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First, I think trucks are a super important chain in our economy. Second, after reading this why do this? The only reason businesses can get truckers is that th
by ransom1538 5y ago
First, I think trucks are a super important chain in our economy. Second, after reading this why do this? The only reason businesses can get truckers is that there are willing truckers to do it. Why not just quit? He clearly laid out that $25/hr is about the max you can get / $20 after costs is more realistic (pretax wtf?) - and there is no overtime. If I was in this situation, I would wake up, think of ways to not do this the entire day. I had shit jobs. The most important part of a shit job is know you are in a shit job - and to escape. At those rates I could just serve tables at AppleBees, crush $25/hr and get free food - also leave my car Turo'ed in the lot.
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago$20/hr is still more than many other jobs pay, especially those not requiring much education.
- alasdair_ 5y agoIt isn’t $20/hr. That’s just the claimed rate. The actual hourly rate is often well below federal minimum wage. The article goes into this in detail.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoBecause poverty and lack of economic options. There’s a reason trucking turned into a race to the bottom after the decline of unionization and deregulation of the industry.
- ransom1538 5y agoSure, but this isn't 1956. I could walk into an AppleBees TODAY and walk out with a job - easily crush $25 an hour -- and my car will be Turo'ed at work.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 5y agoApplebees and renting your car on Turo is the bar? Peak HN. Go talk to more people living paycheck to paycheck. The struggle is shared and legitimate.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ransom1538 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 5y agoI don’t know anyone living paycheck to paycheck but it appears you do. Care to share what they would say?
- ransom1538 5y ago
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI can share detailed portraits of the people I’ve spoken with, I will make time to put something together. In the interim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30820753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30820753 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/20/intergenerational-wealth-middle-class-spiral/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/20/intergenera... https://archive.ph/bNEAc https://archive.ph/bNEAc The above story is not an outlier.
- renewiltord 5y agoAppreciated. Which RSS feed / newsletter do I subscribe to to ensure that I get your story once it’s done. Also thanks for the link.
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago> my car will be Turo'ed at work. I'm curious - what does it mean to "Turo" a car? I'm assuming it means "parked in the parking lot" but I've never heard the expression before.
- FigureTheGreat 5y agoTuro is a service that lets you rent out your car when you aren't using it, so it could provide a 2ndary income stream while you are at work
- leetcrew 5y agoto be clear, it's kind of absurd to suggest that renting out the car you need to get home for the duration of your shift is a reasonable thing to do.
- ransom1538 5y agoCurios why? If someone wants it for an extra 3 days/nights, shoulder shrug take uber home = more money. Someone cancels, drive to work. Someone has it? Uber = more money. Someone cancels during work, drive home like normal. Not following why this is absurd. I think it would be absurd to just sit it in the lot for 10 hours (2 extra hours since I am sucking up those sweet tips) - or take buses home and have a 2 hour commute?
- amalcon 5y agoIt turns out that $20/hr is really good for blue collar work in most of the US. It beats e.g. serving at Applebee's (except the bartender) by probably about a factor of 2, especially if you're not young and charismatic. If you're in a big city, you might be able to demand a bit more than this. Most truck drivers aren't, and don't want to be.
- blamazon 5y agoTruckers largely give up their ability to be firmly located in any one place. If you're willing to do this it stands to reason you might be willing to move to a high growth area somewhere like Cincinnati where the cost of living is low and the floor wage for simple warehouse work is legitimately 25/hour. Businesses in Ohio are begging for workers.
- datavirtue 5y agoTurn around. No homes left.
- pmoriarty 5y ago"Businesses in Ohio are begging for workers." If the pay is so great and the cost of living so low, why aren't more people flocking to work there?
- chestnuttrees 5y agoPresumably the pay is great if you already live there, but not good enough to convince people to move there? Personally, it would take a 50%-100% raise before I would even consider consider uprooting my family and leaving my current city. But I’d switch jobs locally for half that.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blamazon 5y agoIt's a circle: 1. People flock there 2. Those people need services 3. More jobs needed to provide those services 4. Return to 1. Aside from this, Ohio is a convenient place for logistics and commerce owing to a centralized location in the US, strong infrastructure, and a business-friendly regulatory climate. Hence, warehouses and factories serving the rest of the US which means the economy isn't self-dependent and this raises the minimum wage floor for everyone. But, to answer your question directly, I imagine not everyone is eager to uproot their current lives and move to a suburb of an exurb of a suburb in Ohio.
- mynameishere 5y agoHe clearly laid out that $25/hr is about the max you can get He clearly laid out a lie. That's your answer. Go from driving box trucks to chemicals to driving your own rig and it can get to 200/year.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoGross or Net?
- karaterobot 5y agoI don't think he lied about anything, I think you just brought up some edge cases he didn't address. His argument holds true for the majority of drivers.
- silisili 5y agoNot discounting the author's experience, but it doesn't mirror my own. It's probably highly, highly dependent upon the company you work for. My father drove OTR for a certain brown courier service, and made about 150k a year. This was about 15 years ago. You did have to be gone for a whole week at a time, so certainly not easy or for everyone, but the pay was quite nice.
- selectodude 5y agoOTR pays way, way more. I'd be all over it in my younger days. Once you have a family, as you said, it can be a bit more difficult. To the author, if you're reading, OTR drivers are in very, very high demand. Get that bread.
- alasdair_ 5y ago> To the author, if you're reading, OTR drivers are in very, very high demand. Get that bread. The article talks about the authors experience with OTR and why it has a 90% attrition rate yearly compared to 12% for local. They already got that bread. The bread was moldy.
- massysett 5y agoUPS is union. Teamsters. The author is non-union.
- alasdair_ 5y ago> Second, after reading this why do this? The only reason businesses can get truckers is that there are willing truckers to do it. Why not just quit? Part of it is because a lot of truckers are owner-operators that have a lot of money in their trucks. They are effectively employees, not real contractors, and all the pricing power goes to the company that hires them but if they quit it means bankruptcy.
- Johnny555 5y agoAt those rates I could just serve tables at AppleBees I've worked in a restaurant and worked in construction, (didn't drive a truck, but I rode along with the truckers to haul equipment). If I had to choose between working at Applebees or driving a truck, I'd definitely pick the truck.
- altcognito 5y agoWhy? Trapped sitting in a truck, anxious about traffic? Restaurant work isn’t isn’t or fun, but at least you get to go home to your own bed.
- mjevans 5y agoThe 1-5% (I hope it's this low) of customers that are the only ones you can't forget because they make life hell.
- erdos4d 5y agoThis is literally why I quit teaching university and never went back to academia. Every class has one student who is a complete shit and 95% of your stress revolves around this one person. Work that doesn't require much human contact is so much better.
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- Johnny555 5y agoTraffic doesn't make me anxious, even when I'm driving a large vehicle, and not every truck driver is a long haul trucker.
- UncleEntity 5y agoTomorrow I have to sleep until noon, drive over to Yuma, AZ and take a nap while I get loaded, bomb into LA before the morning traffic starts up, drop the loaded trailer then go back to sleep until I get a reload probably at the same place I’m dropping the loaded trailer. Zero stress, zero hassle (well, I hope…) and I’ll get paid a ‘measly’ $200 to listen to the radio all night.
- shkkmo 5y agoI think it is a bit unfair to be blaming the issues on truckers for not quitting. Our other industries get legal protections that ensure fair wage practices, we should extend those protections to truck driver. We, as a nation, need these drivers. We have an obligation to extend them same wage protections we have. Even if some truck driver can and do make quite good money, that doesn't mean that the industry as a whole isn't rife with abusive labor practices.