111–120 of 404 posts
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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.
Apart from not having a CDL at this time, there is a simple reason why no amount of money is going to make me get a truck driving job. Driving jobs I see advertised require an accident free record, and I had a fender bender a couple years ago (even though it was the other driver at fault). I have no tickets, suspensions, or anything else, but the accident automatically disqualifies you.
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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.
For example, in rental markets, it's been shown that tax increases are almost entirely passed on to tenants.
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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
There's never a shortage. Shortage just means somebody wants to pay less than they're having to. Even if half the truck drivers vanished, there still wouldn't be a shortage. The price would simply go up and some people who would have shipped things by truck would produce those things closer to their destination or otherwise not need a truck afterall.
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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.
What is the goal of just exaggerating and debating a thing no one says versus just debating what people are actually saying?
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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
There's never a shortage. Shortage just means somebody wants to pay less than they're having to. Even if half the truck drivers vanished, there still wouldn't be a shortage. The price would simply go up and some people who would have shipped things by truck would produce those things closer to their destination or otherwise not need a truck afterall.
It's also overly simplistic to believe that trucking companies can infinitely raise wages to support demand. People/businesses only tolerate a certain cap of pricing on goods and to say that ceiling is infinitely high is silly.
If markets were perfectly efficient, sure all your wishes and hopes would be a reality. But we're not efficient, we're flawed humans running these things so the flaws are apparent when you attempt to accommodate.
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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.
Trains also aren't that much cheaper. I'm not sure why this is, but my hunch is that much of the cost in transportation is pick up from origin and drop off at destination and this essentially has to be done via truck. So, if you're shipping via train, you incur an additional pick up and drop off, since the goods need to go from the trucker's hub to the train, then from the train to the trucker's hub. That probably erases a lot of the savings that you see when you just calculate costs based on the physics of truck vs. train.
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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.
They track your every move with a gps and you never have time to take it easy between runs. Traveling,the one upside to the job aside from money is ruined by their control-freak managent. You want people to be truck drivers? Get the trucks good internet access,provide laptops and tablets where possible and give the drivers time to take it easy between and during runs. Internet access wherever you are means you can ma…