4 ms·

> Besides, there aren't enough heavy vehicle drivers to meet construction industry demand at the moment, asserts Teleo co-founder and chief executive Vinay Shet

> Besides, there aren't enough heavy vehicle drivers to meet construction industry demand at the moment, asserts Teleo co-founder and chief executive Vinay Shet. Horseshit. Carpenter here. I've been trying to get my fork certification since January. I've had 8 classes in a row cancelled. They're not expensive or time-consuming. We simply can't get training because there's none being offered. The unemployment rate in the USA is dropping but still around 8%, the highest it's been since 2012. Many hundreds of my colleagues are out of work right now. You don't need technology to solve this problem. Hire people, and train them. If only 1/2 of 1% of the unemployed people in America are capable and willing to drive a fork, that's still 60,000 more potential drivers. As a former software techie myself, I think this company looks suspiciously like the classic 'startup' which is trying to insert their technology into a situation, rather than trying to meet a market need. When a company says they can't find workers, I don't believe them, and I especially don't believe them in 2020 for jobs that take literally 1 day of training. Nobody can be that incompetent at hiring. Post "free forklift training + a job" on your personal FB page and you'll have 5 people show up this afternoon. Which they absolutely should be doing, of course. If Teleo succeeds, they're going to need a lot of skilled drivers. This is classic "commoditize your complement". Teleo is YC-backed, and Phantom's founder was previously in YC with a different company. Cute submarine. They're not really lamenting the lack of workers. This is pure marketing.

tshaddox 6y ago
Do you have insight into why training is hard to come by? Is it a recent issue due to the pandemic? If lack of training providers is causing a worker shortage, isn't it true what that person is saying?
- analog31 6y ago
  When I got my certification many years ago, the training course was given on our site by the truck driver from the rental company, who brought us two trucks for a couple weeks of use. He unloaded them from his trailer, then came in and gave us the training course in a few hours. So it could just be a weird effect of all jobs and businesses being affected in some way, because that company didn't seem to have a separate job for trainer.
  - wannadriveafork 6y ago
    There have been some major and very public industrial safety incidents in the past decade. Everyone has gotten much more strict about safety protocols, especially in the last 2-3 years. There was a time, I'm told, when it was "Whoever knows what the levers do, you're on forklift today". Then it was "You need to have taken a class at some point". Today, reputable companies will check the expiration date on your certification card when you show up for work. Nobody wants to risk a pile of OSHA violations if something goes wrong.
    - analog31 6y ago
      Aha, that's after my time. I did it 20+ years ago.
- wannadriveafork 6y ago
  A big piece is certainly COVID-19. Training centers are mostly shut down for public safety. I don't think that's the whole reason, though. Were companies truly that desperate, they'd find a way. Many training classes this year have moved to part-online, part-in-person, for example, which helps with COVID safety, convenience, and cost. But demand is way down. Ultimately, I think it simply boils down to money. We've gone through the better part of a year where most big projects were shut down, and if they were lucky, restarted months later, slowly, with restrictions. When you put a damper on every part of the economy (except Netflix and Purell), everything suffers. As a wealthy friend of mine once said: it's all about cash flow. Reduced demand, few open training centers, DOH class size limits, limited spare cash from unemployed workers for class/book/cert fees, trainers who live elsewhere and might not want to get on a plane, etc. It's like hitting the breaker in Jurassic Park. You don't just flip it back on and get all the lights at once. (I'm not saying we shouldn't have hit the pause button. Public health is critically important. I'm just saying it should be no surprise that labor and training got hit badly by it.) It's hard to imagine a situation where it would not be worthwhile to have a trainer spend 8 hours teaching and certifying one new driver, if any real demand existed. Guess how much a good trainer costs for a day -- a single pallet often holds material with greater dollar value than that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
csomar 6y ago
I don't know a lot about fork-lifting but maybe hiring is difficult across all domains. If you hire 5 people, and 4 of them turn out to be not good enough, you just wasted time and money. So if you need 5, you'll need to post for 25 persons. To train them you'll need multiple people and even more money...
- tapland 6y ago
  A basic fork cert is like 2 days. It’s so cheap a lot of companies require you attend training they pay for and don’t go by old certs at all.
- wannadriveafork 6y ago
  Hiring labor isn't like hiring a CEO or a doctor or an architect. Not this kind of labor, anyway. We're talking about a one-day safety class, with no prerequisites, as mandated by the government. Imagine you were hiring for a job where one of the qualifications was "holds a valid driver's license". You wouldn't bring in 5x as many candidates as open positions because you assumed that most would have failed at that.
novok 6y ago
why dont you go back into software?
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  Not the person you asked, but although I'm in the tech field now, I worked as a shipyard welder for a couple of years after the first .com crash. It was, by far, the most meritocratic, friendly and diverse workplace environment I've worked in, compared to my computer-related jobs. Payed well, too. If it wasn't for the (literal) toxic environment that is unavoidable in ship-welding, I'd likely have stayed longer.
- wannadriveafork 6y ago
  "No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That's what our earliest ancestors did."
mr_toad 6y ago
> Hire people, and train them. Training seems to be a dirty word in companies these days.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  It's a cost all companies want someone else to pick up, either the employee themselves or a previous employeer. There are still some companies out there that will do it though, eg Fidelity's Leap program [0] where they'll hire you, train you for 3 months give you 3 months as a team project then place you in the company. I went through it straight out of college and I'm still with the company today. It's been around for 10+ years now too so it's not just a fleeting initiative which is pretty neat. [0] https://jobs.fidelity.com/page/show/leap https://jobs.fidelity.com/page/show/leap
syshum 6y ago
When ever you see a company claim "There are not enough workers" what they really mean "There is not enough workers willing to work for the substandard pay we are offering"

