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America has a truck driver shortage
- yasp 8y agoI am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.
- maxxxxx 8y agoOur economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.
- yasp 8y agoI don't know much about the trucking industry but I imagine that it is competitive enough where employers don't feel like they have much latitude to pass higher wages along to their customers.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThe only reasons that would be is if other trucking companies are not having driver shortages and can continue to deliver without raising prices, or the the end users of the items they are delivering are not willing to pay for the increase in cost. I doubt both are true.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIt does make sense, you don’t need “infinite” amount of money. Pay a driver $200k a year. Or give them an 8 hour workday, and week off week on schedules so they can see their family. There’s many solutions, all of them involve incentivizing people to become drivers. If people want their Amazon orders so bad, they’ll end up paying. And if they don’t, then they have to re-prioritize what they want.
- StudentStuff 8y agoPart of the problem is with BNSF, UP & the other major long haul rail lines, there is no good aggregator for those looking to ship a few pallets of goods from California to Seattle, and the railroad is happy to set high minimums which make long distance trucking viable. Its ultimately quite silly, I really do think an Uber for Railroad shipping which partnered with the local railroads (that are desperate for revenue & work for cheap) and long haul railroads could effectively shrink the need for long haul trucking.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoUber for railroad shipping? LCL (Less-than-container-load) freight forwarding has been an industry since God-knows-when, and you'd think this includes intermodal. You learn all this when you've done a few international moves.
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- shiftpgdn 8y agoIf you've done an international move surely you saw how horribly the industry is run. It's ripe for "disruption." Most of the pages of companies doing the work look straight out of 2004.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoTo be honest, I can't complain about the state of the industry. You find someone (through recommendations), they give you a quote, you drop off the goods, and the stuff arrives 6 weeks later. It's miraculous, there must be so much informal knowledge to make it all work. The disruption is these "moving pods". They are more expensive, but they are well advertised, and one fears that the established small players will be driven out of business.
- toasterlovin 8y agoThere is a YC company doing this: Flexport.
- dkasper 8y agoAs you pay truckers more at some point it doesn’t make economic sense to hire them. Some jobs are cost centers others are profit centers is one way of looking at it. Another factor is industries like trucking have very little differentiation so it’s a race to the bottom.
- lev99 8y agoAs you increase driver pay delivery costs increase. If the shortage was real it would mean deliveries are not being made that would have happened at an increase in delivery cost.
- gaius 8y agoThe goods being in location A rather than location B is the value add. Logistics is a profit centre, not a cost.
- mi100hael 8y agoOf course the actual act of shipping the goods is a profit center. But payroll is a cost center in every industry I'm aware of. You can't just 10x your shipping costs in order to pay your truckers 10x the salary and expect to remain in business.
- gaius 8y agoThe payroll costs are usually included in each “centre”
- ryguytilidie 8y agoWhy does debate always turn into this? No one suggested much more than a ~1.5xish pay increase yet the response is "you expect them to pay 10x the salary and remain in business??"? What is the goal of just exaggerating and debating a thing no one says versus just debating what people are actually saying?
- maxerickson 8y agoPrices are sticky. Prices at the store, prices for shipping, prices for labor, etc. So where people don't have much leverage (or are perceived to not have much leverage), they move slowly. Trucking is low leverage (the training is a couple months and a large proportion of people will be able to obtain a CDL). Around here they've moved to offer paid training, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.
- merpnderp 8y agoThe US and most of the world's free market countries are actually highly regulated markets where supply and demand are strongly influenced by government influence. As for this particular case, truck driving is a crappy job, with its long term prospects darkened by self driving technology, and equal paying professional jobs in decent supply. If you're motivated enough to be a professional, you can usually find a better career. And there's a fairly hard cap on how much long haul trucker drivers can be paid before rail becomes more economic.
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- Karishma1234 8y agoFree market people understand these things pretty easily. I do not see why you are finding it hard. One obvious fallacy in your statement is that someone getting paid infinite money for talent. I have not seen any such examples so far beside Pentagon who get paid more and more irrespective of their incompetence.
- maxxxxx 8y agoFor example CEO salaries have been increasing rapidly for several decades. Are they so much better now than 40 or more years ago?
- 5DFractalTetris 8y agoTheir business intelligence practice has gotten so much faster that they're probably planning 100 years out.
- Applejinx 8y agoTo people following the way market whims have affected corporate planning, this is an extremely humorous hypothesis. No, I don't think that they are.
- 5DFractalTetris 8y agoInteresting. I notice I have been downvoted as well. Thanks for the slap on the back, everybody.
- Applejinx 8y agoThat part wasn't me, and I'm not in the least mad :) It's just that the subject is extremely important, though it's seemingly not related to 'truck driver shortage'. Part of the problem with seeking to first justify the way our economics are structured, and then explain the outcomes, is that it ignores externalities that can be important. You could take the opposite tack and begin from 'wealthy people are inherently evil' and probably be almost as wrong, but then you'd be arguing a deeply anarchic position where leadership is only dominance and subjugation. That ignores things like Elon Musk's elaborate, sci-fi goals which are clearly that of a nerd writ large, and not simply a pointy-hair CEO guy wanting only wealth. The truth is a lot simpler: value is what you're able to make happen, but compensation is sheer social engineering. CEO pay has absolutely nothing to do with whether they're more useful as a class than truck drivers. I think some of them are more useful than truck drivers, and some are not.
