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America has a truck driver shortage
11–20 of 404 posts
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#12I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
As you pay truckers more at some point it doesn’t make economic sense to hire them. Some jobs are cost centers others are profit centers is one way of looking at it. Another factor is industries like trucking have very little differentiation so it’s a race to the bottom.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#13From the article: A few drivers told The Washington Post that they earn $100,000, but many said their annual pay is less than $50,000 (government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000). As for the bonuses, driver Daniel Gollnick said they are a “complete joke” because of all the strings attached. Yet the headline talks about 80 kUSD/year.
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.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
I don't know much about the trucking industry but I imagine that it is competitive enough where employers don't feel like they have much latitude to pass higher wages along to their customers.
The only reasons that would be is if other trucking companies are not having driver shortages and can continue to deliver without raising prices, or the the end users of the items they are delivering are not willing to pay for the increase in cost. I doubt both are true.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#15If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually always to increase total compensation. Theres no reason $80k is the top end of the pay range for any job. The economy does not price jobs based on prestige, education level, or some other signal... that's a judgement made by certain people about what they think a job is worth.. not the market. The opinions of people about the worth of a job ar…
The opinions of people about the worth of a job are irrelevant
On the other hand, the reputation of an employer or of an industry plays into the market price. You'd think that post-2015 most life scientists would not have worked for Theranos for any salary at all, and if truckers tell you that bonuses are worthless, that means you have to raise the base salary to find any takers.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#16Why we haven't gotten a feasible working heavy weight capatul that would slingshot heavy cargo from spot to spot across states like jumping frog, I don't get where the problem is.
I'm not saying catapult eggs, but majority of goods could withstand 1000Gs.
We need Trevor Milton to stop working on electric truck and get into electric catapults.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#17I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
Prices are sticky. Prices at the store, prices for shipping, prices for labor, etc.
So where people don't have much leverage (or are perceived to not have much leverage), they move slowly. Trucking is low leverage (the training is a couple months and a large proportion of people will be able to obtain a CDL). Around here they've moved to offer paid training, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#18Becoming a truck driver currently doesn't seem a wise choice when self-driving trucks are on the horizon.
This, not a single word about automation and self-driving trucks in the article but every person I talked to that considered this career path* has mentioned automation as a reason staying out of a field. A lot of people value job security really high.
I agree with the comments saying that if the pay was higher then there wouldn't be such a shortage and the fact that is generally true. That doesn't mean the market always adapts fast enough and balances itself though.
* only 3 people, so purely anecdotal.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#19I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
They are increasing compensation, but the job is so shit, and so demanding on time, that it's still not worth it. I'd want to see $500,000 a year before I put long-haul trucking demands on my body.
The industry has labour problems that aren't related to pay. Nobody wants to sit outside a business for 6-8 hours, earning 0 dollars. Solution: Fine deliverees by the minute. Over-policing of truckers. Solution: Lower fines for commercial truckers, thus removing the incentive for police interaction. Long time away from family. Solution: Truckers have a maximum distance they may travel in a day, which includes the return trip.
Re: America has a truck driver shortage
#20I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
By your logic entire concept of labour shortage is outrageous because any shortage will clear with high enough price. But for any job such as that of Truck drive the market value of that job is only X. Paying more than X would mean you should look for alternatives and get out of that business.
As the truck diver salaries go up cost of everything that relies on transportation also goes up marginally. Suddenly the struggling pistachio farmer will now find it even less economical to continue, Wallmart will have to raise prices of their goods and so on. All eventually leading up to poor people paying even more for their daily consumption items such as diapers and baby food.
The brighter side of this is that the Truck driving as an occupation would be pretty much extinct in next 20 years as self driving trucks, hyperloops, cargo drones etc. will replace them or make them really low skill jobs.