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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#291

Post by corodra »

codeismylife wrote: post #289
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…

Curious as to why this cargo cannot be transported via the railway system if it is such a tumultuous endeavor to use the road especially in a geographically vast USA. How well developed (or undeveloped) is the rail network in the states? Is it equipped to handle this cargo and if so, why do businesses turn to the road network instead?

Rails don't go to every department store or grocery store. Don't go to any that I know of.

Rails are terrible for on-demand supply chain due to lag time for loading, unloading and then logistics to ship again on a truck anyways.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#292

Post by corodra »

fiblye wrote: post #288
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…

>It’s not likely the military where you are doing something decently important. You are wasting your life to ship clothes for the Gap or frozen pizzas. I was never a truck driver, but my father was. He was in the military for about 7 years, then got discharged for a severe injury. He worked as a truck driver for about 3 years, then did all he could to rejoin the military and upon doing so never went back to truck dri…

Bah, noticed the typo, I meant "like".

I know a few other guys who made the same decisions, military->truck driving->beg to re-enlist. Same guys who said, "I'll never go back to military".

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#293

Post by EGreg »

fiblye wrote: post #290
EGreg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voluntary redistribution of wealth by a cryptocurrency. Look at groupcurrency.org

People could voluntarily distribute their wealth today if they wanted to. Few do. The crypto meme won't be changing that.

And how would they airdrop money to everyone else in the community every day?

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#294

Post by gambiting »

corodra wrote: post #286
gambiting wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. There is no such distinction over here - if you are carrying goods commercially, you have to have a tachometer, full stop. Also, while the driver can be given a ticket for certain things(speeding mostly) working over hours or any issues with the truck will result in a massive fine for the company(one of the trucks carrying goods for us was fined in Germany recently for 2500 Euro because one side had a small bu…

FYI, by independent I mean a guy buys a semi-truck and trailer, has his own little company and hauls loads commercially. By company, we're talking about 50+ employee operations. There's a whole bunch of contractors, "owner-operators" that are independent. Qualcomm, who has a gps and digital log system, is in nearly every decent sized company trucks. Also the trucks I ran were throttled to 63. The throttle ranges betw…

Again, interesting. You physically cannot order an "unthrottled" truck(as in - the tractor) over here, everything has to come out of the factory speed limited, and everything has to have a tachometer recording all the time. The only exception is if you drove your own personal truck for your own personal purposes, but as soon as you start carrying goods for money(even if it's just you) you have to have a tacho installed and working .

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#295

Post by richjdsmith »

EGreg wrote: post #259
dimensi0nal wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can UBI exist without statism?

Voluntary redistribution of wealth by a cryptocurrency. Look at groupcurrency.org

When's the last time you voluntarily redistributed your wealth? It's certainly available today by literally making a donation to a non-profit, or hell, some homeless guy on the street.

But people don't. No amount of crypto 'disruption' is going to change that.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#296

Post by corodra »

EGreg wrote: post #293
fiblye wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People could voluntarily distribute their wealth today if they wanted to. Few do. The crypto meme won't be changing that.

And how would they airdrop money to everyone else in the community every day?

Yea, but how do you airdrop electronic devices to utilize crypto for those that don't have electronic devices? If utilizing crypto and all it's blockchain glory to those who don't have access to computers/smartphones/internet has been answered, I'm all ears. Then cool. But I see that as an infrastructure issue that no one has directly answered.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#297

Post by geezerjay »

Avshalom wrote: post #219
flukus wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd happily put up with a toxic work environment for double my pay. My costs are fixed so if I tolerate it for a couple of years that's a lot of money to put towards some major investments, it could easily pay off the rest of my apartment in a year. IME places like this usually pay low to middle of the road salaries though, I suspect you partner may have avoided a bait and switch hiring process.

My sister developed a psychosomatic peanut (amongst other things) allergy and insomnia because of a toxic work environment. There is definitely a price for that but if you are comfortable emotionally and physically now 'double' isn't enough in a lot of cases.

Double may not be enough in a lot of cases but it doesn't need to be. A marginal pay raise has a marginal effect on the numbet of people who are willing to take that job. While some people are willing to accept 2x the pay, it's possible to attract more people if 3x or 5x the pay is offered.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#298

Post by baud147258 »

corodra wrote: post #275
jackfraser wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> Essentially, we're all supposed to be level headed, contemplative, long term thinking, logical people.

I'm laughing, especially with your description of Cali just above. (but I agree with what you've said, in this comment and elsewhere in the thread)

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#299

Post by geezerjay »

gaius wrote: post #61
52-6F-62 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The most laughable thing is when HR benchmark salaries and offer the average, but still expect above-average quality to walk in the door.

They don't expect it. They put up an offer and from the pool of candidates they pick the ones they prefer. Everyone wants to maximize the return they get from their offering. The same goes for job seekers, who seek the cushiest job they can get.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#300

Post by tim333 »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #81

They are terrible jobs. Years ago I had a class B and drove dial-a-ride buses. All-in-all it wasn't a terrible job because I got frequent breaks between passengers and could get out of the truck on those breaks and hang out at a mall or get something to eat. My counterparts that drove the city buses had to stay in their seat for 8 hours driving in circles around town. The other thing that people don't realize about t…

I guess maybe self driving trucks won't be a bad thing then.
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