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- Applejinx 8y agoThe people getting almost infinite amounts of money are making the rules and setting the terms of the dialogue. Because to do so is a tactic for maximizing the amount of money they get, that being their self interest. When you see this sort of 'workers are fussy and childish even though they're treated and paid incredibly well!' business, it's safe to read it as 'reality has come knocking, and the reports of wonderful conditions and pay are greatly exaggerated'. It's like asking what's wrong with millenials that they're not buying enough diamonds.
- jbob2000 8y agoThey are increasing compensation, but the job is so shit, and so demanding on time, that it's still not worth it. I'd want to see $500,000 a year before I put long-haul trucking demands on my body. The industry has labour problems that aren't related to pay. Nobody wants to sit outside a business for 6-8 hours, earning 0 dollars. Solution: Fine deliverees by the minute. Over-policing of truckers. Solution: Lower fines for commercial truckers, thus removing the incentive for police interaction. Long time away from family. Solution: Truckers have a maximum distance they may travel in a day, which includes the return trip.
- rectang 8y agoYes, the "everybody has their price" analysis bothers me as well because it only takes into account monetary compensation. There are lots of other factors which make a job more or less appealing: time away from home, job security, personal risk, physical demands. Maybe try to attract more talent by improving working conditions?
- ams6110 8y agoYes but there are people who don't have the same point of view as you. There are people who like spending a lot of time by themselves, for which trucking has an appeal. I know people in the trades who say things like "you couldn't pay me enough money to work in an office."
- mcguire 8y agoThe people to whom truck driving is attractive are probably already driving trucks.
- Karishma1234 8y agoBy your logic entire concept of labour shortage is outrageous because any shortage will clear with high enough price. But for any job such as that of Truck drive the market value of that job is only X. Paying more than X would mean you should look for alternatives and get out of that business. As the truck diver salaries go up cost of everything that relies on transportation also goes up marginally. Suddenly the struggling pistachio farmer will now find it even less economical to continue, Wallmart will have to raise prices of their goods and so on. All eventually leading up to poor people paying even more for their daily consumption items such as diapers and baby food. The brighter side of this is that the Truck driving as an occupation would be pretty much extinct in next 20 years as self driving trucks, hyperloops, cargo drones etc. will replace them or make them really low skill jobs.
- yasp 8y agoYes. This is how a well functioning economy works.
- platz 8y agoexactly - if they truly have a trucking shortage, the prices of all the intermediaries will have to rise, including the end shelf-price. More short-term, Wallmart will either just discontinue that product or offer it elsewhere due to free movement of capital. We'll get just a couple brands of cereal at the supermarket, instead of 25.
- Karishma1234 8y agoYes. That is point I have been making.
- platz 8y agoBut you seem to think the price going up is a bad thing, when in fact it is simply supply and demand, and necessary for markets to function.
- scarface74 8y agoThat doesn't always work as is the case for farm work once you make immigration harder. How many Americans if given a choice would rather make $40K a year doing nice and comfortable office work than make $120K a year (yes I'm making up a number to make a point) to do back breaking manual labor in the hot sun? Not quite to that extreme, but I'm giving up money now by choosing not to go into management and stay a senior developer because I don't want to be a manager and not to get a better paying job as a consultant who would have to travel more and be away from my family. My wife took a pay cut when we got married to work at a job she enjoys. Some jobs are not worth the extra money to a number of people no matter how much money you throw at them.
- rgbrenner 8y agoWhy is 120k the right number? Have you taken some implicit biases of your own, and decided that's the worth of farm work? The correct price of farm labor is whatever it costs to obtain it. There is no cap. It's whatever it costs to persuade people to move from their comfy office to the farm.
- scarface74 8y agoAt 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 far as to say the vast majority of public school teachers make the choice between less pay and being able to do a job that they enjoy as opposed to doing a job that they don't enjoy. Anecdotally, every person I know that decided to work in the school system (including my mom and my wife) chose to do it because of stability, being off for the summer, and being able to work with kids when they both could have made more money doing something else. I doubt you could offer them 10x the amount of money to be willing to work in the fields. But more to the point of the article, many people would not take the trade off of the dangers and long hours away from thier families, for any amount of money.
- ams6110 8y agoConversely, maybe there really isn't a shortage, and trucking companies want to get more drivers so that they can pay less. So they push a narrative of being able to make 80 to $100,000, but don't disclose that it's only a tiny fraction of experienced or specially qualified drivers who actually earn that much
- lopmotr 8y agoThere's never a shortage. Shortage just means somebody wants to pay less than they're having to. Even if half the truck drivers vanished, there still wouldn't be a shortage. The price would simply go up and some people who would have shipped things by truck would produce those things closer to their destination or otherwise not need a truck afterall.
- joshuamorton 8y agoThis isn't necessarily true. The can be shortages of resources (food, water) independently of price. Labor is just another resource, why cant there be a shortage of it?
- rileymat2 8y agoI agree with your point, but I wonder if there has been a shortage of food or water in the last 30 years that more money could not have solved quickly. It seems these happen in poor/war torn areas.
- joshuamorton 8y agoOffhand IDK, I was more thinking in terms of a theoretical resource constrained environment where the population is beyond the carrying capacity. You have a shortage that money cannot solve.
- winstonewert 8y agoEven there, the situation isn't fundamentally different. We are constantly in a situation where we do not have enough resources to do everything we'd like to do, we have decide which are the best uses of the resources. If we don't even have enough resources to keep everyone alive, then we are still in that exact same situation of not having enough resources to do everything we'd like to do. We are going to have to decide how to expend those resources (i.e. which people are going to live)
- antidaily 8y agoThe margins on this type of business are very low. I had a client who couldn't afford to process more than 20% of the invoices online (even though customers demanded it) because of 1.5% cc processing fee.
