modes. So all of this is specific to my industry and New York / the northeast over the last 8 years. We have a few guys that stay out in sleepers, but most guys are home every night. These are still 10-14 hour days that either start at 3am or end at 3am. It’s a hard schedule for most people, but it be considered “easy” in trucking.
We historically have not dealt with brand new drivers. Guys had to have had at least 2 years doing tanker driving before we would even look at them. We’ve had to start getting away from that, taking guys who have driving experience but not tanker/hazmat. And we’ve started doing a little bit of a training program, taking newer guys but not giving them hazmat work. We don’t want to do that work, it’s specifically done just to train drivers who can’t yet do hazmat/tanker. It was a big success that we moved 2 guys from that program into doing the “real” work.
Signing bonuses have tripled in the last year. We also have a really aggressive referral bonus - if a driver refers another driver, the referring driver can earn up to $3k - four $750 chunks based on passing training / 90 days after training / 180 days after training / 1 year) but we’ve only ever paid it out a few times.
All experienced drivers are commission based for us (this is not typical in the northeast for this industry, most companies are hourly) - when I started it would be usual to see a less experienced driver come in at 28% and stay there for a year or more (so he’s making 28% of Linehaul / Accessorials, not any fuel costs). No one is ever under 30% now, and it’s rare for a guy to be below 32% - experienced drivers often come on at 35%. Brand new drivers, we have a guaranteed salary minimum - so effectively they are hourly - but we break out what they would have made had they been commission, convince them that they will make more, and move them over. That guaranteed salary floor we had to put in place to recruit, commission is understandably a dealbreaker with some guys.
We’re super flexible with shifts now. We still require one weekend shift, but basically anything else is on the table now (it was not like this years ago). 4 days on 3 off, 4 on 4 off. I think I told you before but if a guy wanted to work 3 days a week, I bet they’d hire him.
Delay that is the customer’s fault is paid to them at at least $25.60 an hour - those are old contracts, all new / revised contracts pay at least $32. What we call non chargeable delay - say a flat tire or whatever - we paid at $18/hr 8 years ago. That went to $23 to $25 to $27.
Rates to customers have also risen rapidly the last few years (being commission based that’s passed on directly). There was one customer that was under contract but we told them “We cannot find drivers that will do your work at this rate any more.” They renegotiated.
We’ve tried to do some quality of life increases - one small one, AQ mentions above inward facing cameras. We had those, and did away with them because they were so hated. Another one - drivers hated going to a specific loading point, so we went to every customer that loaded there and told them they were getting a additional charge for every order at that origin point, that was passed directly to the driver 100% - meaning the company took no percentage of it. I think that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The few sleepers we buy and use are a bit bigger. AQ mentions above that dispatch will refer to a driver as a pussy if they turn down a load, I know that is how it is in the truckload world but we wouldn’t allow that here. Good dispatchers are hard to find, too, but there’s no way we’d let someone abuse a driver here.
The average guy - when we compare his commission to hours in his log is at $37+/hr. We have guys that are like the robots that AQ mentions above that are well above $40. One guy swears to me he makes $50 an hour, but I think he’s just bad at math. Our average driver works 5 days a week, but the guys that often do 6 (or stay in a sleeper) make $135K+. Our top guy this year was $162k. With rate increases, if he works the same amount this year I bet he’ll be $185k. Average guy was $102k, average full time guy that works 5 days a week (so removing the robots) was $93k. The vast majority of these guys are home every night.
At least in my sector we’re trying hard to improve things for the drivers. This is the only way to keep the guys.
sperm donor.
It’s happening in your own backyard. LA Times did an investigative series on it in late 2019:
https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1183426628707377152
https://twitter.com/MelodyPetersen/status/1183370279608700928
https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1183429750984970240
To raise those numbers, California and other states over the last decade passed laws requiring coroners and medical examiners to “cooperate” with the companies to “maximize” the number of organs and tissues taken for transplant. Procurement companies’ lobbyists helped to write the legislation and push it into law.
Although the companies have emphasized organ transplants, in far more cases nationwide they harvested skin, bone, fat, ligaments and other tissues that are generally not used for life-threatening conditions. Those body parts fuel a booming industrial biotech market in which a half-teaspoon of ground-up human skin is priced at $434. That product is one of those used in cosmetic surgery to plump lips and posteriors, fill cellulite dimples and enhance penises. A single body can supply raw materials for products that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some more details on the lobbying efforts that have led to this and how procurement companies are straight up bribing coroners and medical examiners in the second part:
This is really just one aspect of it though, and obviously there are also private companies brazenly raking in huge profits from organ, tissue, and body donations. It’s just another business model.
Damn, and here I was secretly thinking about an organ acquisition company that could help pay for organs after death to help bring some money to the families. We just need to get some venture capital and think about how it can scale.
Right, people have already figured this out.
Science Care’s new owner, Northlane Capital Partners, is led by veteran private equity investors based near Washington, D.C. Northlane Capital’s other holdings include Potpourri Group, which operates the linen company Cuddledown. Potpourri also runs Whatever Works, an online catalogue that markets products ranging from garden tools and kitchen wares to sex toys and pest repellent.
Northlane Capital’s interest in the body broker business didn’t end with Science Care. In February, the partners acquired another major body broker that it merged with Science Care. Last year, the same private equity partners expressed interest in buying two other cadaver firms, according to interviews and a letter reviewed by Reuters.
I kind of like the idea that my body will live on in some Beverly Hills housewife’s lips, or some dude’s penis.
Although I agree for non-life-saving they should be paying us for that shit. But then you have a company following you around your whole life hoping you die. Even bigger obvious problem if the money goes to your next of kin after you die.
Your article doesn’t support this, and you go on to talk about cadavers, which are extremely different and it’s not right to conflate that with organ donation
I say let the market decide which body parts should be harvested from which people for the benefit of the rich. I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA!
Show me basic understanding of the difference between cadavers and organ donation.