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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#351

Post by fjsolwmv »

scarface74 wrote: post #71
rgbrenner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is 120k the right number? Have you taken some implicit biases of your own, and decided that's the worth of farm work? The correct price of farm labor is whatever it costs to obtain it. There is no cap. It's whatever it costs to persuade people to move from their comfy office to the farm.

At a certain point, the marginal value of a dollar to anyone isn't worth the work it would take to make that dollar. That value is different for different people based on the opportunity but it does add up in aggregate. If someone can choose to make $30K a year and adjust thier lifestyle accordingly instead of making $90K a year doing a job that they don't want to do, many people will choose the former. I would go so…

Are you sure teachers wouldn't take 10x? That means 1 year of sacrifice in exchange for moving retirement up 10 years -- that's much better stability and time to spend with family and kids.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#353

Post by Nasrudith »

jessriedel wrote: post #160
tlb wrote: post #155

When you're planning to replace a profession with technology, it's a winning strategy to start spreading long-term career doom over the profession a few years ahead of when you're ready to launch, so that there'll be a labor shortage and higher wages when you're ready to enter the market. (Not dealing with ethics here, just strategy for winning.) We've had a few years now of news stories about how truck drivers will…

Or the people making predictions are basically right, and young people are rationally not opting as frequently to join the profession?

Yeah that has already been a problem with petroleum engineers. Even if they don't have any ethical objection to working in it the writing is on the wall that it may not be a 40+ year career. The same with COBOL. Although the old software is zombie-ing along there isn't much new being written.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#354

Post by Firadeoclus »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #132
CPLX wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the prospect of mass unemployment and the infliction of considerable misery on a large portion of the population is considered "the brighter side" then your argument contains some pretty consequential unstated value judgements. What, exactly, is the point of commerce in the first place? Is it measured by some abstract efficiency metric or do real life humans figure into your analysis at all? If so, which humans co…

> What, exactly, is the point of commerce in the first place? Very good question. The point of commerce is that people be able to buy other people's time willingly for a rate they voluntarily negotiate. When you can buy someone else's time you save time for your own self to do something that interests you. Everyone time you fill gas in your car you are buying perhaps 0.5 seconds of a guy who chose to work on a Oil ri…

Your definition seems to entirely ignore matter. It's not enough for people to have time on their hands, they also somehow need access to the means of production, the physical goods. And enough of them to actually survive.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#356

Post by badpun »

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.

> In EU it's impossible for a truck driver to speed

They can speed if there's a speed limit on the road (such as when you enter a populated area or get close to a dangerous crossing etc.). The tacho does not know about it. In Poland, truck drivers speed all the time.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#357

Post by test6554 »

isolli wrote: post #317
shados wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the profit margin in a field. Some industries have razor thin margins. Unless your competitors do the same as you do (and in some industries, your competitors are in other countries with different standards of living), you don't have a whole lot of choice. Software/SaaS is able to give ever increasing wages because of near infinite supply of investor money and/or insane profit margins (which won't last). S…

Yes, but even in industries with razor-thin margins the solution to a labor shortage is to increase salaries. Some of the companies will go under, and the most productive ones will survive. It's capitalism, quite simply.

The solution to a labor shortage is to increase salaries, increase productivity, or automate.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#359

Post by ryandrake »

gambiting wrote: post #346
louden wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Outside of trucking: In the US, there are a handful of States that do not even require car insurance, and in the ones that do require it, the minimum "shit tier" coverage is astoundingly low. In Florida, where I once lived, you could get coverage of $10K (property damage and personal injury) and be driving legally. $10K won't even cover the cost of a broken leg.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#360

Post by ocschwar »

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.

"Rails don't go to every department store or grocery store"

Bit of a self fullfilling prophecy there.

Lots of places around the world have rail slips going to the back of shopping malls.

The real reason is that 100 years ago the rail companies in America were so predatory and vicious to any customer trying to ship something smaller than a boxar's worth that the first generation of truck drivers were pretty much heroes for providing an alternative. The companies decided to stay in an inwardly looking economic niche and pretty much only ship slow moving multicar loads.

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