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- shams93 8y agoThe reason this hasn't happened in decades is every time there are labor gains the fed steps in to thrust us into a recession to destroy any labor gains thus salaries remain frozen in 1979, you salary is still wearing huge sideburns and a leisure suit while a sandwich and a soda from the market are $18. The fed plays a big role in suppressing wage income. Ultimately we create a society that punished hard work and rewards sloth on the part of the rentier class.
- perl4ever 8y agoI think a so-called labor shortage can be defined as an inelastic supply under given circumstances. There are always limits to how markets can be idealized - if you offered me $100K, $1M, or $1B to drive a truck across the country tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference, I still couldn't qualify. There is likely a gap between the salary a current truck driver will take and the one a potential truck driver will take, because the people who are not already doing it not only need some training but are likely to view it as a dying industry due to publicity about self-driving vehicles. So it seems like there could be substantial inelasticity just above the typical wage.
- randomdata 8y agoYou might not qualify, but a sufficient amount might attract those who are. I personally know quite a few people who are legally qualified to drive truck, but have jobs that pay more doing something else. But there are also existing truck drivers from whom you can poach from another company. If that other company cannot afford the new rate that you've offered, they're no longer in the market for a truck driver, and are no longer counted. It's like of like software developers. At, let's say, $150,000 per year, there are only so many companies who can afford them. A place that can only afford $30,000 per year for a developer isn't in the market for developers in the first place, no matter how much they claim they are. So as price rises, the need for drivers also declines. Technically speaking, the definition of shortage is a situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising. That does not seem to be the case here.
- meritt 8y agoLabor shortages absolutely exist. If there are 100 jobs requiring a specific skill and only 97 people exist who have that skill, that's a labor shortage. Those companies can compete for those workers all they want, but it doesn't magically create 3 new workers. Those shortages create opportunities and more people train to fill those gaps but it takes some amount of time before 3 new workers are available.
- stevenwoo 8y agoThere are some alternatives that do not increase the labor supply - for farmers they might switch to a crop that requires less manual labor or is mechanizable so they do not need as many workers, and demand for that crop might be filled by imports from another country. It seems like something weird is going on with farm labor because we hear about a shortage of workers every couple of years but farm worker pay have not gone up that much ( up to half the average California workers salary). Here's one example of the guy in Stockton paying about 16000(?) versus the people in Napa paying 40000 for the same crop/work (the grapes in Napa are worth more), and Napa farm workers are commuting from the Central Valley. http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/
- lopmotr 8y agoIn 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 because they're much more expensive (ignoring speed/etc.) than truck drivers. So if you're saying there can be labor shortages (in a free market), you could also say there's a severe shortage of human thing-carriers, which is ridiculous.
- meritt 8y ago> 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 as a "abundance of jobs", as if they aren't two sides of the same coin. Your second point is just ridiculous, I agree.
- jandrewrogers 8y agoThis mischaracterizes a more complex situation and conflates several things. While simple unwillingness to pay a market clearing price is the cause in some cases, I would assert it is a small minority of cases in practice. Some other important causes of labor shortages: - Labor intensive, low margin industries typically have long-term financial structures that don't allow for high wage volatility. Most workers also dislike wage volatility, so this arrangement works. However, this means that there is limited ability by the business to address labor shortages by increasing wages. - There is an actual labor shortage. If the market needs 1,000 neurosurgeons and there are only 800 in the world, no wage level will make that shortage disappear and it may be many years before the market can adapt. This is painfully evident at the high-end of the software engineering market. Paying higher wages doesn't eliminate the shortage, it just moves it around. - Individual wages are capped by value produced. Companies that can pay the highest wages are those where employees produce the most value. The value produced by employees is finite so at some wage they are effectively unemployable; the market has to clear in the other direction as well. - Spatiotemporal latency and distribution i.e. the required skills are trainable but do not exist when and where you need them. This is increasingly challenging as businesses are required to adapt on shorter timeframes; human populations change and migrate at relatively slow rates. - Local monopsony for labor sets an economically optimal clearing price for the buyer. This creates a synthetic "labor shortage" of sorts in company towns and similar; market clearing, but in a skewed market. This is not the situation for the vast majority of Americans. Most labor markets are some combination of all these, and the first four reasons are common in most American labor markets. None of those real labor shortages can be reasonably addressed simply by "paying more". That isn't how markets work.
- maxxxxx 8y agoFunny that the manager's pay is the only one that's not listed. It seems to me that truck driving is at the same boring, unhealthy and dangerous. I can't imagine not making serious mistakes if I had to drive on a freeway for 8 hours a day or more.
- rgbrenner 8y agoIf 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 are irrelevant.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoThe opinions of people about the worth of a job are irrelevant On the other hand, the reputation of an employer or of an industry plays into the market price. You'd think that post-2015 most life scientists would not have worked for Theranos for any salary at all, and if truckers tell you that bonuses are worthless, that means you have to raise the base salary to find any takers.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoThis is definitely a major problem in large corporations with HR rules baked into the fabric of the thing over decades. Many positions get assigned a grade based upon the nature of the work. A series of qualifiers fix that kind of position to a grade. You can earn anything inside of that grade, but not distinctly above it. Considering yearly cost of living increases are usually fixed at about 2%, it can take one some many years before they even approach the cap. And then there is the yearly culling of the herd with no standard qualifier. Somebody wants more money? You find a better job. One of my favourite [read that with sarcasm] lines I'd heard in a yearly review was, "your salary here is like running a marathon..."
