Author: News Polite

The Petro Travel Center on Interstate 10 in Ontario, Calif., is one of scores across the country. At the front of the building are the things road trippers see when they stop for gas or snacks: a convenience store, restrooms and some dining options.

But for truckers, Petro is a haven.

An entrance opens to kiosks and services catering directly to those who work out of the cab of a big rig. There are showers, a driver’s lounge, a gym and a laundromat. A brightly lit game area features arcade machines and a pool table. Outside the stop there is a chapel in a trailer.

“For the next 34 hours I’m going to do laundry, catch up on some reading, take a shower — basically just like what anybody else would do if they were home for the weekend,” Bryan Tyson Galbreath, 41, of Corpus Christi, Texas, said. “I’m away from my house, but that truck is technically my house.”

Mr. Galbreath is one of at least 550,000 long-haul truck drivers in the United States, underpinning an industry that has been hailed as indispensable during the pandemic even while facing a severe shortage of drivers. That shortage has coincided with supply chain issues, adding pressure on drivers to reach their destinations on time.

The industry is also on the precipice of a huge change. The driver shortages are reshaping the work force, as the specter of self-driving trucks increasingly threatens to transform how the work is done. Self-driving trucks are being tested now and are viewed as the future for shipping all manner of goods across the country.

As trucking evolves, the patchwork of businesses across the United States that exist to support the industry is at risk of disappearing.

There are no figures on how many people work in the various professions that support the trucking industry, but it takes an army of truck washers, gas station cashiers and truck stop custodial staff to help drivers and their cargoes get from Point A to B.

Restrictions control how long they can drive, down to the minute, a reason Mr. Galbreath is spending 34 hours in the truck stop’s orbit.

Because of the dangers associated with having exhausted drivers at the wheel, various federal rules have taken effect since the 1930s. The current set of rules, enacted in 2013, are complicated. Depending on their companies’ operating hours, truckers are allowed to drive a maximum of 60 hours over seven days or 70 hours over eight days. So drivers on these schedules can set their time back to zero with so-called reset breaks. These 34-hour off-duty periods are often spent at truck stops.

“If you’re at a truck stop, you’re pretty much stuck there,” Mr. Galbreath said.

In the parking areas, the drivers nestle their trucks in tightly packed rows. Their cabs function as kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms and offices. At night, drivers can be seen through their windshields — eating dinner or reclining in their bunks, bathed in the light of a Nintendo Switch or FaceTime call home.

Small truck stops have just a few parking spots. By contrast, the Iowa 80 Truck stop, in Walcott, Iowa, bills itself as the largest truck stop in the world and has 900. Across the country, entire temporary cities form and disperse daily.

“Everybody has different stories,” Elaine Peralta said of the truckers that pass through her salon inside the TA Travel Center in Barstow, Calif. “There’s a lot of couples that are driving. There’s a lot of students driving. Young people are driving, and they do their school work, if they’re in college, on the truck. A lot of different ages.”

One common complaint among truckers is food quality. Except for the occasional diner, food truck or independent restaurant, fast food is the most readily available fare, with restaurants like Carl’s Jr., Wendy’s and Taco Bell dominating the truck stop market.

“I would like to see a little more variety and not just fast food,” said Angela Eudey, 42, of Bakersfield, Calif., who tries to shun it and stocks up on groceries before she hits the road. “I have a fridge, so I buy food each week,” she said. “Mostly fresh fruits, vegetables, yogurt, luncheon meat.”

“I try to be healthy,” the truck driver said.

Being healthy isn’t easy, though. With long hours behind the wheel and a lack of nourishing food options, truckers face a variety of challenges. Various studies have found that truckers have higher-than-usual rates of obesity, diabetes, back problems and depression and that long-haul drivers are more likely to smoke.

Another issue presented by truck stop food is the cost. As of 2021, the mean annual pay for a truck driver was $50,340 — down significantly from 1980, when the average pay was $110,000 after adjusting for inflation, according to one analysis. Pay can be especially low for new drivers, or independent contractors, as they can be on the hook for costs like training fees, maintenance and fuel.

“Everything is expensive,” said Anthony Johnson, who is 36 and based in Miami. “And I don’t get paid that much to keep buying food out in restaurants at all. And Uber Eats is worse. I’m constantly spending $30 for things that cost $9.”

At a stop in Barstow, Calif., truckers grilled tri-tip, burgers and sausages over a portable grill in the parking lot. “If you’re going to eat at the truck stop three meals a day, it’s going to cost you $75 to $100,” Bobby Parkman, 59, a truck driver from Center Rutland, Vt., said. “This is a lot better.”

Truckers aren’t always able to make it into truck stops or rest areas when they’re not working.

The United States has a huge shortage of truck parking spaces. According to the American Trucking Associations, over 98 percent of truck drivers have reported having difficulty finding safe parking. If no spots are available in designated areas, truckers have to improvise, spending their nights sleeping in potentially unsafe or illegal locations, like vacant lots or highway on-ramps.

For truckers, a good night’s sleep is essential. Driving a truck is incredibly dangerous, and tired drivers exacerbate the problem. In 2020, 4,842 large trucks were involved in fatal crashes — and 107,000 in crashes that resulted in injury. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, fatigue is a factor in around 13 percent of truck crashes.

