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America has a truck driver shortage

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#301

Post by ItsMe000001 »

jezclaremurugan wrote: post #256
anoncoward111 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main reasons I am so heavily in favor of UBI, even though I am quite the anarchist if we are talking about idealism and not pragmatism. There IS money being made out there by large firms and small firms alike, but it is absolutely NOT based on merit or skill at all. Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers a…

> Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers and executives will forge the deal FIRST, and then go get the expertise and skilled laborers after. Maybe - forming the relationships and contracts and forging the deal - is a valuable skill too, and since I've been on a lot of interview panels - getting the skilled laborers and exper…

Of course it is, that's the whole point? Those guys get the deals, OPs point. So if you measure success by their individual success it's a tautology. However, hoe is it for the rest of society? I would claim it is not so clear. There is quite a bit of "success is when you are successful" in a lot of arguments I see around such topics, where the assumptions directly lead to the outcome followed by a "Q.E.D.".

For example, "Rich people deserve to be rich because they showed the ability to accumulate wealth." - Well, that was easy...

Or another one "good enough" products are good enough because they are bought. Investing any more, e.g. into making a software have less bugs, or an electronic device, or anything, last longer, are useless, or the market would already have provided that outcome. What a nice and easy circular argument. Imagine Gillette produced razors that last ten years, including blades. Very bad for them! Would it be bad for the mankind overall? If you believe in "the market" then yes, it would be bad for mankind. You can take any other product and company, incl. all the "lemon market" stuff. If the market prevents you from voluntarily doing better (because you will be outcompeted) it must be what is good for everyone or the market would not have produced that outcome, Q.E.D.

I think that while the skill is obviously extremely valuable, also to society, what you can get with it is too much. It always leads to optimal outcomes if you already believe it does (because "market", magic word).

Just like in biochemistry a reaction can be enzyme-limited or substrate-limited, i.e. the path is too hard or there is not enough supply, I think the rewards for being well-connected are oversized because we don't have an issue with too few people desiring to be well-connected, but that the path is hard. Paying more does nothing to how hard it is to become well connected, and increasing the desirability of being well-connected doesn't do anything either.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#302

Post by b1daly »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #274
refurb wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the ability to develop business relations and close deals a skill in and of itself? That pretty much describes sales skills perfectly. I know this is NH, so skills are viewed as technical with all other skills regarded as "unnecessary fluff", but at the end of the day business is built on human relationships, so I'd argue the ability to make and maintain relationships with the right people is one of the most im…

It's not about HN's technical focus. It's that for many of us here - myself strongly included - sales and marketing can be seen as a large-scale defection in the game of free market. In the ideal world, when you want to buy a product or a service, you would consider the value it brings to you based on hard facts, consider other circumstances impacting the costs - like e.g. product A is a bit better, but product B has…

I don’t mean to be glib, but nothing is perfect. What some of the other posters are alluring to is that the ability to organize deals and market a product is an essential skill in running a business. If product A is technically superior, but there is not sufficient business talent to sustain a business on it, then the quality is moot.

What you’re describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products that defy “apples to apples” comparison.

Again, the sales and marketing are integral to the product. I don’t believe companies will survive if they practice outright fraud on their customers. This is not an easy problem. For the example, simpleminded approaches like forcing government to accept the lowest cost bid on complicated products has tremendous downside.

FWIW, managing people, organizations, setting up deals, marketing...these are “hard” skills. What makes them hard is that the parameters of the “problem space” are almost infinitely complex, the work product is ambiguous, and often the involves the focused cooperation of people, who are notoriously unpredictable.

Managed systems comprises of “soft components” is a very hard challenge.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#303

Post by stephengillie »

tim333 wrote: post #300
alistproducer2 wrote: post #81

They are terrible jobs. Years ago I had a class B and drove dial-a-ride buses. All-in-all it wasn't a terrible job because I got frequent breaks between passengers and could get out of the truck on those breaks and hang out at a mall or get something to eat. My counterparts that drove the city buses had to stay in their seat for 8 hours driving in circles around town. The other thing that people don't realize about t…

I guess maybe self driving trucks won't be a bad thing then.

The issue of self-driving trucks taking the jobs of truckers seems to be a unique occurrence where 2 problems solve each other.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#304

Post by michaelt »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #232
joe_the_user wrote: post #181

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. No, trucking was a decent living 'till deregulation in the 90s. "How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst" http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst-job/

"No" is an incorrect response. The 90s is two decades ago. Your comment doesn't contradict the previous one at all.