- HarryHirsch 8y agoFrom 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.
- StudentStuff 8y agoThis 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.
- awat 8y agoAgreed, my hope is that it isn't a foreshadow for other industries. Once breaking regs and cheating (whatever that looks like for a given industry) become part of the revenue forecast. It’s pretty hard for market participants to compete without doing those things.
- dorchadas 8y agoThen we should just completely remove regs, obviously /s
- djajshgsjja 8y agoJust curious, how does cheating the books work for a driver?
- devonkim 8y agoThe 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.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoHeadline: "Here’s why few want an $80,000 job." Paragraph 5: "government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000." Well. There's your problem.
- opencl 8y agoShort haul trucking has miserable pay and long haul trucking is a miserable job. It's also not clear if the $80k jobs referred to here are employee or owner-operator jobs. If they're employee it's a massive outlier and if they're owner-operator the expenses are high and $80k results in rather pathetic take home pay.
- adrianN 8y agoBecoming a truck driver currently doesn't seem a wise choice when self-driving trucks are on the horizon.
- inglor 8y agoThis, not a single word about automation and self-driving trucks in the article but every person I talked to that considered this career path* has mentioned automation as a reason staying out of a field. A lot of people value job security really high. I agree with the comments saying that if the pay was higher then there wouldn't be such a shortage and the fact that is generally true. That doesn't mean the market always adapts fast enough and balances itself though. * only 3 people, so purely anecdotal.
- Apocryphon 8y agoOn the bright side, I guess self-deselection will reduce the amount of job displacement caused by automation if people preemptively choose to not be truck drivers or to leave the field.
- ams6110 8y agoTFA did touch on this, the comment was that self-driving trucks are a long way off. And I happen to agree that they are a lot farther off than people think. That last 10% of functionality needed to be safe on the road in non-normal situations such as construction zones, traffic accidents, ice, heavy rain or wind, is going to take a long time to achieve
- adrianN 8y agoIf a lot of people think that they're not so far off that's a lot of people who'd rather not become a truck driver only to be displaced by a robot in ten years.
- dragontamer 8y agoFirst, I disagree with that opinion politically. But that's not the main issue I have with the mindset. There are a HUGE number of business opportunities in the "short-term" 5 to 10 year market. About 15 years ago, when 3d-printing was "about to take off", I know of some entrepreneurs who started a 3d-printer / 3d-CNC Mill sharing service. It was an old-school service. Telephone based, door-to-door, handshakes kinda deal. They knew it was a temporary job. This was a door-to-door business in the age of the internet. Furthermore, 3d printers were about to become mainstream and in everybody's houses. Well, it looks like they were wrong. And their business model matured for the last 15 years and grew instead. Turns out that the 3d printers at Universities and bigger labratories sit idle most of the time... and even today, there's no consumer-grade 3d printer you can buy that gives you the quality or speed of the ones at public universities. Indeed, there are probably more business models out there that are based on "temporary" work than are based on forward-looking models. If there's a need today, that need will likely remain for decades to come, even as technology improves.
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- joering2 8y agoWhy we haven't gotten a feasible working heavy weight capatul that would slingshot heavy cargo from spot to spot across states like jumping frog, I don't get where the problem is. I'm not saying catapult eggs, but majority of goods could withstand 1000Gs. We need Trevor Milton to stop working on electric truck and get into electric catapults.
- always_good 8y agoI'm sure a bunch of children also wonder the same thing. The same way they wonder why we can't just cool off Texas with a big fan when it becomes too hot. After all, look how easy it was to come up with the idea (the hard part). By the way, the reason is because you'd use a trebuchet, not the inferior catapult.
- joering2 8y agoTrebuchet is a type of a catapult, smartass.
- gaius 8y agoIt’s thinking like that that got ski jumps put on aircraft carriers
- paulie_a 8y agoTruck driver's are basically consultants. They generally have to cover the costs. So 100k has a lot of expenses attached to it. Plus long hours and time away from friends and family. And long boring drives in the middle of Nebraska. I don't think I would want to do that for 45-65k take home pay.
- PedroBatista 8y agoOnly if you're a owner-operator. If you're a company driver you'll only pay for living expenses. Either way, most are paid by the ( loaded ) mile which makes them some weird bizarro version of Uber drivers.
- badrabbit 8y agoThey track your every move with a gps and you never have time to take it easy between runs. Traveling,the one upside to the job aside from money is ruined by their control-freak managent. You want people to be truck drivers? Get the trucks good internet access,provide laptops and tablets where possible and give the drivers time to take it easy between and during runs. Internet access wherever you are means you can maintain some social life and video call with the family. On the flip side,trucking isn't just a job,it's a lifestyle. You never leave work since your truck with the hidden Mics and location tracking is also your home. The compensation just isn't worth the job for most people. Better pay helps but so does hiring convicts and relaxing the driving history restrictions (like running a stop sign 4 years ago shouldn't make you unhirable)
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- 5DFractalTetris 8y agoI think I would enjoy trucking, but as a person born in the 1990s, I grew up in an area supplied entirely by trucks with no substantial agricultural land. One of the retail airstrips with the movie theater and a mall and a supermarket. Our community was connected by automobile transit, internet, and telephone. I wouldn't want anyone still living like this to go hungry--we don't make the choice to enter the world we find ourselves in, as far as I know--but I can't stomach that lifestyle for myself or my children, or the kin of anyone I've known or met. When I was young it was thrilling, with engines and freeways and drive-thrus. My friends bought cheap sports cars and motorbikes, and there was 100 years of movies to watch. Now I am older, and I find it inhumane.
