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The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

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Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes,.,, almost 100 years of history says no this is not the case

> If drivers spend much time loading and unloading, and not getting paid, the amount paid per mile required to attract drivers will rise. Actually, logic would indicate that it has already happened . Every industry pays people the least amount that it can reliably obtain labor and/or reliably profit from their employment. Trucking is no different.

Not every industry tries to create such an opaque payment structure.

Industries that do that sort of thing tend to suffer in aggregate because you get a 'bad money drives out the good' effect, similar to used cars.

The same thing happened in finance (nobody touches the CDO market now - it would have disappeared entirely were it not for government life support).

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#172
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your optimism, but realistically self driving trucks on American highways are a long way off. How will the trucks refuel? How will they handle loading and unloading? How will they handle inclement weather? What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads? Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)? Even Mercedes says in that article, "the Highway Pilot s…

>How will the trucks refuel? Full serve gas stations. >How will they handle loading and unloading? Do long haul drivers typically load/unload themselves these days? I would have thought that would have been the task of the warehouse staff on either end. >How will they handle inclement weather? Probably better than human driven trucks why would you think they couldn't? >What is the insurance liability for putting them…

Not to mention an automated truck driving a safe 20 MPH over 24 hours is equivalent to a human driver at 60 MPH for 8 hours.

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much a tautology - cities exist because trains went there. I live in a state covered with extinct towns, because the tracks went another way back in the day. But sadly those tracks are bicycle trails or even roads now. Eminent domain space is problematical; rails always go interesting places; tracks have largely disappeared from the landscape by having their route repurposed.

Right but I'm curious if, as the GP claimed, there were any population centers in the US not well connected via rail. It's possible that when the interstates were built, that they created new population centers not connected by rail but I'm unaware of any. Do you know of any?

Certainly interstate highways had an effect - they squashed growth in towns NOT visited. Unless you have a freeway exit in or near your small town, it can't grow today. Similar to the way rail did the job a century earlier.

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you're just moving unemployment from one category to another. There's unemployment in every field. The fundamental issue is, with automation we no longer need everyone to work. As robotics advances the problem will just get worse. We've never, ever needed as many engineers as we've needed laborers and assembly-line workers. Making them all into skilled labor is absurd for many reasons, not least of which is, we…

> Making them all into skilled labor is absurd for many reasons, not least of which is, we don't need that many engineers. I'm not sure "we don't need that many engineers" is defensible. Who's to say how many are "needed" or not? I see no reason why the world couldn't have many more engineers (and scientists) working and still doing useful work. Seriously. How do people look around at the world today and think: Yup,…

Employment statistics say this. There is already unemployment in engineering. Maybe long-term in a socialist or planned society we could make use of scads of new engineers; but not in the society we have now.

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#175
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your supervisor is 1000 miles away, you can listen to whatever you want on the radio, no one else has control over the HVAC controls, its not as physically relaxing as being a programmer (which might be good?) but its incredibly physically easier than virtually all other craftsperson / labor blue collar jobs, the constant change in scenery is almost better than one of those C-level corner window office jobs, the empl…

" ...simply refused to drive in snow and hated driving in big cities. So he didn't. " Any chance you could hook me up with your uncle? I'm interested in changing careers and am moderately financially secure. :-)

You'd need a seance for a couple years now, but pretty much any truck driver you'd run into will have many opinions.

From memory... don't work for large companies, because a place that doesn't do business in NYC or LA can't even think of sending you to the streets of NYC or LA, which according to him was no picnic for a truck and I'm sure is only worse now. If you don't want the office politics drama of not picking up a load to FL, don't do business with a place that has loads to FL, its that simple. I seem to recall hearing he had a deal with a franchise farm equipment dealer where by definition he never went out of the dealership territory other than occasional horse trading between dealerships. When he got sick of living in Iowa he moved on.

Much like the computer biz, life is better if you're not in the middle of it. Not being in the middle of everything meant feast or famine, which was OK for him.

He was retired, sorta, but still needed 90s era health insurance premiums (which I'm sure was comically low compared to current costs) and he wanted to avoid 401K early withdrawal penalties, so he only worked for restaurant and bar money. That kind of personal financial position helps a lot when looking for quality of life. If you demand 10% more pay than everything else, they'll pay it, but take it right outta your hide, horrible working conditions and bad routes. Better to love life at 50% of income than to exhaustively minmax up to 110% of income and hate every millisecond of it.

Most "IT type positions" would not be amused if you decided not to work that month because you have enough cash for now. But trucking was (is?) flexible.

There is a bias in the truck driving biz that is the opposite of "IT type work" where its assumed that an old guy will naturally be more reliable, harder working, and more knowledgeable about trucks and routes and just generally a better overall trucker. In that way it can be a decent second career.

He claimed that once him and his wife saw the country, it got pretty boring. I imagine anything can become boring, eventually. So it might be super exciting for only a decade, after which "eh".

