**: Nine sides.
Some time ago, I inadvertently mentioned the matter of the truck, and a friend asked me to talk about it more, especially the magical past in the 90s.
I'm too familiar with trucks, because there's a coal mine in our hometown, and people around me basically do this when they go out since I was a child.
Many people think of "coal bosses" when they think of coal mines, and think that where there are mines, everyone is very rich, but in fact, the mine owners will not share how much money they make, and many of those mine owners are from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. However, coal mines have indeed given birth to two industries, coal kilns and big cars, so that everyone's life is guaranteed.
Going down to the coal kiln is a high-risk and high-return job, people from all over the country are running to us, all want to go down the coal kiln, in case something happens, there is a verbal agreement in advance, take the money to settle the matter, the family comes over and is not noisy, take the money and leave, if the body can not be found, add money. In order to stabilize the hearts of other miners, it is not ambiguous to give money.
Of course, it's very, very regulated now, and it's not the same thing as when I was a kid.
However, the most common thing I see is the endless large trucks. I specifically checked, until now, the main mode of transportation in my country is still road trucks, from small trucks to 21-meter semi-trailer cargo. They are responsible for 70 per cent of the country's land transport. The train mainly pulls some large quantities, such as coal and fertilizer, and the rest mainly relies on trucks.
According to statistics, there are more than 30 million truck drivers in the country, plus the people who provide related services, as well as the parents, wives and children of these people. The number of people directly affected by the industry may be 10% of the national population.
There's actually very little attention paid to them, so I'm going to talk about them today. Especially the early development of the industry. This article is a stream of consciousness, where you want to talk about it.
As the old saying goes, "There are three hardships in life, and the boat is beaten with iron and tofu".
The boat is facing high winds and waves, and if you are not careful, you will capsize and die. Iron workers endure scorching heat all year round, as well as heavy physical work. Grinding tofu has to get up in the early morning, soaking beans, grinding, marinating, pressing, and selling, and it is very hard to cycle every day all year round.
Truck drivers can be said to be a combination of these three, not only dangerous, but also hard, and constant suffering.
According to incomplete statistics, more than 20,000 drivers die in traffic accidents across the country every year. The percentage of truck drivers is very high, while tens of thousands of people are injured.
The working environment of the truck is a little bigger, and the sealing is very average, really cold in winter and hot in summer. It's much better now, and it's worse before.
As for the working hours and intensity. Highly nervous and focused for a long time, sitting is a huge burden on physical and mental health, which is generally understood by friends who have driven long distances.
As long as there is work, it will not stop, and everything will revolve around the car. The so-called rest time is actually just a gap in work. Eating, sleeping, going home, and even getting married and having children are all done by "squeezing" out time. In recent years, many trucks have simply been husband and wife, and both of them are in the car.
This way of working and living comes at the cost of occupational diseases for almost everyone. If not, it may mean that you haven't been in the industry for a long time.
The main grievances now are unlimited involution, the increasing costs of various expenses, the vicious competition of peers, and the exploitation of the platform by grasping the source of goods, which finally causes the income to continue to decrease.
Once upon a time, truck drivers were also a wealthy industry, and now, the cost performance is very low. If all goes well, there is some surplus in the cost of removal. Once something goes wrong, it will not only lose money, but even cause a huge blow to the family.
In "Ordinary World", Lu Yao wrote that Li Xiangqian gave up being a cadre and chose to become a truck driver, which seems incredible to people now, but it is not difficult to understand under the circumstances at the time. There is a sentence in the book called "When the steering wheel turns, the county magistrate will not change it." ”
It's an exaggeration, but it's not outrageous.
In those days, trucks mostly belonged to public households. The number of drivers is small, and there are even fewer cars, and it is almost impossible for ordinary people to become drivers.
Later, the country opened up, and it ushered in the **90s.
The first is that individuals are allowed to buy trucks to run transportation. At that time, everyone's income was low, and most people only had one or two hundred yuan a month. Trucks are measured in 10,000 units, and the old-fashioned liberation costs more than 50,000, and the driving and riding experience of the new car is much better, and it is also as high as 100,000.