- skookumchuck 8y agoMore intercity traffic should be shipped by rail anyway. Heavy trucks cause enormous damage to the freeways, far exceeding the weight taxes charged.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoSource? Each 18 wheeler on the road pays at least $25k/year in road taxes.
- candiodari 8y agoBut ... that would require the freight customers to actually have something resembling decent logistics planning ... And these people clearly are idiots.
- jacobkg 8y agoI hired the same company to move my car across the country then back four years apart. The same man drove the truck. He told me he expects the company will shut down in another decade or two as it’s too hard to find good reliable drivers who want a long term trucking job. It’s a family run company with a stellar reputation and they aren’t interested in short timers
- Implicated 8y agoI'll be shipping a car soon - have any contact details you can pass along?
- amorphid 8y agoWhat's your starting point? Maybe I could drive it for you!
- rootsudo 8y agoBe careful, this is the worst of all shipping. The car is never shipped until it's fully loaded. Make sure to pay extra for a top slot, and go on youtube. Everyone who owns a luxury car despises car shipping companies. uShip used to have a decent program where people will do it for about $400-700 with no wheels touching the ground. You need proper registration and title work though.
- debacle 8y agoTalk to used car lots near your destination and find out who they use.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoSeems like the solution is to charge a bit more, pay a bit more, and give long term employees equity in the business.
- cm2012 8y agoMedian truck driving wage is $42,000 according to the article, so...
- e40 8y agoMy step sister's husband drives a truck. It pays well, but it's a terrible job. They have two kids, and he is gone a lot. It's a hard life, that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
- socratewasright 8y agoThe shortage, if there is one, won't last long once the autopilot-enabled truck convoys get going.
- peatmoss 8y agoSomeone in the industry suggested to me that the number of long-haul truckers needed is relatively small. And that’s where autonomous trucks are going to be viable for quite a while. It’s one thing to autopilot a truck down a long straight freeway. It’s another to pilot a truck through city streets.
- arkh 8y agoI'm sure you could almost double the number of drivers by getting some "girls can drive big trucks too" program.
- Someone1234 8y agoSo the headline ("$80K job") and actual content of the article are at complete odds. All of the people they interviewed were making $45K-50K ish, with this one company offering $80K and claiming there is a "shortage." If there is a real shortage why do truckers get paid less than some fast food employees? The article seems to answer its own question: Very low pay, very high hours, and little time spent at home/with family.
- alistproducer2 8y agoThey 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 those kind of jobs is, for men at least, they are very hard on your prostate. Sitting for such long periods can cause it to swell leading to prosatitus along with a whole host of other bad health effects. All that being said, our jobs were cake compared to long haulers. You would need to pay people $120-150k before you could get a consistent hiring pool.
- samsonradu 8y agoAt least you had passengers, truck drivers spend a ton of time alone which is quite terrible from a psychological point of view.
- acou_nPlusOne_t 8y agoSolitary Confinment, here i go, turn the cage.
- tim333 8y agoI guess maybe self driving trucks won't be a bad thing then.
- stephengillie 8y agoThe issue of self-driving trucks taking the jobs of truckers seems to be a unique occurrence where 2 problems solve each other.
- valarauca1 8y agoTrucking pays great on paper when you are an owner-operator. This means you own (and insure) the truck, pay for gas, and insure the load. You cover maintaince, and you cover finding yourself new loads to haul. You personally carry the fiscal risk. Your take home pay is AMAZING, but it doesn’t factor in your expenses. Most truckers work as members of a fleet. Where a larger company handles the contracting, insurance, fuel, and maintenance while the drivers are paid to drive. This job can pay ~40-60k/yr. This article tries to paint a world where truckers are fabulously paid. Why would nobody want to work this job? But in reality it’s a very stressful job underpaid job. And a small subset of truckers manage to become well paid contractors but the VAST MAJORITY aren’t. This swings the average/high end pay into idiotic territory.
- corodra 8y agoAt a rough point in my life, I was a truck driver for CR England and Knight Transportation for a few days short of 7 months. You don’t start at 80,000 a year. That’s such a lie. You make about 600 a week to start, roughly, depending if you get enough miles. You don’t get the good routes, staying in well populated areas like the i5 corridor, at first. You stay in the middle of no where Arizona, North Dakota, etc. You spend a lot on food because you can’t buy bulk that easily like you would for an apartment. Want a hot meal? You have to eat at fast food restaurants or truck stops. How’s your back? 7 months I went from never understanding back pain to 6 years later I still suffer from the back pain. Family life? HA! How does that work when you VISIT home for 3 days out of a month and you get calls CONSTANTLY that you have to get back to the truck. It’s not likely the military where you are doing something decently important. You are wasting your life to ship clothes for the Gap or frozen pizzas. You are constantly sleep deprived. Constantly sitting. The companies hound you constantly about speeding up and trying to break the law to get loads faster to their destination because they screwed up the logistics and didn’t do some simple math. Yes, they publicly say they don’t tell drivers to break the law. Bullshit. CR England is the worst about this. Knight wasn’t so bad. Fuck driving jersey in a truck. The industry needs MASSIVE reformation. Then, some of the arguements here by folks who never did it can be remotely valid. You ruin your personal life and your body for realistic 300 a week after you figure all the costs for not ever being home.
