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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#61

Post by gaius »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #39
rgbrenner wrote: post #4

If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually always to increase total compensation. Theres no reason $80k is the top end of the pay range for any job. The economy does not price jobs based on prestige, education level, or some other signal... that's a judgement made by certain people about what they think a job is worth.. not the market. The opinions of people about the worth of a job ar…

This is definitely a major problem in large corporations with HR rules baked into the fabric of the thing over decades. Many positions get assigned a grade based upon the nature of the work. A series of qualifiers fix that kind of position to a grade. You can earn anything inside of that grade, but not distinctly above it. Considering yearly cost of living increases are usually fixed at about 2%, it can take one some…

The most laughable thing is when HR benchmark salaries and offer the average, but still expect above-average quality to walk in the door. Get rid of all them save the payroll clerks and any company will be better off and better to work for.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#62

Post by analognoise »

StudentStuff wrote: post #26
lotsofpulp wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

Railroads are only inexpensive because they demand those minimums to reduce or eliminate their touch labor costs.

If they removed those minimums, the price would go up substantially - your model doesn't include that cost on the train side, it would incur it on you as a shipping aggregator, making your costs uncompetitive.

Just a guess, I haven't done an analysis.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#63

Post by rectang »

jbob2000 wrote: post #19
yasp wrote: post #2

I 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.

They are increasing compensation, but the job is so shit, and so demanding on time, that it's still not worth it . I'd want to see $500,000 a year before I put long-haul trucking demands on my body. The industry has labour problems that aren't related to pay. Nobody wants to sit outside a business for 6-8 hours, earning 0 dollars. Solution: Fine deliverees by the minute. Over-policing of truckers. Solution: Lower fin…

Yes, the "everybody has their price" analysis bothers me as well because it only takes into account monetary compensation. There are lots of other factors which make a job more or less appealing: time away from home, job security, personal risk, physical demands. Maybe try to attract more talent by improving working conditions?

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#64

Post by chrisseaton »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #10
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

I wouldn't re-train as a truck driver for $200k a year? Would you?

And you can't just say 'there's lots of people for whom $200k would be a lot of money' because there's a lot of people who whom $50k is a lot of money and those jobs aren't filled either.

Short of literally offering a million dollars a year, it's got to be more complicated than how much you offer.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#66

Post by HarryHirsch »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #49
HarryHirsch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest, I can't complain about the state of the industry. You find someone (through recommendations), they give you a quote, you drop off the goods, and the stuff arrives 6 weeks later. It's miraculous, there must be so much informal knowledge to make it all work.

The disruption is these "moving pods". They are more expensive, but they are well advertised, and one fears that the established small players will be driven out of business.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#68

Post by duxup »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #5

From the article: A few drivers told The Washington Post that they earn $100,000, but many said their annual pay is less than $50,000 (government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000). As for the bonuses, driver Daniel Gollnick said they are a “complete joke” because of all the strings attached. Yet the headline talks about 80 kUSD/year.

There was a truck driver on NPR a while back giving an interview. He noted the same thing. Only very few drivers with specialized skills make a good living. Everyone else is tied to a very low net salary structure.

It was an interesting observation that he contrasted to this myth of the independent truck guy working for himself... when really most are just as tied to company whims and rules that they have nothing to do with, and arguably have less freedom than most workers.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#69

Post by gaius »

joering2 wrote: post #16

Why we haven't gotten a feasible working heavy weight capatul that would slingshot heavy cargo from spot to spot across states like jumping frog, I don't get where the problem is. I'm not saying catapult eggs, but majority of goods could withstand 1000Gs. We need Trevor Milton to stop working on electric truck and get into electric catapults.

It’s thinking like that that got ski jumps put on aircraft carriers

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#70

Post by rayiner »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #20
yasp wrote: post #2

I 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…

> By your logic entire concept of labour shortage is outrageous

The concept of an anything shortage in an efficient market is outrageous.

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