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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#181

Post by joe_the_user »

StudentStuff wrote: post #13
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.

This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k/yr job without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work very hard & cheat the books get close to that. Are you willing to drive while sleepy, break regs when the customer is demanding you drive longer to deliver their products (due to traffic delaying you or similar)? Its a really screwed up industry.

This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k/yr job without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work very hard & cheat the books get close to that.

No, trucking was a decent living 'till deregulation in the 90s.

"How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst" http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst-job/

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#183

Post by mud_dauber »

Low wages, terrible working conditions, drivers as commodities: autonomous long-haul trucking looks like a no-brainer.

I had two uncles who retired from a F500 train company (many years ago). It sounds like this industry is going to end up with one person riding in the equivalent of a caboose to handle the unexpected stuff, or to oversee intermodal activities.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#184

Post by rileymat2 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #114
lopmotr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't necessarily true. The can be shortages of resources (food, water) independently of price. Labor is just another resource, why cant there be a shortage of it?

I agree with your point, but I wonder if there has been a shortage of food or water in the last 30 years that more money could not have solved quickly. It seems these happen in poor/war torn areas.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#185

Post by lopmotr »

TheCapn wrote: post #116
lopmotr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a simplistic view of shortages of labour markets. Just taking trucking as an example, many jurisdictions have safety standards drivers need to meet. If "half the truck drivers vanished" tomorrow we'd have an absolute shortage until labour could be spun up to account for the supply demand. It's also overly simplistic to believe that trucking companies can infinitely raise wages to support demand. People/busines…

How are you defining shortage? If half the drivers vanished, then half as much stuff would be shipped by truck. What's the problem with that, other than things would be worse for people? Is there a correct amount of truck driving that should happen? Are we currently at that correct amount? Have we ever been?

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#186

Post by joshuamorton »

rileymat2 wrote: post #184
joshuamorton wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily true. The can be shortages of resources (food, water) independently of price. Labor is just another resource, why cant there be a shortage of it?

I agree with your point, but I wonder if there has been a shortage of food or water in the last 30 years that more money could not have solved quickly. It seems these happen in poor/war torn areas.

Offhand IDK, I was more thinking in terms of a theoretical resource constrained environment where the population is beyond the carrying capacity. You have a shortage that money cannot solve.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#187

Post by lopmotr »

joshuamorton wrote: post #114
lopmotr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't necessarily true. The can be shortages of resources (food, water) independently of price. Labor is just another resource, why cant there be a shortage of it?

Food prices do go up and down, and on each up, more people on the fringes of survivability die from lack of food, perhaps indirectly through disease. How high do food prices have to go before it would be classified as a shortage? The distinction seems arbitrary.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#188

Post by anoncoward111 »

MisterTea wrote: post #163
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…

The guys I meet who are pulling in good money are all union vocational workers. We're talking dump trucks, cement mixers, sometimes roll off (dumpsters/skips), and the holy Grail: heavy haul. I know a guy in New Jersey who works for a well known hauling and rigging company. Makes 130k/yr. Small shop of a dozen guys, no one makes under a 100k, and home just about every night. But good luck getting into those shops. Cr…

This is one of the main reasons I am so heavily in favor of UBI, even though I am quite the anarchist if we are talking about idealism and not pragmatism.

There IS money being made out there by large firms and small firms alike, but it is absolutely NOT based on merit or skill at all.

Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers and executives will forge the deal FIRST, and then go get the expertise and skilled laborers after.

Startups are an exception to this rule, since the technology is all so new. But rapidly, we all see the "money guys" and the "business guys" coming in to the profession day by day, buying up tech, creating bogus certifications and so on that just add the cruft and bureaucracy that monopolies need to survive.

For every trucker making $130,000 a year, there's 100 truckers making $35,000 a year.

For every trucker making $30,000 a year, there's probably 10,000 unemployed or underemployed people begging for the chance to make middle class money rather than $10 an hour at Burger King

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#189

Post by joshuamorton »

lopmotr wrote: post #187
joshuamorton wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily true. The can be shortages of resources (food, water) independently of price. Labor is just another resource, why cant there be a shortage of it?

Food prices do go up and down, and on each up, more people on the fringes of survivability die from lack of food, perhaps indirectly through disease. How high do food prices have to go before it would be classified as a shortage? The distinction seems arbitrary.

>Food prices do go up and down, and on each up, more people on the fringes of survivability die from lack of food, perhaps indirectly through disease.

This really isn't true. In practice it may be, but that's due to inefficient allocation, not due to a lack of resources. We have enough food to feed the entire human population. A shortage would be if we didn't.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#190

Post by fpig »

lopmotr wrote: post #100
ams6110 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason why the world doesn't work the way you're suggesting and why shortages do exist is nominal rigidity. And it's much more complicated than "the boss is reluctant to pay the worker more". The client might also be reluctant to pay for the service more, regardless of supply and demand. Consumers might be reluctant to pay a higher price. If the current increase in demand for trucking services is temporary, and they increased wages, they're kind of stuck with the now higher wages as wages are strongly sticky-down (in other words you can't just constantly adjust wages to their market price, up or down, because humans react very negatively to their wages being cut). It is deeply entrenched in the economy and human minds. This is why shortages often only resolve themselves in the long term. Until they resolve themselves, they certainly do exist.
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