- fred_is_fred 8y agoInteresting what you said about I-5 vs middle of nowhere. As someone who has to drive from Denver to south east Texas a few times per year for family stuff, I'd almost always rather deal with an empty great plains highway than traffic on I-5. There are downsides, mainly food and hotel choices of course.
- corodra 8y agoI got 2 weeks on i5 and liked it over my desert routes. Matter of relative terminology. I also like trees. I hate the desert... so much. East coast would have been nicer if I wasn’t so constantly freaked out for low overpasses. I5, for me, is the ideal route if I had to do it again.
- zxcvvcxz 8y agoA lot of people are putting forth this notion that the market just isn't offering enough compensation for the jobs, and that's why they're not being filled. That may be true. It probably is true. But here's something else to consider: the alternative of not working, especially for people who may do these particular jobs, is fairly competitive. With enough welfare, government assistance, and cheap easy-to-access entertainment, getting a job looks worse and worse (less necessary), so would-be employees won't bother as much at current market rates. Companies will therefore need to offer higher and higher wages for these jobs to fill them. The same story has been unfolding in China with regards to manufacturing: these "$2/hour" jobs which seem terrible were actually amazing prospects for a half billion rural inhabitants, who were able to move to the city, work and save up money, and provide more for their families than they ever could. But once those families have higher standards of living, the next generation (their kids) don't need to take these jobs. They could, and they would still make some money, but they don't need to, so they'd rather go to school for the hopes of something better (an office job with AC), or just not work, because saving up marginally more money when you already have most of your needs met on your smartphone and through your parents just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This is the psychology: my family has some stability, I don't need to work like they did. I can aim for something better. This is not a moral judgement - sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. On the whole it's a good thing. So what's going to happen in either case is automation through technological progress. These jobs will disappear as companies invest in their destruction. Why not try out this startup's experimental self-driving truck, rather than raise my total truck driver comp. package to $90K? Obviously a ton of reasons for most companies. But the economic pros/cons will shift towards the technology faster and faster. And then what for the people who need these kind of jobs, what happens when they disappear? In the West, it seems as if we're moving to some kind of income redistribution scheme, based on taxing the owners and producers of the technology. So essentially: increase the welfare. This seems like a relatively stable short-term solution. But what happens when you're left with a large underclass of unemployed people, and a small upper-class of producers? It's not good, and not long-term stable. Look up the Gini Coefficient, one of the most fundamental social science discoveries, and see for yourself: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality-murder-homicide-rates https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequ... All the taxing and redistribution in the world isn't going to help this. We're a global economy now, so unless you trap the rich in one area, they're going to move eventually. In summary - I see big problems ahead the next few decades relating to these issues, and I don't see a good long-term solution just yet.
- mistrial9 8y agoomg this is a massive con job - there are lines of trucks with non-english speaking drivers, waiting for twenty or thirty hours without accomodations, every week at the second busiest port in the western United States, right now. A glance shows signs for "contractors" and abundant evidence of labor abuse left and right. Who is being fooled by this story ?
- perl4ever 8y agoApart from not having a CDL at this time, there is a simple reason why no amount of money is going to make me get a truck driving job. Driving jobs I see advertised require an accident free record, and I had a fender bender a couple years ago (even though it was the other driver at fault). I have no tickets, suspensions, or anything else, but the accident automatically disqualifies you.
- personlurking 8y agoAs in totally accident-free? The accidents I was involved in in my late teens/early 20s made me a way better driver.
- perl4ever 8y agoWithin a certain number of years, i.e. anything currently showing on your driving record. But the point is, they don't care if you were at fault, just that there was a police report.
- PedroBatista 8y agoThat's all talk, most companies will let it slide as long as it isn't something big.
- UncleEntity 8y agoI'm pretty sure by "accident free" they mean "at fault" since you can't be expected to be held responsible for the actions of others. My last job I had something like 8 not at fault accidents and could go get a job driving a truck tomorrow if I really wanted to (well, aside from the fact I let my CDL expire but that could be fixed). I rear-ended a U-Haul with my company big rig (totally my fault) and they didn't care enough to fire me, just deducted some random amount from my pay and didn't actually fix the bumper on my truck. The U-Haul was fine, those truck are seriously solid it turns out. I would go back to driving trucks but it's kind of a rough life...
- personlurking 8y agoBrazil's current trucker strike brought to light how things could go if there were a similar strike in the States. The BBC article below doesn't say much about the lack of products available for the average person living in a major city, but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life have been large. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44275782 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44275782
- cesarb 8y ago> but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life have been large. Yes, they have. First, the fuel situation: trucks carrying fuel to gas stations were blocked by strikers, so they quickly ran out of fuel. Buses need diesel fuel to run, so people can't get to work. Cars also need fuel (gasoline or ethanol) to run, so even people who have cars can't get to work. Those with gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to the gas station through pipes), but even these need a small amount of gasoline to start the motor. Then, the food situation: almost all the fresh food is gone from the markets, and what little there is got really expensive (like 4 or 5 times more expensive). Longer-lived but basic food (like rice and beans) flew from the shelves, since people still have memories from the hyperinflation days last century. Huge amounts of food had to be thrown away in the farms. Hospitals had to cancel all non-emergency surgery, since stocks are running really low. Industries have stopped, since they can't get their inputs or don't have space to store their outputs. There was a risk of water rationing in some places, since stocks of water treatment chemicals ran low. We're lucky that our country's power supply is mostly hydro, and most of the thermal generators either get their fuel through pipes, or had enough fuel stored locally. Only a few distant cities (probably without interconnection to the national system) lost power. Things are getting better. Many of the blockades have now been cleared, and fuel trucks escorted by the police or the army are getting fuel to essential services and to the gas stations. Hopefully trucks will soon be able to get food from the farms to the markets.
