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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#341

Post by magduf »

jernfrost wrote: post #335
apexalpha wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, the company does not get fined, the driver does, personally. America vs Europe in a nutshell.

Yeah I see this a lot. Like in the US they seem to go after individual doctors for mistakes. In Norway it is more the hospital which gets punished. Also economical compensation for medical error is something you apply to the government to get. If you think they pay too little or don't pay then you go to court. I've noticed that in the US almost everything seems to go to court straight away. In Norway and probably res…

In the US, except for a few exceptions like Kaiser, doctors do not work for hospitals. They're independent. That's why, when you get a procedure done at a hospital here, you get a bill from the hospital, another bill from the doctor, and another bill from the anesthesiologist, etc.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#342

Post by magduf »

gruturo wrote: post #306
briandear wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What very few people talk about is eliminating taxes on diesel fuel. Oh no, a thousand times no. Individual trucks hauling goods around the world is awful to the environment (and to the roads) and if the pollution was somehow priced in you’d be scared. And that is the real cost - we just ignore a decent chunk of it and leave it to the next generations as debt. The last thing we want is to encourage even more of thi…

>Oh no, a thousand times no. Individual trucks hauling goods around the world is awful to the environment (and to the roads)

In shorter-term economics, the roads are a MUCH bigger factor. Tractor-trailer trucks do an enormous amount of damage to the roads, due to physics (I believe the factor is related to weight to the 4th power). Basically, if we didn't have trucks like those, we wouldn't be spending even a fraction as much on road upkeep. Road maintenance costs governments a LOT of money, so it only makes perfect sense to have commercial trucking and diesel fuel taxes to pay for it.

Really, what they should be doing is making it easier for stuff to be shipped by train, and then only trucked the last few miles.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#343

Post by louden »

gambiting wrote: post #323
jacobush wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too expensive?

Surely everyone has to have insurance when driving, even in US, no?

Truckers need $750k of liability insurance (but usually have $1M). For individual drivers, they are required to have liability, but it varies by state (and in some places a lot of people flaunt the law).

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#344

Post by magduf »

corodra wrote: post #291
codeismylife wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Containerization should have fixed the loading/unloading times decades ago. It should only take a few minutes to pick a container up off a railcar and hitch it up to a truck to be driven the last few miles to a store.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#345

Post by louden »

gambiting wrote: post #285
corodra wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

It is the same in the US. All trucks that transport across state lines has to have an electronic log. Tickets issued to the driver can be noted on the saftey record of the company and if there are enough violations, especially of certain types, the companies authority to transport can be revoked.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#346

Post by gambiting »

louden wrote: post #343
gambiting wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely everyone has to have insurance when driving, even in US, no?

Truckers need $750k of liability insurance (but usually have $1M). For individual drivers, they are required to have liability, but it varies by state (and in some places a lot of people flaunt the law).

That is shockingly low. My normal car insurance without any extra add-ons covers up to £20 million($26 million) in 3rd party damage, and I believe EU mandates that every car insurance, no matter how cheap, has to provide at least 5 million euro cover. So even the most basic, 3rd-party-only, shit car insurance has to cover you for up to 5 million euro, by law.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#347

Post by ska »

corodra wrote: post #205
rwallace wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, that sounds bad :( What exactly is the back pain from? Outsider's perspective would expect that since it's mostly sitting, at least your back should be okay. What am I missing?

Compressed discs mostly but you start to learn what muscles in your back really need full body movement regularly or that weakening starts to kick your ass. Without some expensive surgery that I still can't afford, I've been fixing it with a weight lifting regiment. I'm lucky, a friend is a physical therapist. So, I just owe him beer. Even have a year of hard dedication to dealing with it, I still "feel" it and get s…

If you can do it without the surgery, do. Think of back surgery as a temporary partial fix with a high failure rate. Best avoided until you have literally exhausted other options.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#348

Post by debacle »

Implicated wrote: post #79
jacobkg wrote: post #41

I hired the same company to move my car across the country then back four years apart. The same man drove the truck. He told me he expects the company will shut down in another decade or two as it’s too hard to find good reliable drivers who want a long term trucking job. It’s a family run company with a stellar reputation and they aren’t interested in short timers

I'll be shipping a car soon - have any contact details you can pass along?

Talk to used car lots near your destination and find out who they use.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#350

Post by Nasrudith »

golergka wrote: post #327
StudentStuff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Screwed up would be forbidding people from making this personal choice through regulation.

The problem is that it doesn't just affect them. If drunk drivers only killed themselves it would be a lesser issue not worth setting up checkpoints over.
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