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America has a truck driver shortage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#401

Post by lopmotr »

meritt wrote: post #400
lopmotr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're missing the point. This has nothing to do with more drivers entering the market to return the numbers to any artificial "correct" number. If more companies wanted truck drivers more desperately, their pay would go up. Same number of drivers but they'd all earn more as employers compete to get what's available. Or if half of them quit, the pay for the remaining half would go up. Less truck driving would be done and fewer companies would need truck drivers (at the price they now demand).

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#402

Post by lopmotr »

macintux wrote: post #221
lopmotr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you defining shortage? If half the drivers vanished, then half as much stuff would be shipped by truck. What's the problem with that, other than things would be worse for people? Is there a correct amount of truck driving that should happen? Are we currently at that correct amount? Have we ever been?

By your logic has there ever been a shortage of anything?

Yea, it's an emotional concept that seems to mean things cost more than somebody was expecting. You could say there's a shortage of anything you like, so it's a meaningless word. There's a shortage of helicopters because lots of people want them but don't want to pay the high price they currently have. There's a shortage of petrol because if it was much cheaper, I'd be running a generator to power my house. I want that cheap petrol but there isn't enough for the price to be so low.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#403

Post by ItsMe000001 »

godzilla82 wrote: post #378
anoncoward111 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of most things is a function of labor cost + materials + location where it's made + admin + delivery. In a perfect world, admin and delivery are nearly 0, the warehouse where it's made is once again as cheap as possible, and the materials and labor will decrease over time as more and more laborers acquire the skills necessary to make the product. This is why drone pilot income is rapidly plumetting, along w…

>The price of most things is a function of labor cost + materials + location where it's made + admin + delivery. Sorry, but you are wrong. The price of a good is not a function of these. Price is a function of demand and supply. And demand and supply are in turn also a function of price. For example, you cannot demand a salary based on the cost of your education. The market will decide what is the value of your labou…

> Price is a function of demand and supply.

As someone who has set prices in a small business, that is not true.

Please don't take the simple - and simplistic - models used in trying to study an incredibly complex world as if they are reality.

You get some useful results from the Bohr model of the Atom - that doesn't mean it's "true" or "reality". It's a model. As some STEM professor (might have been physics) once said to the new students: If you want "truth" you are in the wrong lecture, philosophy is down the hall on the right.

So you get some useful results from assuming that this is what determines price, so that you are able to create a model. That does not mean that that's "how it is". The more closely you look the less it is true.

Re: America has a truck driver shortage

#404

Post by StudentStuff »

Nasrudith wrote: post #350
golergka wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The problem is that it doesn't just affect them. If drunk drivers only killed themselves it would be a lesser issue not worth setting up checkpoints over.

Warrantless checkpoints aren't legal in Washington State, and having experienced them in other states I'm very happy to not have to interact with an armed goon at a random checkpoint.
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