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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#271

Post by chha »

briandear wrote: post #267
andrei_says_ wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, shortage of people willing to forego having a personal life, are expected to speed/break the law daily and risk losing their job as a part of doing their job, are verifiably destroying their health long term in order to do said boring menial job for long hours in exchange for low to medium pay. Of course there’s a shortage. If pay was 200-300% higher and drivers could afford to work 2/3 of the time an…

Are you willing to pay dramatically higher prices for literally everything you buy? Solutions like “just raise wages” are simplistic. Markets don’t work that way. You raise wages, trucking gets more expensive and demand drops, causing all sorts of unintended consequences. What very few people talk about is eliminating taxes on diesel fuel. That would lower costs and increase margins which would result in companies be…

Or perhaps more likely; taxes are cut and companies see it either as a chance to lower their prices even more or have a bigger profit for a while

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#272

Post by kamaal »

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…

>>But good luck getting into those shops. Cronyism and nepotism abound.

Any job that pays $130k/yr will have these sort of dynamics.

Precious opportunities don't come along unless you have some serious leverage up management. That's not just true with trucking but with any job on earth.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#274

Post by TeMPOraL »

refurb wrote: post #244
anoncoward111 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Isn't the ability to develop business relations and close deals a skill in and of itself? That pretty much describes sales skills perfectly. I know this is NH, so skills are viewed as technical with all other skills regarded as "unnecessary fluff", but at the end of the day business is built on human relationships, so I'd argue the ability to make and maintain relationships with the right people is one of the most im…

It's not about HN's technical focus. It's that for many of us here - myself strongly included - sales and marketing can be seen as a large-scale defection in the game of free market.

In the ideal world, when you want to buy a product or a service, you would consider the value it brings to you based on hard facts, consider other circumstances impacting the costs - like e.g. product A is a bit better, but product B has support people in your country, speaking your language, etc.

Suddenly, comes product C. It's very much inferior compared to A and B, but the producers of C spent most of their budget on sales and marketing. Your boss knows all about C from on-line ads. A C salesman comes to you, promising you features they know they won't deliver, but also know they'll be able to weasel their way out of along the way. Oh, and he brings some nice "off-the books" benefits for you personally, as part of "building customer loyalty".

Sales and marketing as applied in practice distort the market. What a salesman says can be - and often is - completely disconnected from reality, so in presence of salesmen, products are no longer chosen based on objective value they provide. The incentive structure this creates makes everyone else have to lie too, or go out of business.

That's why many people don't like those skills and practices.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#275

Post by corodra »

jackfraser wrote: post #251
pkaye wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like in the software field, there might be a multitude of reasons women might not go into that industry including sexism and not being encouraged by family/society. Some of the industries that women work in can be just as bad in their own ways.

Every single thing has to be about feminism, somehow, doesn't it? Even a guy trying to relate to us about how the truck driving industry treats people badly - well gosh darn, it's not doing well enough if it's not treating women badly in an exact proportion to their population level. I have to wonder if folks like yourself ever give it a rest and just actually read what someone has written without spending every seco…

Meh, it's a bit out on a limb, but there's some validity bringing it up.

To be fair, the dev market has the luxury to be a forefront in addressing sexism issues properly. Essentially, we're all suppose to be level headed, contemplative, long term thinking, logical people. The fact a majority of companies have allowed ambulance-chasing, popularity contest politics to run the show instead of going, "You know what, let's figure out how to properly address and solve the issue", pisses me off. I get where you're coming from, but there is some truth to it. I just think the conversation has become to politically polarized and both sides are just regurgitating the same nonsense without wanting to accomplish anything. This is why I hate politics, so so much.

But on the other hand, there are dirty jobs and jobs of passion. Trucking is a dirty job, not a passion job. No one does it for fun or as a hobby. Lots of people are not pro devs, don't intend to be, but still do it for fun. That distinction must be made first. A job isn't "a job". Some are done just for the paycheck and that's it. Some are done because you truly enjoy or believe in what you do. Shit jobs for shit pay are typically for guys, let's be honest. I wouldn't want my nieces ever doing it. My nephew, that lazy bum needs hard work in his life. Once you realize "This is a shit job, with shit pay and a shit lifestyle", I think that gender ratio argument is kind of meaningless.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#276

Post by gambiting »

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…

Do American trucks not have tachos? In EU it's impossible for a truck driver to speed or work more than 8 hours a day - if the truck moves even a little bit in the period when the driver is supposed to be resting, that means stupid fines for the transport company, and that's because everything is recorded by the tachometer behind the dash.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#277

Post by kamaal »

pkaye wrote: post #238
corodra wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that I follow. Can you explain?

Just like in the software field, there might be a multitude of reasons women might not go into that industry including sexism and not being encouraged by family/society. Some of the industries that women work in can be just as bad in their own ways.

Nobody has to 'encourage' any body to do anything these days. We don't exactly live in the middle ages that we need sanctions from priests, kings and elderly to do anything.

The unfortunate fact about this sort of freedom is that all reduces to personal enterprise. Don't have enough of it. The bad news is you are likely to do nothing no matter how easy things are made for you. Have good enough amount of it you see people doing all sort of good stuff in war zones and refugee camps too.

The thing about freedom especially in the modern context is its all on you.

In the software field these days you can learn and do anything you want with may be few hundred dollars worth investment. You have plenty of free/cheap books, chrome books, free linux and a lot of online mentoring should you want to learn and do something.

If the complain is that its hard. Then guess what, anything worth doing is hard. You are unlikely to do anything significant in any profession by just coasting around. And that's true for people of all identities not just a specific gender.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#278

Post by candiodari »

skookumchuck wrote: post #33

More intercity traffic should be shipped by rail anyway. Heavy trucks cause enormous damage to the freeways, far exceeding the weight taxes charged.

But ... that would require the freight customers to actually have something resembling decent logistics planning ... And these people clearly are idiots.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#279

Post by corodra »

gambiting wrote: post #276
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…

Do American trucks not have tachos? In EU it's impossible for a truck driver to speed or work more than 8 hours a day - if the truck moves even a little bit in the period when the driver is supposed to be resting, that means stupid fines for the transport company, and that's because everything is recorded by the tachometer behind the dash.

Independent trucks don't. Company trucks do. However, the company does not get fined, the driver does, personally.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#280

Post by fffdg445 »

pkaye wrote: post #238
corodra wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that I follow. Can you explain?

Just like in the software field, there might be a multitude of reasons women might not go into that industry including sexism and not being encouraged by family/society. Some of the industries that women work in can be just as bad in their own ways.

There are plenty of reasons for not going into tech besides sexism, yes. I've actually always aid exactly that: women are too smart to become programmers.

Maybe things have improved a little, but in the old days, programming meant sitting in the basement without natural light, staring at a screen most of the time. Yes, there are meetings, but meetings also suck.

These days, maybe it is not the basement anymore, instead you have open plan offices with hundreds or workers.

It's probably much more healthy to take a job with frequent human interactions. Surprise: these are the kind of jobs women tend to take.

Look at a standard office building. Check where the developers are sitting. Then check where the women from marketing and human resources are sitting. I wouldn't be surprised if even today, you'll find marketing in the well lit corner offices.

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