At that time, the income of truck drivers was also high, and the monthly drivers had a large income of several hundred yuan. It's normal to run long distances, thousands. If you have your own car, you are willing to run and dare to take risks, you are not afraid of hard work and night walking, and there is no cap on your income.
You may say that a few hundred or even a thousand a month is not much, but the problem is that at that time, a teacher only had 180 yuan a month, and these 1,000 yuan is equivalent to 40,000 or 50,000 yuan now.
It was at that time that many people saved their first pot of gold by driving, first bought a few more cars to build a fleet, and then transformed into a contractor when the real estate broke out.
In fact, there are many reasons for the prosperity of those years, and the most critical is timing.
At that time, the domestic economy was in the ascendant, and everyone wanted to make money, but they did not let go of the obsession of the past few decades, and while they were obsessed with iron rice bowls, they envied the people who went to the sea to make money. The people with really good conditions are all in the system, which makes a group of "marginal people" who have bad conditions and cannot enter the system anyway make a fortune.
And at that time, there were more jobs and fewer cars, and the driver arrived at one place, and the goods were unloaded and drove to the parking lot. Many times, as long as you see that your car is empty, someone will immediately come up and ask you how many things to go. Even if the last time it was not shipped, the next order has already been booked.
Drivers will also be picky, they don't want to go for a short distance, they don't want to go if things are not good, and they don't want to go when they come back. Even because I don't eat spicy, Jiangxi and Hunan don't go.
In addition, the price of oil is several times higher now than in the 90s, when diesel was only about 2 yuan. The big cars are all oil tigers, and there is a lot left of this item.
There are also some special circumstances of the year that are even talked about now.
There is a special kind of freight: the transportation of parallel goods. The most profitable are imported electrical appliances and imported black cars (new cars, stolen cars, and second-hand scrapped cars), as well as refined oil and foreign cigarettes. The margins of these are very high.
Smuggling" is now feeling very serious, and you can go in and step on the operation of the sewing machine at any time. Back in the nineties, everyone felt that it was commonplace, and even Luo Yonghao did not shy away from his experience of smuggling cars when he gave a speech at university. Now I can't imagine that if an Internet celebrity says that he smuggled a car on the Internet, there is a high probability that he will be banned in a few days.
In addition to that, there were a few things I didn't expect. For example, chemical and metal raw materials, frozen meat and fish, second-hand clothes, second-hand cars and electronic parts, smuggled iron ore, illegally excavated construction river sand, and even foreign garbage, all of which are more profitable than normal freight.
"I couldn't understand it until a few years ago, when a colleague suddenly resigned from the African office. He is just reselling China's garbage to Africa, clothes, bicycles, broken TVs, mobile phones, scrapped cars, and even expired canned instant noodles. In fact, in many places, everyone doesn't look at the expiration date at all, they just eat it, as long as they can't taste it, it's no problem, that's how it was when I was a child.
These things are taken back as garbage, and then sold in Africa as "new" goods, although cheap, they can still be profitable. Some electronics are even sent to Mumbai, where skilled craftsmen repair and replace parts, which are repaired and sold all over the world. The "Central Asia Line" goes to Pakistan, and there are a lot of handicraft gods in Pakistan, who can be literate and martial, computer repair and hand-rub crankshafts, and can do anything, repair it and then resell it.
China is now the second largest exporter of "foreign garbage" in the world after the United States.
Some of the lucky ones went from 10,000 yuan households in the late 80s to luxury cars in the late 90s, and by the new century, they have a net worth of hundreds of millions, and even listed companies and become celebrities. It's really a rocket-like ascent speed, and these drivers are just eating a few scraps, but they are already holding up their bellies.
To add a word, reselling river sand is now also a lucrative industry, and it is often said that every sand truck is a piece of Rolls-Royce. It's just that the driver's income is already very poor, and it is the big brothers who really make money. The earthwork is domineering, the lending is a Land Rover, and the Passat is a dry share. Take a closer look.
On the side of the highway in many mountainous areas, you can see signboards, in addition to accommodation, eating, and repairing cars, there is a project called "adding water". There are often large truck drivers, parked on the side of the road to connect the water pipes.
