America has a truck driver shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#101

Post by joering2 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #38

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.

I'm sure a bunch of children also wonder the same thing. The same way they wonder why we can't just cool off Texas with a big fan when it becomes too hot. After all, look how easy it was to come up with the idea (the hard part). By the way, the reason is because you'd use a trebuchet, not the inferior catapult.

Trebuchet is a type of a catapult, smartass.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#102

Post by randomdata » Mon, May 28, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #82

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.

I think a so-called labor shortage can be defined as an inelastic supply under given circumstances. There are always limits to how markets can be idealized - if you offered me $100K, $1M, or $1B to drive a truck across the country tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference, I still couldn't qualify. There is likely a gap between the salary a current truck driver will take and the one a potential truck driver will take…

You might not qualify, but a sufficient amount might attract those who are. I personally know quite a few people who are legally qualified to drive truck, but have jobs that pay more doing something else.

But there are also existing truck drivers from whom you can poach from another company. If that other company cannot afford the new rate that you've offered, they're no longer in the market for a truck driver, and are no longer counted.

It's like of like software developers. At, let's say, $150,000 per year, there are only so many companies who can afford them. A place that can only afford $30,000 per year for a developer isn't in the market for developers in the first place, no matter how much they claim they are. So as price rises, the need for drivers also declines.

Technically speaking, the definition of shortage is a situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising. That does not seem to be the case here.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#103

Post by paulie_a » Mon, May 28, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #9

Becoming a truck driver currently doesn't seem a wise choice when self-driving trucks are on the horizon.

But they are not going to happen anytime soon. Maybe in a couple decades.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#104

Post by corodra » Mon, May 28, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

fred_is_fred wrote: post #98

corodra wrote: post #88

At a rough point in my life, I was a truck driver for CR England and Knight Transportation for a few days short of 7 months. You don’t start at 80,000 a year. That’s such a lie. You make about 600 a week to start, roughly, depending if you get enough miles. You don’t get the good routes, staying in well populated areas like the i5 corridor, at first. You stay in the middle of no where Arizona, North Dakota, etc. You…

Interesting what you said about I-5 vs middle of nowhere. As someone who has to drive from Denver to south east Texas a few times per year for family stuff, I'd almost always rather deal with an empty great plains highway than traffic on I-5. There are downsides, mainly food and hotel choices of course.

I got 2 weeks on i5 and liked it over my desert routes. Matter of relative terminology. I also like trees. I hate the desert... so much.

East coast would have been nicer if I wasn’t so constantly freaked out for low overpasses. I5, for me, is the ideal route if I had to do it again.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#105

Post by 5DFractalTetris » Mon, May 28, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #93

5DFractalTetris wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their business intelligence practice has gotten so much faster that they're probably planning 100 years out.

To people following the way market whims have affected corporate planning, this is an extremely humorous hypothesis. No, I don't think that they are.

Interesting. I notice I have been downvoted as well. Thanks for the slap on the back, everybody.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#106

Post by gaius » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:00 PM UTC

mi100hael wrote: post #94

gaius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goods being in location A rather than location B is the value add . Logistics is a profit centre, not a cost.

Of course the actual act of shipping the goods is a profit center. But payroll is a cost center in every industry I'm aware of. You can't just 10x your shipping costs in order to pay your truckers 10x the salary and expect to remain in business.

The payroll costs are usually included in each “centre”

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#107

Post by jaggederest » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #93

5DFractalTetris wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their business intelligence practice has gotten so much faster that they're probably planning 100 years out.

To people following the way market whims have affected corporate planning, this is an extremely humorous hypothesis. No, I don't think that they are.

It's even more severely the opposite. Instead of planning for a decade, they're planning for the quarterly results call in ~3 months, maximum.

Like selling and leasing back real estate, which often pumps up cash flow for a few quarters and then cripples the company with operational expenditures instead of appreciating as land tends to do.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#108

Post by lopmotr » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

skookumchuck wrote: post #73

toomuchtodo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous existing market for this. It's called intermodal transport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport

Given the interstates are clogged with long haul trucks, it obviously isn't nearly enormous enough.

Is it the trucks clogging them or everyone else? Maybe if human travelers flew instead of driving, then there would be space for the trucks.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#109

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

skookumchuck wrote: post #73

toomuchtodo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous existing market for this. It's called intermodal transport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport

Given the interstates are clogged with long haul trucks, it obviously isn't nearly enormous enough.

Incentives and all that. Have to raise heavy truck highway taxes if you want to push a lot of that freight onto the rail backbone.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#110

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

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.

There is a YC company doing this: Flexport.