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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#321

Post by caf »

shados wrote: post #164
rgbrenner wrote: post #4

If 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…

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…

Labour is no different to any other business input.

If you can't afford the inputs you need at the price the market is setting, you can't afford to run a profitable business.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#322

Post by jbergens »

rgbrenner wrote: post #4

If 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…

On the other hand IT complains of lack of skilled workers all the time, and here the salaries seem to be pretty good compared to other careers.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#324

Post by jacobush »

apexalpha wrote: post #287
corodra wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent trucks don't. Company trucks do. However, the company does not get fined, the driver does, personally.

>However, the company does not get fined, the driver does, personally. America vs Europe in a nutshell.

Yep. Upholding "the morals of the individual" vs going for what could effect intended wider behavior change.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#325

Post by caf »

twothamendment wrote: post #257
devonkim wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one I’m familiar with is that you drive more than you report and that lets you take on more jobs. You’re not supposed to drive more than (for example) 14 hours / day for safety reasons but most drivers that pull six figures tend to have violated these laws fundamentally.

It may not be to take more jobs, it may be to keep the one you have. Say it takes 14 hours and 45 minutes and you can only log 14 hours drive time. How do you get the job done when dispatch is promising you'll be there? Start driving before you log the start of your day, log breaks when really you've been peeing in a bottle, log some time to inspect your truck when you are stuck in traffic. A little here and there. Y…

The only way to align the incentives here is for the company to also face sanctions if one of their drivers is caught.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#326

Post by soziawa »

jbergens wrote: post #322
rgbrenner wrote: post #4

If 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…

On the other hand IT complains of lack of skilled workers all the time, and here the salaries seem to be pretty good compared to other careers.

They complain about a lack of skilled worker at lower prices.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#327

Post by golergka »

StudentStuff wrote: post #13
HarryHirsch wrote: post #5

From 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.

> 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.

Screwed up would be forbidding people from making this personal choice through regulation.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#328

Post by anoncoward111 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #313
reitanqild wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to mud the waters. ... obviously unless you happen to work for the company with the good (or least bad) apples, in which case your jib is to spread the word that good apples exist.

The problem is, the market isn't static, but dynamic. You play an iterative game. It turns out that spending more money on spreading the word about your apples has better ROI than spending that money on ensuring you actually have the best apples... And even if you achieve best apples and best marketing, think of just how much money you had to spend on the marketing part. How much better still would your apples be if…

Everything you are saying in this thread is exactly right, in my opinion. And I'm a sales guy! Haha.

Inventing something is a value-added game. If I make us a knife that lets us cut a cactus in the desert for water, and we both survive the day because of that knife, I've added value.

If another guy makes the same knife, and now we have to compete for your attention, distort deal terms and product features to "seem" better than the other knife, etc, then this is not adding value. This is destroying time and money.

Sales is a zero sum game. One company wins, the other company loses. That's ok, but the winner should succeed thanks to price + features (e.g. who makes the better knife), not who "promises" you their knife is "better".

In an ideal world, we all just have a spreadsheet of all the knives available out there, their price, what they're actually built to do, and you just hit buy.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#329

Post by josefresco »

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. That would lower costs and increase margins which would result in companies being able to pay more.

You must be new to capitalism. Snark aside, I doubt most trucking companies will raise wages if their margins are increased. Most likely it will result in bonuses for management.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#330

Post by cesarb »

jacquesm wrote: post #284
wavefunction wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean compressed natural-gas rather than petrol. Many fleet vehicles run off of CNG in the Americas and elsewhere.

Yes, I understood that. But those stations are pretty rare and typically need a (quite expensive) compressor to turn the gas in the pipes into CNG if it isn't delivered by truck. (Former gas station owner here...) The other option would be LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas), that too is usually delivered by truck.

> But those stations are pretty rare

In my experience, not all stations have natural gas, but it's not exactly rare. I found a list which matched my intuition: http://www.gasnet.com.br/postos_gnv_lista.asp?nomestado=Rio%... shows 531 stations on my state, several cities have 10 or more, the state capital has over 200.

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