Some other advice is there are downsides of exotic travel. I live in a state with no known non-escaped pet poisonous snakes and only one species of venomous spider. You go trucking in the deep south and you'll inevitably meet some kind of swamp animal that can kill you. Also as a Midwestern boy, suddenly after decades of not caring, having to be really careful about hurricanes on coastal runs was weird. On the other hand, when he got fed up with visiting an area, in only a couple days he could be back in the western mountains. Thinking of geography in terms of time not distance was another anecdote he talked about. No matter how hot it was in Louisiana he could be back "home" so to speak in North Dakota in a couple days. His relatives (us) treated him like a sailor who could be gone for months and needs years of warning for a wedding, but crazily enough he could get around faster than people with "normal" desk jobs when he had to (sick relative, whatever).

He got tired of his truck after a decade or so just like you'd get tired of a house. Truck dealerships make some commission just on people getting tired of the layout and windows, just like houses.

I wasn't super close to him but there was some weirdness in the 90s such that his retirement fund was somehow available to him with lower (no?) penalties because he bought a truck with it. Or maybe it was accounting BS and he figured once he made 10% of the cost of the truck in profit (which didn't take long) that he "wasn't paying a penalty on his withdrawal" even though technically on paper he did. This is complicated and worthy of some research if you're serious. I wasn't close enough to him to talk taxes and accounting but I'm sure basically setting up a small business is an interesting topic. (Oh and edited to add he had some tax weirdness where he was basically homeless but it turns out renting an apartment in an income-tax-free state was cheaper than paying income tax in a income taxing state, I'd talk to a real tax accountant about that before renting anything or filing anything)

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#176
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they will initially be used for long straight lines on highways and the human drivers will only be responsible for the "last mile" drive.

We call that a "train". Steel wheels on steel rails just works better over long distances. Then trucks to haul from station to individual loading docks. I also live about 25 miles from a small port that on rare occasion does get container freight traffic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport Lots of existing infrastructure for this, cheaper to use than to put AI in each truck.

I'd love to agree because rail is beautiful. However rail is even more over regulated than trucking. Also it requires massive capital investments, both in the rail system and operators to get economies of scale, which causes problems with monopolistic pricing. Also the trucking industry has huge $$$ influence on politicians.

On the plus side for rail, high speed automated container systems could significantly reduce delays, automate shunting yards, etc. The difference between automated docks like Rotterdam and the manual way trains are loaded is stark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXZQ7emHC0 http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/35955-extreme-engi...

The use of driver-less trains is feasible, but the rail network (especially signalling) in America is so antiquated. Perhaps outsource it to the Netherlands...

Automated rail container system fails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7I4wa1gpoc

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazingly, people live where rail is not an option. The interstate system offers more possibilities than rail. Rail also does not deliver to your door.

What parts of the country don't have rail as an option? Pretty much the entire US is covered in rail, especially around population centers since that's why many developed there in the first place. Most people don't get tractor trailer deliveries to their door so a driverless truck wouldn't have an advantage there.

I work in the logistics industry. Just because there are railroad tracks through a town, does not mean there are active stops. Also, while most people do not get tractor trailer delivers to their door, most business do. Especially for items too large to send via UPS or FedEx. Total US public highways miles: 161K [1] Total US Railroads miles (Class I):100K [2]

[1]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs01/hm41.htm [2]http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freig...

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#178

Margins are VERY tight in transportation. In a solid company most of this should be going to pay drivers, and in decent companies it does they can make a pretty decent paycheck (none of that per mile crap) BUT with licensing points and experience being the biggest roadblocks getting decent drivers. Plus how many kids are growing up to be truck drivers these days... not many

Then trucking companies can maintain their margins by charging more to haul goods. If there really is excess demand, then the market should be able to absorb price increases.

Safety would be the largest cut into margins. Completely unplanned and everything from bumping into a yellow pole to an accident. Those all cost hundreds of thousands apprx 130k for a yellow pole...the market is not ready or willing for the risk that the companies traditionally absorb.

Re: The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started down the right road. Much of their pay has to do with how they are paid. There are trucking companies that don't pay drivers to fuel the truck. Do you know how long that takes? It isn't like it is an optional task - that truck won't move without fuel. I know a driver who spends 2-6 hours waiting to be unloaded. He doesn't get paid for that time but isn't free to leave the truck because when the loading do…

The issue is that most drivers incorrectly assume they are in the weakest position for any given scenario. They absorb delays as if it were their own fault and falsify logs to compensate. Many drivers even absorbed the reimbursable toll costs on a route because they couldn't match the ticket times to their falsified logs. They are afraid to log as 'on duty not driving', which is how they legally should be doing it. S…

Great comment, very informative.

"and enjoyed the very low tax rate Hours of Service workers get (9%, taking the standard deduction x days worked, typically)."

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this part. Would you mind explaining it a bit more?

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