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Why America has a school bus driver shortage

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Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#21

Post by iratewizard »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #5
fnord77 wrote: post #2

tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.

Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each o…

I'm sure Uber would be happy to fix this problem for less than the cost of more bus drivers. Not that that's a good solution or that parents would be comfortable with having kids ubered to school. I have no horse in the race, though. I will never send my kids to these failing, pathetic indoctrination centers.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#22

Post by gruez »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #12

There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about. If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you alrea…

> There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited.

and those "abused and exploited" people are providing the labor, leading to a labor shortage.

I don't understand people who think "shortage" need to be qualified by how sympathetic the reason for the shortage is. You can either be the type of person who thinks any failure to meet demand is a shortage, or that shortages don't exist because people can simply pay more. The in-between of "there's a failure to meet demand but they deserve it so it's not really a shortage" seems like trying to inject subjectivity to an objective word.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#23

Post by gruez »

egypturnash wrote: post #18
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.

Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.

They could, but they don't because it's not their responsibility. Likewise, should we shame rich silicon valley knowledge workers because they didn't pay to keep their local restaurants afloat during the pandemic?

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#24

Post by monkeybutton »

rgbrenner wrote: post #15

"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to…

Part time hours but fulltime availability! What a complete scam. My spouse working in healthcare ran into this at one job. It didn't last long. And they wondered why employee retention was miserable. What's even the point of working at a place that demands such unpaid concessions?

Those hours represent an opportunity cost and should be paid for. They are not free.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#25

Post by CapitalistCartr »

rgbrenner wrote: post #15

"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to…

Waiting tables often have "split shifts".

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#26

Post by dstaley »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #20
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each o…

If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. Do you really want the equivalent of an Uber driver taking your kid to school each day?

I think the idea is just a larger number of drivers driving smaller, typical vehicles, not literally using Uber/ride-share drivers.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#27

Post by makomk »

sys_64738 wrote: post #10

Is this similar to the HGV issues Britain is having with food and fuel shortages? Nobody to deliver it.

Very similar. Part of the story here seems to be that the US also has shortages of HGV drivers that have also caused issues like fuel stations having to close: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-truckin... Since it's basically the same license to drive a school bus or a truck, all those drivers can now get plenty of better-paying work. (As far as I can tell, the only reason this hasn't turned into a full-on fuel crisis like in the UK is because it hasn't been featured on the front page of the American equivalent of the BBC and the Sun, which means the US hasn't had the large-scale panic buying the UK did. Nearly all the examples of petrol stations running out of fuel here are due to massively increased demand rather than an underlying lack of supply; they just don't have the infrastructure to cope with everyone deciding to fill their tanks full at once even if everything's running perfectly. I've seen hints that there are empty shop shelves in the US too from people there complaining about it, but that doesn't have news coverage at all.)

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#28

Post by ghoward »

bluGill wrote: post #16
ghoward wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trained as a school bus driver, and I agree with both of you, but especially the dealing with children part. I quit my job as a bus driver on my second day because I was stressed out about hurting kids. (Yes, I know school buses are among the safest vehicles on the road; it was an irrational fear.) But the other part of the equation is the schedule. You are hired as a part-time employee, no benefits, but the schedu…

School bus driver is a good job for otherwise stay at home parents. You drive your kids to school and back home everyday and get paid for it. Sure if you drove your own care you could do the round trip in half an hour, while the bus means it takes 2 hours, but you get paid and ensure you kids actually go to school every day. You can also take the babies along with you to work (or at least my school allowed that) It i…

Replying to say that yes, you are absolutely correct. I spoke quite definitely when there were other options, and you rightly called me out for it.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#29

Post by Limb »

I have a Class B CDL (with a medical cert restriction since it was for a state job, meaning no commerical jobs unless I get a medical done. I presume driving a school bus would be exempt for this) in New York. I guess I was one of the "500k+" people targeted by NYS, as I received an email asking me to apply to be a school bus driver. I gave it a quick thought before realizing that I work a 9 to 5 job, so there was no way I could even work the job if I wanted to. Besides the other good reasons mentioned in the article and this thread, I'm sure that also restricts the number of applicants because most people can't work during those hours unless they are retired or unemployed.

Re: Why America has a school bus driver shortage

#30

Post by jltsiren »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #5
fnord77 wrote: post #2

tl;dr: people with commercial drivers licenses can get much higher paying jobs doing other types of driving.

Does this point to a solution in the form of using smaller vehicles that don't require a CDL? School buses are super inefficient because kids are all spread out, so you end up driving a huge 6 MPG diesel a lot of miles to pick up 40 kids. Or worse, driving it a lot of miles to pick up less than 40 kids. If you used smaller vehicles to pick up the same number of kids, you would need more of them, but they would each o…

Good solutions to labor shortages rarely involve making things more labor-intensive.

In wealthy countries, labor costs are already much higher than the costs of operating the bus itself. (People often claim 70% vs. 30%.) If the economy grows in a way that benefits the working class, labor becomes even more expensive relative to the vehicle. The key to cost-effective services is therefore minimizing the number of people needed for providing the service.

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