- jacquesm 8y ago> Those with gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to the gas station through pipes That's interesting. So the gas stations have compressors?
- booleandilemma 8y agoI’d imagine that a part of it is that being a truck driver is not a sexy job. It’s hard enough trying to find a girlfriend when you’re in IT, the stigma with being a truck driver is probably on a whole other level. Remove the stigma, make it “cool”, and they’ll see more people applying.
- yason 8y agoIs it the trucking companies or the customers that bound the pay? What does it cost to move a container a distance of five days? What would be the annual billable revenue if you decided to buy a truck and start hauling cargo around yourself, cutting the middlemen? There are people who do this. Obviously your income is limited by regulations regarding how long you can drive and how long you must rest in between. These physically clamp the amount of time you can do billable work (unless you're driving with a partner and take turns). I would guess some hundreds of thousands of gross revenue per truck annually, EBITDA is probably a lot less. Would be interesting to know what the books might look like.
- ebbv 8y agoSerious conflict of interest with this story given that the Post is owned by Bezos and Amazon is highly reliant on the trucking industry and trying to grow their own logistics.
- tlb 8y agoWhen you're planning to replace a profession with technology, it's a winning strategy to start spreading long-term career doom over the profession a few years ahead of when you're ready to launch, so that there'll be a labor shortage and higher wages when you're ready to enter the market. (Not dealing with ethics here, just strategy for winning.) We've had a few years now of news stories about how truck drivers will all be replaced with self-driving. I'd wondered about whether that was good strategy on the part of companies working on self-driving, because it might cause truck drivers to organize and lobby for regulation to keep it out. But it seems to be working for them.
- jessriedel 8y agoOr the people making predictions are basically right, and young people are rationally not opting as frequently to join the profession?
- Nasrudith 8y agoYeah that has already been a problem with petroleum engineers. Even if they don't have any ethical objection to working in it the writing is on the wall that it may not be a 40+ year career. The same with COBOL. Although the old software is zombie-ing along there isn't much new being written.
- markvdb 8y agoHave a look at the trucking jobs in the European Union. Loads of truck drivers from low wage EU member states. Some working for under 500€ a month, or 6000€ a year. A friend from the Baltics is teaching new drivers... from the Phillipines, because the local ones are getting "expensive". To speak of a race to the bottom...
- mlinksva 8y agoMake them pay their weight, demand will go down http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-have-18-wheels/ http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-have-1...
- teyc 8y agoThere's an Indian start up addressing some of the issues with long haul driving by turning them into short haul ones. This way people work closer to home. I thought that was innovative.
- MisterTea 8y agoDo you have a name or link? For some reason I can see this company operating like an uber with tractors waiting at way points to swap trailers. Problem is the swaps will be conducted at the drivers discretion which opens the flood gates to all sorts of abusive shenanigans and race to the bottom economics. I can picture all the complaints of drivers meeting in private parking lots causing damage and trespass. Or meeting in residential neighborhoods off highways causing all sorts of noise and possible damage. Excessive idling causing noise and air pollution, drivers taking up parking or partly blocking roads while waiting for other truck which is trapped in two hours of back up. These are heavy vehicles that make a lot of noise and beat on the pavement. Best keep them rolling along the highways where they belong. That or keep the heavy duty noise to terminals located in industrial or commercial centers where people wont be bothered by the racket.
- gitgacutils 8y agoI guess that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is America has a truck driver wage/compensation shortage. I'm sure if the companies increased wages that shortage would magically disappear.
- Bromskloss 8y agoWhat does "shortage" really mean? Isn't it just a matter of price?
- twothamendment 8y agoNot 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?
- Bromskloss 8y agoIf that's the case, it must be a very temporary problem.
- CapacitorSet 8y agoI hope that the "shortage" of drivers will lead companies to prefer shipping by rail, which is much less polluting, easier on the workers, and more efficient.
- MisterTea 8y agoI miss the days when the train delivered things to my door step.
- ocschwar 8y agoThe last time someone used an 18 wheeler to make a long haul delivery to my door step was 18 years ago. It's been small utility trucks ever since, driven on short hauls, by people who might well live walking distance to my house. A train would never deliver to my house, but to this day there are still unused train slips leading to factories around my urban area, and in Europe there are plenty of shopping malls that have a train slip as well as a truck loading bay.
- burger_moon 8y agoLTL trucking is how just about everything you buy in a store is delivered, and it you ever buy anything online that is large or heavy it is also shipped this way to your house. The UPS truck isn't delivering pallets of bananas to the grocery store.
- ocschwar 8y agoNope. 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)
- MisterTea 8y agoHow 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.
- mud_dauber 8y agoLow wages, terrible working conditions, drivers as commodities: autonomous long-haul trucking looks like a no-brainer. I had two uncles who retired from a F500 train company (many years ago). It sounds like this industry is going to end up with one person riding in the equivalent of a caboose to handle the unexpected stuff, or to oversee intermodal activities.
- RickJWagner 8y agoAs a 28 year coding veteran, I sometimes dream about the life of a truck driver. Hours on the road, seeing the country go by, seems like a nice change. But an article like this one brings me back to reality. I guess I'll stick to coding for a while longer.
- test6554 8y agoThis is heartening as automation is sure to ravage the trucking labor market.