Presumably he was contradicting "This is the nature of truck driving" - saying, in other words, that the problem isn't inherent to truck driving but rather came about due to deregulation.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#305

Post by pas »

briandear wrote: post #267
andrei_says_ wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, shortage of people willing to forego having a personal life, are expected to speed/break the law daily and risk losing their job as a part of doing their job, are verifiably destroying their health long term in order to do said boring menial job for long hours in exchange for low to medium pay. Of course there’s a shortage. If pay was 200-300% higher and drivers could afford to work 2/3 of the time an…

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…

People ought to want the currently underpriced externalities to be correctly accounted for. At least I hope there's some basic human decency thing, but maybe the Emancipation was just an act.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#306

Post by gruturo »

briandear wrote: post #267
andrei_says_ wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, shortage of people willing to forego having a personal life, are expected to speed/break the law daily and risk losing their job as a part of doing their job, are verifiably destroying their health long term in order to do said boring menial job for long hours in exchange for low to medium pay. Of course there’s a shortage. If pay was 200-300% higher and drivers could afford to work 2/3 of the time an…

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 this practice. Companies would immediately use the tax break as a competitive advantage and consumers would come to simply expect lower prices. We can’t keep destroying the planet like this.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#307

Post by b1daly »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #301
jezclaremurugan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers and executives will forge the deal FIRST, and then go get the expertise and skilled laborers after. Maybe - forming the relationships and contracts and forging the deal - is a valuable skill too, and since I've been on a lot of interview panels - getting the skilled laborers and exper…

Of course it is, that's the whole point? Those guys get the deals, OPs point. So if you measure success by their individual success it's a tautology. However, hoe is it for the rest of society? I would claim it is not so clear. There is quite a bit of "success is when you are successful" in a lot of arguments I see around such topics, where the assumptions directly lead to the outcome followed by a "Q.E.D.". For exam…

I see your point, and it’s an interesting issue. Do marketing and managerial skill add real value to a product/service, or are they at best a necessary evil?

I think there is a strong case to be made that they add value. One issue they solve is simply the communication of the existence and value of said product in an increasingly crowded and noisy world.

To take everyone’s favorite example, look how Apple has consistently worked on their image and marketing, and how that expense and effort serves as a signaling mechanism to consumer purchasers of very complex products. Of course, Apple delivers the goods, consistently, and has built up a symbiotic system of communication and technology.

The two big differentiators Apple has used are there focus on design and user experience. It’s not hard to see how these areas of attention blur into the boundaries of marketing, customer service, and product development.

There’s something I think of as “coherence” in created things. When it’s achieved, to end user it might seem like nothing, because the effort put into the subtle aspects of the creation become “invisible.”

If you’ve ever attempted doing something even as simple as writing marketing copy, the difficulty of bringing focus, clarity, and effectiveness quickly hits you in the face.

A company that can execute these “non-technical” skills well is at least a good bet for executing the technical apsects as well.

Can anyone think of counter examples? Companies that talk a good game, set up outstanding business structures, and then consistently deliver rubbish?

Edit: your comment about the contined existence of merely adequate products, wouldn’t you say that there is a real issue of cost? A company could dramatically reduce bugs in software putting more testing into the product, hiring better engineers, but if people don’t want to pay the price, the product is not “better.”

There is a fundamental issue in economics, which is how to “value” things. Price is used as a proxy, because it’s inherently quantifiable, and the alternatives lead to highly contentious differences of opinion.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#308

Post by narag »

b1daly wrote: post #302
TeMPOraL wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about HN's technical focus. It's that for many of us here - myself strongly included - sales and marketing can be seen as a large-scale defection in the game of free market. In the ideal world, when you want to buy a product or a service, you would consider the value it brings to you based on hard facts, consider other circumstances impacting the costs - like e.g. product A is a bit better, but product B has…

I don’t mean to be glib, but nothing is perfect. What some of the other posters are alluring to is that the ability to organize deals and market a product is an essential skill in running a business. If product A is technically superior, but there is not sufficient business talent to sustain a business on it, then the quality is moot. What you’re describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then failing…

What you’re describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products that defy “apples to apples” comparison

No. It does happen, not "maybe", every day and for every kind of decision, complex and simple. If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to mud the waters.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#309

Post by Bromskloss »

twothamendment wrote: post #260
Bromskloss wrote: post #178

What does "shortage" really mean? Isn't it just a matter of price?

Not if all the experienced drivers retire and there isn't enough young ones to fill their seats. Raising wages would help, but it still takes time to get people up to speed. Do you want the new guy in a hazmat tanker next to you on the freeway?

If that's the case, it must be a very temporary problem.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#310

Post by ItsMe000001 »

b1daly wrote: post #307
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is, that's the whole point? Those guys get the deals, OPs point. So if you measure success by their individual success it's a tautology. However, hoe is it for the rest of society? I would claim it is not so clear. There is quite a bit of "success is when you are successful" in a lot of arguments I see around such topics, where the assumptions directly lead to the outcome followed by a "Q.E.D.". For exam…

I see your point, and it’s an interesting issue. Do marketing and managerial skill add real value to a product/service, or are they at best a necessary evil? I think there is a strong case to be made that they add value. One issue they solve is simply the communication of the existence and value of said product in an increasingly crowded and noisy world. To take everyone’s favorite example, look how Apple has consist…

> Do marketing and managerial skill add real value to a product/service, or are they at best a necessary evil?

That was not what I said - at all! Of course it adds value. Reading through it, it seems you entire reply is premised on something I did not even remotely say?

I edited the post and added a new last paragraph.

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