Most people will probably find it strange: how much water can be used in the large cargo tank of diesel fuel when the old steam train is filled with water? Why are there signs everywhere?
In fact, it is a water-cooled brake, which is as cool as a "water-cooled machine gun".
The principle of this thing is very simple, driving in mountainous areas, the vehicle's braking device is used frequently, and brake pads, calipers, tires, etc. will rub and heat. Once the temperature rises, the braking effect will be greatly reduced due to thermal decay, and the tires will lose grip or even spontaneously combust.
So I came up with the idea of adding a sprinkler near the brakes and tires to maintain the performance of the brakes and tires by spraying water to cool down. The driver joked that it was "add a water cooling".
The effect of this invention is so good that some management departments in the southwest mountainous area require that large quantities of goods are not allowed to be put on the road without installing sprinklers.
However, the danger of this behavior is obvious, one is that the tire may directly explode into an accident if it is repeatedly alternating between hot and cold. The second is that the winter is cold, and the water sprayed on the ground may freeze. And it's that thin layer of dark ice, which the driver behind may not be able to see at all.
Therefore, in the autumn and winter in the north, the management department strictly ordered that the water sprinkler should not be used, and once found, it was not allowed to go on the road.
In fact, the reason why the sprinkler was invented back then was very simple: overload.
Now with strict management, the overloading of trucks is much better. In the '90s, the situation was so serious that they couldn't even look back on it.
At that time, there were no trucks that did not overtake, and they started at least 100% over, and there were almost no trucks that did not overtake. When some manufacturers produce, the car leaves room for overload from size to power.
If you don't overload, don't leave ten problems.
CCTV reported an interesting thing before, in the mid-90s, a truck was found on the Sichuan Expressway that was not overloaded at all, and the experienced police became suspicious, carefully investigated, and found dozens of kilograms of drugs from the mezzanine of the fuel tank. The policeman's uncle later said that it was too unreasonable not to overload, and there must be something wrong.
In addition to overloading, there are many other problems.
For example, speeding, many old drivers said that the speedometer was a decoration at that time, and how fast you run depends on the road conditions and the amount of goods pulled. And guts, of course.
Fatigue driving, when I was tired and hungry, I stopped to rest for a while. The two shifts do not stop, once they are busy, they are all sent over to talk about it, and it will be solved when the time comes. You may have to use some medicine on the road, and I have personally seen the driver of the cart bake what medicine with tin foil. At that time, there was also a kind of "painkiller tablets", which was very high in opium, and drivers often roasted it to refresh themselves.
In this way, accidents are frequent, and sometimes people fall asleep completely before they get to the place. Almost every veteran driver can tell a lot of thrilling experiences, and finally everyone has a summary of this line: exchange life for money.
Some of these chaos come from the operation of the industry itself, and some come from the environment.
At that time, it belonged to the "chaotic 8090s" that I have been repeatedly emphasizing. The industry is just getting started, and there are various deficiencies, both internally and regulatory. Both the quality of vehicles and the level of road infrastructure are at a very low level.
For drivers, the most hated kind of person is the so-called "gas guzzler".
At night, the trucks stopped to rest, and these people came in small cars, mostly modified bread. The so-called modification is to get an extra-large fuel tank in the rear.
When we got to the parking lot, the rats came down. Usually there are three people, two go to pry the fuel tank to steal gas, and one goes to the cab to keep an eye on the driver. A lot of these people have guys, or steel pipes or machetes.
If the driver doesn't move, forget it, if you want to come down to stop it. The person who is staring at the car is standing close to the door, whether the driver reaches out first or stretches his leg first, he goes up and cuts. Even if the driver carries a guy with him, he will not dare to open the door if the terrain is unfavorable, otherwise he will definitely suffer.
The solution was not impossible, and some drivers in those days got a five-shot shotgun with a shotgun, and the barrel was sawed short and put on the car. Whether you encounter a mouse or a robbery, roll down the window and put a shot, and if the other party is interested, he will go away. Anyway, the trucks are everywhere, and it's not worth playing with.