tshaddox 6y ago

Do you have insight into why training is hard to come by? Is it a recent issue due to the pandemic? If lack of training providers is causing a worker shortage, isn't it true what that person is saying?

analog31 6y ago
When I got my certification many years ago, the training course was given on our site by the truck driver from the rental company, who brought us two trucks for a couple weeks of use. He unloaded them from his trailer, then came in and gave us the training course in a few hours. So it could just be a weird effect of all jobs and businesses being affected in some way, because that company didn't seem to have a separate job for trainer.
- wannadriveafork 6y ago
  There have been some major and very public industrial safety incidents in the past decade. Everyone has gotten much more strict about safety protocols, especially in the last 2-3 years. There was a time, I'm told, when it was "Whoever knows what the levers do, you're on forklift today". Then it was "You need to have taken a class at some point". Today, reputable companies will check the expiration date on your certification card when you show up for work. Nobody wants to risk a pile of OSHA violations if something goes wrong.
  - analog31 6y ago
    Aha, that's after my time. I did it 20+ years ago.
wannadriveafork 6y ago
A big piece is certainly COVID-19. Training centers are mostly shut down for public safety. I don't think that's the whole reason, though. Were companies truly that desperate, they'd find a way. Many training classes this year have moved to part-online, part-in-person, for example, which helps with COVID safety, convenience, and cost. But demand is way down. Ultimately, I think it simply boils down to money. We've gone through the better part of a year where most big projects were shut down, and if they were lucky, restarted months later, slowly, with restrictions. When you put a damper on every part of the economy (except Netflix and Purell), everything suffers. As a wealthy friend of mine once said: it's all about cash flow. Reduced demand, few open training centers, DOH class size limits, limited spare cash from unemployed workers for class/book/cert fees, trainers who live elsewhere and might not want to get on a plane, etc. It's like hitting the breaker in Jurassic Park. You don't just flip it back on and get all the lights at once. (I'm not saying we shouldn't have hit the pause button. Public health is critically important. I'm just saying it should be no surprise that labor and training got hit badly by it.) It's hard to imagine a situation where it would not be worthwhile to have a trainer spend 8 hours teaching and certifying one new driver, if any real demand existed. Guess how much a good trainer costs for a day -- a single pallet often holds material with greater dollar value than that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

csomar 6y ago

I don't know a lot about fork-lifting but maybe hiring is difficult across all domains. If you hire 5 people, and 4 of them turn out to be not good enough, you just wasted time and money. So if you need 5, you'll need to post for 25 persons. To train them you'll need multiple people and even more money...

tapland 6y ago
A basic fork cert is like 2 days. It’s so cheap a lot of companies require you attend training they pay for and don’t go by old certs at all.
wannadriveafork 6y ago
Hiring labor isn't like hiring a CEO or a doctor or an architect. Not this kind of labor, anyway. We're talking about a one-day safety class, with no prerequisites, as mandated by the government. Imagine you were hiring for a job where one of the qualifications was "holds a valid driver's license". You wouldn't bring in 5x as many candidates as open positions because you assumed that most would have failed at that.

novok 6y ago

why dont you go back into software?

Baeocystin 6y ago
Not the person you asked, but although I'm in the tech field now, I worked as a shipyard welder for a couple of years after the first .com crash. It was, by far, the most meritocratic, friendly and diverse workplace environment I've worked in, compared to my computer-related jobs. Payed well, too. If it wasn't for the (literal) toxic environment that is unavoidable in ship-welding, I'd likely have stayed longer.
wannadriveafork 6y ago
"No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That's what our earliest ancestors did."

mr_toad 6y ago

> Hire people, and train them. Training seems to be a dirty word in companies these days.

rtkwe 6y ago
It's a cost all companies want someone else to pick up, either the employee themselves or a previous employeer. There are still some companies out there that will do it though, eg Fidelity's Leap program [0] where they'll hire you, train you for 3 months give you 3 months as a team project then place you in the company. I went through it straight out of college and I'm still with the company today. It's been around for 10+ years now too so it's not just a fleeting initiative which is pretty neat. [0] https://jobs.fidelity.com/page/show/leap https://jobs.fidelity.com/page/show/leap

syshum 6y ago

When ever you see a company claim "There are not enough workers" what they really mean "There is not enough workers willing to work for the substandard pay we are offering"