Welcome to a special holiday week edition of Shifting Gears, your roundup of all the transportation news you need to know from the week.
This edition is coming out on Wednesday instead of Friday thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm biased, but I'd say it makes for some great airport or train reading.
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What did we miss? What else should we be covering? As always, let us know at grapier@businessinsider.com.
From leaked Amazon trucking documents to the never-ending Tesla-Ford feud, and of course, Black Friday sales, here's what you missed this week so far:
SEE ALSO: Here are the cool cars, trucks, SUVs, concepts and other stuff I saw at the 2019 LA auto show
Amazon's trucking rates revealed
Rachel Premack got her hands on an internal Amazon document that revealed it's paying drivers in a way that diverges from the rest of the industry at large, and sometimes well below prevailing market rates.
Instead of by the hour, Amazon pays by the day, and on three categories: SOLO1, SOLO2, and TEAM. Of course, not all drivers love the structure, but many say it could boost guaranteed minimum wages for truckers, something the industry hasn't had since the 1930s.
Read the full scoop on BI Prime here.
Thanksgiving travel nightmares
It's upon us: one of the busiest travel days of the year.
Headaches started out early, as two winter storms — one for each coast — threatened to snarl air traffic throughout the country. From there, things only got worse.
United passengers reported difficulty logging into the airline's app and website Tuesday afternoon, as many began to pack up and head to the airports. And for some of those customers, if they happened to be heading to Oakland, California, faced even more delays thanks to a mysterious blackout at the airport that lasted hours.
Ford isn't scared of Tesla's Cybertruck
After Elon Musk showed off a video of Tesla's new electric pickup handily beating an F-150 in tugs-of-war, Ford has doubled down on its challenge.
"Bring it on," Musk tweeted in response to a Ford executive who suggested the challenge might not have been fair, and wanted an "apples-to-apples" rematch.
Even famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson weighed in, sparring with Musk about torque, towing capabilities, traction, and more when it came to the showdown. But as Matt DeBord points out, nobody should care if the Tesla truck can beat the F-150. Here's why.
Everything else:
- America's largest truck-engine manufacturer just announced 2,000 layoffs — and it's another sign of the trucking 'bloodbath' that's slamming the $800 billion industry
- The end is near for the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet. Here's how it went from airline status symbol to reject in just 10 years
- A new Chicago ride-hailing law reveals for the first time what Uber and Lyft really charge
- African-American and Hispanic former Tesla employees allegedly said they heard racial slurs and were passed over for promotions that went to less-qualified white colleagues at Tesla's Buffalo factory
- Airlines are joining in on Black Friday with major flight sales — here's how you can save