“There’s been many a time I couldn’t find a spot,” said Mr. Galbreath, who has sometimes been forced to sleep on the side of the highway because of the lack of parking. “You have vehicles that are traveling down the highway at 65, 70 miles an hour.”

He continued: “You can feel them when they run by you, rocking the truck. You’re not going to get a good night’s rest doing that.”

Yet while truck drivers have adapted to increasing difficulties on the road, the problems ahead seem more transformational.

If driverless trucks are the future of America’s highways, the industry surrounding truckers is likely to head the way of other once essential, now forgotten support industries, like the businesses that once served gold rush towns, mining towns or Route 66 motorists.

“This is all I really want to do,” said Kevin Ransom, 46, who has been driving for 22 years. “I’ve tried welding. I’ve done carpenter work. I’ve done a variety of manual labor jobs, working in the plants, and I don’t care for it. So I don’t know what else I could do.”

He added that he was hopeful it would be another 20 years before automation would affect his job. “By that time,” he said, “I’ll be retired.”

ORLANDO — The first tropical threat of the hurricane season in Florida washed across the state overnight Friday, leaving South Florida residents and local officials to deal with flooding, power outages, stranded vehicles and hours of cleanup, affecting some businesses.

In Miami, drivers faced slashing rains and flooded streets in the early hours of Saturday morning. The city’s fire department responded to several people caught in cars amid the rising waters. Six high-water vehicles deployed in the city, the department said on Twitter. Winds of 40 miles per hour did not meet the threshold necessary for the system to be classified as Tropical Storm Alex, but they did slosh water into the downtown area, including in parking areas of condominiums.

The storm has brought more than 10 inches of rain to Miami over a 72-hour span, according to Accuweather, but other areas, including Key Largo (11 inches) and Biscayne Park (11.6), saw higher totals. There was also reported flooding in communities outside Miami including Hialeah and Hollywood, as well as in Naples, Fla., on the Gulf Coast.

Power outages did not soar overnight, however. As of 9 a.m. on Saturday, Miami-Dade County had 4,083 outages according to PowerOutage.us, though that number dropped to 1,310 by 11:30 a.m. Surrounding counties of Broward and Palm Beach reported 985 and 214, respectively.

To the west, Collier County, home of well-populated Naples, had 226 outages reported at 9 a.m., but only two by 11:30. Lee County, further to the north along the Gulf Coast, had 47. By noon, all tropical warnings were canceled in most of southwest Florida as the storm pounded the Treasure Coast in the southeastern region, according to the National Weather Service.

Although meteorologists said the storm never fully organized as it traveled from the Gulf of Mexico toward the Keys (it could still strengthen as it leaves the Atlantic coast, they said), it does not take much rain to cause mayhem in Miami — especially on a weekend night when many are out.

Goncalo Gil, 26, stayed inside as streets clogged with water outside his apartment in the Miami neighborhood of Brickell. Mr. Gil, a student pilot, who posted a video of flooded streets on Twitter, wondered if the city’s flood prevention system, which included storm water pumps and sea walls, had worked as intended. “From midnight, everywhere was flooded, every car was stalled,” he said.

Kash Kashmiri, 30, arrived at Total Nutrition in Brickell by 10 a.m. and found a customer waiting outside for him. The store manager saw water inside the entryway and fretted about allowing anyone inside. Mr. Kashmiri offered to gather the products that the customer needed and do a cash transaction at the front door. The customer helped move sandbags while he waited, then paid for an assortment of protein doughnuts, healthy snacks and energy drinks.

Mr. Kashmiri said he had to turn away other customers because they didn’t have cash. But he added that some flooding was fairly standard for Miami. “Normal down here is where there’s a heavy storm, you can expect slight flooding,” he said by phone. “Any kind of tropical storm, you can expect flooding for sure.”

More than two hours into his shift, the rain picked up again and he noticed people in the area tying down furniture.

Warnings about continued possible weather risks remained for the weekend.

“The main threat right now is the potential for heavy rainfall and flash flooding,” said Maria Torres, a spokeswoman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, on Friday.

Early Saturday, the center warned of “considerable flash and urban flooding” in South Florida.

Rainfall totals associated with the storm were expected to be wide-ranging. Western Cuba could see up to 14 inches of rain with the possibility of life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides, forecasters said. Some areas in the northwestern Bahamas could see up to 10 inches.

The forecast for Florida included the possibility of tornadoes over the southern portion of the state through Saturday. The Hurricane Center also said that some cities in the state could see a storm surge of up to three feet.

People who live in parts of South Florida that are prone to floods should identify a safe place to go to if waters begin to rise, and be careful not to drive through standing water, Ms. Torres said on Friday.

“Turn around, don’t drown,” she said.

Hurricane Agatha, the first named storm in the eastern Pacific region, roared into Mexico this week as a Category 2 storm with heavy rains and damaging winds. It killed at least nine people and left five others missing, the governor of the southern state of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, said on Friday morning.

Concerns about dangerous weather in the Atlantic began this week when forecasters said a large area of disturbed weather, related to the remnants of Hurricane Agatha, had formed near the Yucatán Peninsula and had interacted with an upper-level trough over the Gulf of Mexico.

Meteorologists expect an “above normal” Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30, with 14 to 21 named storms considered likely. Up to 10 of those are expected to reach hurricane strength.

Alanis Thames, Nick Madigan and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.