Quote Originally Posted by drivesafe View Post
and hundreds of huge trucking companies, .
Some of the US truck fleets just about defy the imagination of persons in the Australian road transport business. East Texas Motor Freight operates in all mainland states and Canada and Mexico. They had over 3000 prime movers and 7000 trailers at one time. United, Red Ball, and Winnette are of similar size. Roadway once bought 1100 White Road Boss 2 prime movers in one order. Ryder bought 11,500 GMC trucks over a two year period. There is another one whose name I have forgotten had around 400 prime movers and over 4,000 trailers. The prime movers are mostly yard tractors and local/short haul pickup and delivery. They use owner drivers to line haul the trailer fleet. God knows how many vehicles of all sizes are operated by the likes of the US Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS.

Most major fleets are unionised, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Draymen, and Warehousemen being prominent. Job demarcation mostly applies in the big fleets, as much for efficiency as from union demands. Gear Jammers are line haul drivers who do just that, drive. They take over a loaded rig at depot with their log book and paperwork and drive it to destination. There are also Dock Spotters who drive yard tractors and shuffle trailers & prime movers in and out of loading areas and storage yards and Loaders who do just that. Each job being performed by specific workers is probably an efficient way to manage the large fleet numbers and huge volumes of freight.