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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#391

Post by ocschwar »

MisterTea wrote: post #382
ocschwar wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. But note you said pallet. Nothing stopping those pallets from making the long haul on tracks, and the last mile on a truck. (Except politics, that is)

How does the pallet make it from train to truck in a cost effective way? Adding labor into the equation is grade A bean counter kryptonite.

There is no way for it to be more cost effective to truck a load long haul than it is to pay for a forklift operator to unload your truck onto a rail car at one end of the haul and another forklift operator to do the reverse operation at the other end.

The reason it isn't done this way is certainly not the amount of labor.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#392

Post by scarface74 »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #351
scarface74 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain point, the marginal value of a dollar to anyone isn't worth the work it would take to make that dollar. That value is different for different people based on the opportunity but it does add up in aggregate. If someone can choose to make $30K a year and adjust thier lifestyle accordingly instead of making $90K a year doing a job that they don't want to do, many people will choose the former. I would go so…

Are you sure teachers wouldn't take 10x ? That means 1 year of sacrifice in exchange for moving retirement up 10 years -- that's much better stability and time to spend with family and kids.

I seriously doubt that my mom would have been willing to work in the fields for any amount of money.

Heck, I wouldn't. Once you have a comfortable lifestyle, the marginal value of a dollar goes down.

After the kids get 4-5 they are in school during the day and you have the same schedule for the holidays and the summer.

My mom not only went back to work part time for the school board, she voluntarily took a pay cut from what they were willing to offer her so she could work more hours helping at risk kids without interfering with her pension.

She could have easily worked at a college, made more money and received her full pension

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#393

Post by nickwalton00 »

corodra wrote: post #269
xapata wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's any consolation, I once was told that I needed to complete a project in 4 months, by myself, when the customer had been promised a team of 6 working for 1 year. I'm sure many engineers have been pressured into attempting similar things, their jobs on the line.

Yea, but the difference, the likelyhood of you dying from such a rush is minimal. Truckers die often from sleep deprivation mostly due to bullshit haul times. Google "trucker deaths per year".

Wow I just looked it up and found that truck driving is the most dangerous occupation in the US. That's crazy!

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#394

Post by toasterlovin »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #386
toasterlovin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a YC company doing this: Flexport.

Their website is full of fluff, and you have to sign up for an account. With your average freight forwarder you just pick up the phone for a quote, and if the quote is outside their area of expertise they'll refer you to someone who can perform. What is their niche, exactly?

Their "niche" is that you can actually track your shipments on their website, rather than having to harass your dinosaur freight forwarder via phone & email and hope that they deign to get back to you. Oh, and you can also request quotes via their website! Seriously, though, you should give them a shot. They were a game changer for a former employer. And there's a phone number in the website footer.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#395

Post by azernik »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #364
FooHentai wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually always to increase total compensation. Most cases I would guess this is true until you hit the point that the pay is enough to live comfortably. Then it changes. My partner was recently approached for a position offering compensation more than 200% of their current for the same work. However,the hiring process is exposing red flags hinting at…

>Working conditions are such a major aspect of any job So they need to increase compensation even more to account for these aspects of the job. If they can't fill the position, it is because they aren't paying enough for the job. I don't see how anything changes except that employers don't want to admit that their jobs suck so much more than similar jobs that paying even twice the amount doesn't pull people in.

I think the major difference is that, if you're in this regime where you're getting diminishing returns on increased pay, for the employer it can be a lot more cost-effective to improve working conditions.

Trucking companies paying drivers 30-50K/year are probably not in this situation; software companies got there a long time ago for engineers.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#396

Post by b1daly »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #328
TeMPOraL wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" b…

I know this thread is probably dead, but just feel like responding: the factor you’re leaving out is that having multiple people competing to develop the best knife leads to better knifes.

This is old school Econ 101, but I think it’s relevant. Know we have multiple options for knifes. How do we decide the best one? We let people decide for themselves, and price is the signaling mechanism as to where resources should be focused.

So we have a “market mechanism” for discovering quality, thereby making “market” an integral part of the system.

It could be done otherways, and markets have known weaknesses, especially for certain categories of goods.

But for many categories of goods it’s a very powerful system to spur and support innovation and entrepreneurial endeavors. So to call an essential part of a market bases system valueless does not make sense.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#397

Post by isolli »

test6554 wrote: post #357
isolli wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but even in industries with razor-thin margins the solution to a labor shortage is to increase salaries. Some of the companies will go under, and the most productive ones will survive. It's capitalism, quite simply.

The solution to a labor shortage is to increase salaries, increase productivity, or automate.

Or better, all of the above :)

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#398

Post by RandomInteger4 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #144
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the training were free and I was guaranteed a job, then I definitely would. I see little downside.

> I see little downside. I think the job has a very high incident of obesity and heart disease, as it's so sedentary, and a high incident of divorce because it's anti-social.

You raise a good point. I hadn't considered the amount of sitting hours required, where you're incentivized not to make stops to stretch your legs due to time to delivery constraints.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#399

Post by lopmotr »

meritt wrote: post #151
lopmotr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, 3 companies will realize they don't actually need those workers afterall, not for the salary they're demanding. They'll find another way to do business without hiring them, or they might even go out of business, which is fine and normal in a well functioning economy. There's actually no need for truck drivers. People could carry loads on their backs. The reason companies don't hire people for this is be…

> In that case, 3 companies will realize they don't actually need those workers afterall, not for the salary they're demanding. They'll find another way to do business without hiring them, or they might even go out of business, which is fine and normal in a well functioning economy. Absolutely that could happen. But it's funny how you refuse to acknowledge that there may be a "labor shortage" and instead you present…

It's neither a labor shortage nor an abundance of jobs because there's no correct amount of labor to compare against. All it is is a price for labor which sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down, but there's no correct price at which there's neither a shortage nor an oversupply.

If it's ridiculous to say there's a shortage of thing-carriers, how is the different from saying there's a shortage of truck drivers? What's the difference? If you just dismiss it as ridiculous, then you probably don't know what you're talking about.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#400

Post by meritt »

lopmotr wrote: post #399
meritt wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In that case, 3 companies will realize they don't actually need those workers afterall, not for the salary they're demanding. They'll find another way to do business without hiring them, or they might even go out of business, which is fine and normal in a well functioning economy. Absolutely that could happen. But it's funny how you refuse to acknowledge that there may be a "labor shortage" and instead you present…

It's neither a labor shortage nor an abundance of jobs because there's no correct amount of labor to compare against. All it is is a price for labor which sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down, but there's no correct price at which there's neither a shortage nor an oversupply. If it's ridiculous to say there's a shortage of thing-carriers, how is the different from saying there's a shortage of truck drivers? What…

Truck drivers require a specific skill and license. There's a finite amount of those people at any point in time. If the number of jobs exceeds the number of workers, then we have an abundance of jobs in relation to the amount of human capital.

It's really not a difficult concept to understand.

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