Some of them lie on the edge of the fuel tank with a knife on their pillows, and the general fuel guzzler sees the person lying down, and knows that he is prepared, so he will not come to steal it.
The safest way is to go in pairs, more than a dozen big trucks act together, everyone prepares all kinds of equipment, and whoever encounters trouble, there is often a bald brother with a scar on his face who leads everyone forward to confront him. Everyone is seeking money, no one will be desperate, watching the drivers come prepared, they will generally retreat.
The life endings of the bald brothers are often more extreme, they dare to take the lead, dare to take the lead, have natural leadership, some of them sit in prison or die, and some of them later become extremely rich.
Again, the rapid rise of China before 2005 was not the work of polite people, but by the reckless heroes in the marginal areas. After 2005, real estate and the Internet, the leading big brothers are somewhat literate.
And at that time, it was very difficult for you to learn to drive a big car, generally there were only two ways, follow your family to get started, and learn to drive by the way, yes, drive first and then get a license. One of the most common ways is to retire automobile soldiers, and there are many large vehicles in the army, and many automobile soldiers retire every year. Therefore, there are a lot of drivers who have been soldiers, and they dare to fight.
Ordinary people can't do this, after all, in the 90s, "car bandits" were everywhere.
At the height of the rampant, some even dared to rob patrol police cars, and some were killed when the police stopped the robbery. There was once a local ** promulgated an ordinance: "The masses kill car robbers in crime, and road rage is rewarded." ”
Most of these people are in economically and transport-underdeveloped areas, and the modus operandi is very simple: make a fence or a big rock or simply a car, and stop the truck when it comes.
Some only need cash, some want to grab the goods on the car, and some are even the car with the goods roll stew. Sometimes the driver is simply knocked unconscious and thrown on the side of the road, and the goods are pulled to the city to find acquaintances to get rid of, and the car is sent to the auto repair shop. Or dismantle and sell accessories, or save a new car for several cars, and then sell the car through the formalities.
At that time, several people from the north and south of the river concentrated on this, specializing in disassembling and assembling this kind of underground car, and some even won the nickname of "China Sanqi". A large number of smuggled cars, scrapped cars, and stolen cars are piled up. A big truck came in, and in an hour or two it was dismantled into a pile of parts.
This is not only the case with road trucks, but also with long-distance buses and trains. Those who pull people come up to rob, and those who pull goods come up to rob goods.
People in my hometown are particularly sensitive to a certain place, and I often mention it, and I once forgot where that place was, until last year's ** Festival, when the villagers "picked up" things, and I didn't remember it.
At that time, the severity of the problem made the whole country pay great attention to it. In 1993, the Supreme People's Court promulgated the Circular of the Supreme People's Court on Severely Cracking Down on the Criminal Activities of "Car Bandits and Road Blockers", announcing that participants in the criminal case of "car bandits and road blockers" would be severely punished. If the circumstances are serious, they should be resolutely executed, and probation is generally not considered. This is the first time that we have to crack down on this.
A soldier named Xu Honggang was returning home from vacation when he encountered four men robbing him with knives on the way. In order to protect the masses, he stepped in to stop it, was stabbed 14 times by the gangsters, and got out of the car to chase the gangsters with his clothes and intestines. became a famous hero of the year.
The result backfired, the effect was very average, and the car robbers not only did not converge, but also intensified. Even from remote areas to the main line and big cities, some criminals even shouted the slogan of "marking the Beijing-Guangzhou line".
By April 1996, it was decided to launch a second round of "strike hard" nationwide around the phenomenon of "car bandits and road blockers".
Hindsight counts, more than a year. Nearly 100,000 gangs were smashed, 420,000 were arrested, and tens of thousands of people voluntarily surrendered under pressure.
In addition, the so-called "car robbers and road rage are rewarded for killing", and the drivers also took light and heavy firearms on the road, and this unhealthy fire was suppressed a little.
This reminds me of another thing.
I don't know if you've heard of it, but many Americans will shout "shotgun" before getting into the car, which is equivalent to declaring that they want to sit in the passenger seat. Yes, the co-pilot is called "shotgun" in the United States, which means "troll" or "shotgun".
