I hired the same company to move my car across the country then back four years apart. The same man drove the truck. He told me he expects the company will shut down in another decade or two as it’s too hard to find good reliable drivers who want a long term trucking job. It’s a family run company with a stellar reputation and they aren’t interested in short timers
America has a truck driver shortage
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Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
It does make sense, you don’t need “infinite” amount of money. Pay a driver $200k a year. Or give them an 8 hour workday, and week off week on schedules so they can see their family. There’s many solutions, all of them involve incentivizing people to become drivers. If people want their Amazon orders so bad, they’ll end up paying. And if they don’t, then they have to re-prioritize what they want.
So why is this not happening in trucking or other areas? Whenever salaries go up in an area it's being reported almost like a miracle.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does make sense, you don’t need “infinite” amount of money. Pay a driver $200k a year. Or give them an 8 hour workday, and week off week on schedules so they can see their family. There’s many solutions, all of them involve incentivizing people to become drivers. If people want their Amazon orders so bad, they’ll end up paying. And if they don’t, then they have to re-prioritize what they want.
Part of the problem is with BNSF, UP & the other major long haul rail lines, there is no good aggregator for those looking to ship a few pallets of goods from California to Seattle, and the railroad is happy to set high minimums which make long distance trucking viable. Its ultimately quite silly, I really do think an Uber for Railroad shipping which partnered with the local railroads (that are desperate for revenue…
Just put the truck on the railroad flatcar.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
Free market people understand these things pretty easily. I do not see why you are finding it hard. One obvious fallacy in your statement is that someone getting paid infinite money for talent. I have not seen any such examples so far beside Pentagon who get paid more and more irrespective of their incompetence.
For example CEO salaries have been increasing rapidly for several decades. Are they so much better now than 40 or more years ago?
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#45I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
Conversely, maybe there really isn't a shortage, and trucking companies want to get more drivers so that they can pay less. So they push a narrative of being able to make 80 to $100,000, but don't disclose that it's only a tiny fraction of experienced or specially qualified drivers who actually earn that much
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is with BNSF, UP & the other major long haul rail lines, there is no good aggregator for those looking to ship a few pallets of goods from California to Seattle, and the railroad is happy to set high minimums which make long distance trucking viable. Its ultimately quite silly, I really do think an Uber for Railroad shipping which partnered with the local railroads (that are desperate for revenue…
Uber for railroad shipping? LCL (Less-than-container-load) freight forwarding has been an industry since God-knows-when, and you'd think this includes intermodal. You learn all this when you've done a few international moves.
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Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is with BNSF, UP & the other major long haul rail lines, there is no good aggregator for those looking to ship a few pallets of goods from California to Seattle, and the railroad is happy to set high minimums which make long distance trucking viable. Its ultimately quite silly, I really do think an Uber for Railroad shipping which partnered with the local railroads (that are desperate for revenue…
Just put the truck on the railroad flatcar.
There is an enormous existing market for this. It's called intermodal transport.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#48I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
The margins on this type of business are very low. I had a client who couldn't afford to process more than 20% of the invoices online (even though customers demanded it) because of 1.5% cc processing fee.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is with BNSF, UP & the other major long haul rail lines, there is no good aggregator for those looking to ship a few pallets of goods from California to Seattle, and the railroad is happy to set high minimums which make long distance trucking viable. Its ultimately quite silly, I really do think an Uber for Railroad shipping which partnered with the local railroads (that are desperate for revenue…
Uber for railroad shipping? LCL (Less-than-container-load) freight forwarding has been an industry since God-knows-when, and you'd think this includes intermodal. You learn all this when you've done a few international moves.
If you've done an international move surely you saw how horribly the industry is run. It's ripe for "disruption." Most of the pages of companies doing the work look straight out of 2004.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#50I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
By your logic entire concept of labour shortage is outrageous because any shortage will clear with high enough price. But for any job such as that of Truck drive the market value of that job is only X. Paying more than X would mean you should look for alternatives and get out of that business. As the truck diver salaries go up cost of everything that relies on transportation also goes up marginally. Suddenly the stru…
> All eventually leading up to poor people paying even more for their daily consumption items such as diapers and baby food.
Shareholders make less, consumers don't pay more, because you're still going to rather have your goods get to market versus not being in business.
As many others in this thread have mentioned, there is no shortage. This is a narrative pushed by actors attempting to keep trucking wages low.