- ehnto 8y agoIndustry races itself to the bottom with cheap labour and terrible conditions, surprises itself that no one is interested anymore. Unfortunately it's the good companies and drivers that find out their industry was swiped from underneath them first. It happens in farm labour markets too. Bigger companies start undercutting with cheaper labour and worse conditions, the smart people leave the industry all together because the writing is on the wall, and those companies willing to pay for good people with reasonable work conditions have no one to hire anymore.
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- UglyYou 8y agoSome states do not let Deafies want to be driver. Hearing people(not deaf people) who barrier them. that is the problem.
- somberi 8y agoA related read (1): Things I found interesting from the article: a. Approximately 150,000 Sikhs (my edit: Sikhs are a subset of Indians and to a smaller extent Pakistanis) in trucking, 90% of whom are drivers. b. Those numbers are growing rapidly, with 18,000 Sikhs entering the industry in 2017 alone. c. Sikhs control about 40% of trucking in California. d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading along the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh highway food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this transported to the Rockies) e. Earnings of $42,000, or about $20 an hour, a sum that may dwindle after expenses. Annual turnover rates within firms hover around 90%. f. The American Trucking Associations warned of a shortage of 50,000 drivers by the end of 2017, rising to 174,000 by 2026. d. The median age of the private-fleet driver is 52; (1) - https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all-american-industry-changes-the-all-american-way https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all-am...
- ocschwar 8y ago> d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading along the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh highway food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this transported to the Rockies) Now THAT would get me to conisder trucking for a living. Indians know how to do truck stops right.
- selimthegrim 8y agoDo you get to sit outside on the charpoys too at the truck stop? I'd roadtrip there just for that.
- camdenreslink 8y agoHow do you even stay in business w/ 90% turnover rate. That's insane!
- a3n 8y agoI couldn't read the article. I read most of the comments. I'm a new truck driver, since March 1st of this year. I drive for one of the biggest trucking companies in the country. When weather is bad, they call or message us to shut down. I've never felt any pressure 2 exceed the legally allowed number of driving hours. If you're going to be late for some legitimate reason, you let the company know, and you're then not considered late. They reschedule the appointment. It's definitely a lifestyle that a lot of people would not want to do. I am unusual in that I enjoy my alone time. Yeah this is Extreme alone time, but I like it. There probably are not a lot of people like me, but probably more than you would think. Edit: I've lost 20 pounds since I started driving. Driving doesn't cause you to lose weight, but I knew weight gain is a problem, so I really focus on eating carefully. My truck has a refrigerator. I think it used to have a microwave, but I think the former driver gave it to himself as a going-away present. Most problems are solvable. I plan on very slowly incorporating a few solutions to a few problems. My truck has a good inverter, so I have a coffee pot and I make my own coffee in the morning, it's cheaper than truck stop coffee and I like it better. I'll get a small microwave eventually, and possibly bring a Crock-Pot or similar. I shop when I'm home, but that's usually not enough for the two or three weeks that I will be out. So when it's convenient to me I will drive to a Walmart, where they are Truck friendly, and stock up. Truckers also will sometimes Park overnight at Walmart, but not all of them allow it. Pay to start is low, but larger companies recently, including mine, have begun to increase starting pay, and incorporate bonuses for existing. Pay increases regularly over quarters, but it will be a few years before you're making what you might call good money. Right now I'm shut down for the night at a truck stop about a half hour north of Las Vegas on I-15, that Corridor that someone here said nee guys never get. This is not my first time on this route. This is my second Thousand Mile trip this week. My only serious complaint is parking. I'm parked on the street across from the truck stop, because I got a late start and finished late. If the country hired any significant fraction of the trucker shortage, there would be no where to park. Drive down a major Interstate some night at 10 or 3 in the morning, and really look and see how many trucks are wedged into non parking spaces. We have to do it, because of hours of service regulations. Everyone has anecdotes, pro and con, including me. Don't think that the article, or the comments here, give you good and accurate coverage of the subject. Everything everyone says here is probably true, for that person's experience. But like in any area, your mileage may vary. [Apologies for Trump style random capitalization, my phone does that to me when I speech to text.]
- kmonsen 8y agoEveryone of the x has at shortage articles are silly. We live in a capitalist society so pay more. Truck drivers or software engineers it applies risky. Or teachers and nurses. If you pay enough (and maybe have decent benefits) you will get qualified people. That's not part of the business model? Please go to a socialist country.
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- chiefalchemist 8y ago> "The ATA predicts that it's likely to get worse in the coming years" Not really. These vehicles are at the top of the list to go autonomous sooner rather than later. In fact, aren't they being tested in Europe? Germany? Editorial (and slighly off topic): Perhaps it's time for the USA to revisit its consumption based economy? Less good consumed means less goods to ship. Perhaps the driver supply is fine. It's the excessive demand that's gone mad.
- lerie82 8y agoAmerica does not have a truck driver shortage.
- major505 8y agoSo do Brazil.... at least today. Anyway, I don't think is a wise move t o invest in truck drive carrer, when we are so close of autonomous trucks.
- test6554 8y agoI think this is a big factor as well.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoUltimately we will get self driving trucks and that will solve the problem. The question is not if but when. Waymo has cars driving around Arizona as I type this without safety drivers so maybe not too far off.
- TheForumTroll 8y agoPut ads in magazines targeting serial killers. They like driving trucks in the US i hear.
- dang 8y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ocschwar 8y agoNot finding enough applicants for your shit job. Do you... a. Raise pay? b. Improve benefits? c. Improve working conditions? or d. Bitch and moan to the press?
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