Why is there such a statement? Why did the co-pilot have anything to do with a shotgun?
It turned out that when they were developing the western region, the convoy would be robbed at any time, and the co-driver of the big car had to have someone holding a troll there to guard, and after a long time, that position became a "troll". Once upon a time, we also had a "shotgun" on the passenger side of our truck.
At that time, the truck driver defaulted to the fact that he could not stop in a deserted place if he saw something wrong on the road. As long as you don't overturn the car, you hit the accelerator with one foot, and it's a big deal to repair the car and spend some money. Unless you have a gun, parking is too dangerous.
At that time, driving a large amount of goods was like a dart in the old days, and many people were veterans before, or they had squatted on the number, or they were usually more brutal, otherwise they really didn't dare to go out and run.
But now the vicious crime is almost gone.
With the development of society, especially the development of communications and surveillance, it is more important that economic development "human life" is valuable. A car with goods no longer seems so expensive. Far from worth a life in the calculation, whether it is the driver's or the criminal's.
And after the malignant cases become fewer, occasionally one will be very dazzling, ** will be arrested at any cost, the cost of crime has skyrocketed, and the gains outweigh the losses, and it will slowly disappear. Today's vicious cases are generally impulsive crimes.
But less vicious cases remain. Especially "fuel consumption" and "electric consumption", with the price of oil, a heavy truck can hold more than 1,000 liters of large fuel tank is too powerful. "Electric rats" are those who steal batteries, not only from large cars, but also from express delivery.
Many truck drivers are very entangled in the industry: more and more people and cars are joining, but the growth of goods has stagnated. The industry is getting more and more volatile.
The industry is constantly shuffling, and people are constantly leaving, but the tables are still packed.
As far as I know, the income of truck drivers has not increased for many years, and most of them are in the range of 60 million to 10 thousand.
This number is not very low, but if you add factors such as working hours, labor intensity, and safety risks, this income is obviously too low. And most people can't bear this pain at all.
Especially in recent years, with the relaxation of access to operating vehicles, a large number of drivers and light trucks have poured in, which has stirred up the already chaotic market.
Because light trucks are cheap, even for complete novices, some transportation companies have started a "one-stop" service. Driver's license test, loans, affiliated companies, distribution of supplies, annual inspection and repair of vehicles. As long as the person comes with an ID card and signs the contract, you will be a glorious "driver cow horse".
Of course, the company is not kind, they have to collect money in all links, and the car loan is handled by the driver, but it is listed in the name of the company. Once there is a problem, the risk is all on the driver, and the company can't touch it at all.
The extreme of this involution is the emergence of the so-called "steamed bun car". It is said that the truck driver does not want to make money by transporting goods, pulls goods at cost price, and only eats steamed buns to grab the business.
White steamed buns, boiled water. service area, and day sleep. Old godmother, adjust the taste. Add a small amount of oil (refers to the informal channels of private gas stations, the quality of which basically depends on the face), and take the national highway (no tolls). As long as it costs less, they can run. ”
The reason for this is very simple: the supply is too small, the ** is too low, but the cost of the vehicle itself is there. For its empty car, it is better to pull back the cost.
They have crippled the entire industry, and no one can make any money.
End. No matter what happens, until now, large trucks are still one of the few high-paying jobs for grassroots people, but they have not been the same over the years.
Didn't I run through the 109 National Highway last year, through the no-man's land of Hoh Xil, and there were big cars everywhere along the way. Friends who have been to Aksai Chin said that there are also continuous convoys of trucks transporting supplies.
It can be seen that even in no man's land, there are them.
It can be said that trucks are becoming more and more important to the economy, equivalent to hemoglobin to our human body. Over the years, the overall laws and regulations have been continuously improved, and the problems that plagued drivers before, such as robbers, speeding, overweight, etc., are rare, but the ubiquitous madness of depressing each other's prices cannot be solved for a long time.
But like Didi, the industry gives a relatively high income to those who want to work hard, which is a good thing anyway.
It's the New Year, and I also pay tribute to those who are still on the way.