5 ms·

Lost Highway: The trials of trucking school

33 points by samclemens 3y ago

Mashimo 3y ago
> Long-haulers, lauded as the backbone of our economy, live out of their trucks for weeks at a time, often working eighty-plus-hour weeks while earning little more than minimum wage. The economist Michael Belzer has equated commercial trucking to working in a “sweatshop on wheels.” The shortage is, in fact, a retention problem: annual turnover at large fleets in recent years has exceeded 90 percent. 90% turnover. That is insane.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  That insanely high figure is also why the predicted labor strike against automation of long haul trucking likely won't happen. Very few love the job and most who have experienced it quickly leave. It's one of those cases where not many will be put out of work should self driving ever come to be. Short haul on the other hand seems to be growing, pays better and probably is more difficult to automate.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Factory workers and coal miners in the 1800s probably didn't love their jobs, either. They still needed them, though, and thus... organized labor.
    - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
      If you have 90% turnover it means that people indeed don't need this particular job.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        They may need a trucking job, though. It depends quite a bit on where they turnover to. If they're largely jumping from trucking company to trucking company, a strike is still entirely feasible.
        pi-e-sigma 3y ago
        I would disagree with your reasoning. The high turnover and a short tenure means people are not very attached to the job but more importantly it also means the drivers in any given trucking company don't know each other very well and it would be quite difficult for them to organize for a common cause such as a strike. Way to easy for the trucking company to play the drivers against each other.
- dchuk 3y ago
  What’s actually insane: for many fleets, 90% turnover would be considered amazingly good. Some fleets suffer from 300%+ turnover!
- noshortage 3y ago
  these non-trucking magazines that constantly claim there is a driver shortage should explain the extreme excess in supply and shortage of demand. do we need these drivers rolling at below cost before we start claiming the shortage is over? the data we look at in the trucking industry isn't indicating a shortage, many of us in the industry are perplexed by the constant "driver shortage" claims but i think people might just be used to news that doesnt tell the truth
  - jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
    Claiming labor shortages in particular industries increases supply, which lowers wages.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It may be partially intentional, or at least advantageous to the companies. There's a common model where a company pays for the driving school and then the driver leases a truck from the company. The driver is technically an owner-operator, and has all the expenses and risks of that, but are contracted to the company to "pay off" the school fees and so are effectively an employee. If they quit the company gets the truck back and the driver has to repay the school fees. A very cheap & low risk way for the company to have drivers, if they can manage the turnover.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    This is the case, and the turnover usually involves the driver going to another company. Often those big "signup deals" you see for drivers are to pay off the previous company if necessary. Once a driver has some experience they will settle down in a company that doesn't turn over as much, or actually become a real owner-operator.
- toss1 3y ago
  >>90% turnover. That is insane. Yup It screams to me: Bad Management There are evidently companies that can retain workers There is obviously a lot more demand for trucks rolling on the road than supply
- gosub100 3y ago
  this might be how they want it though. The industry knows there is a steady stream of newly licensed, but completely inexperienced drivers. If some companies are willing to take the risk on them, but pay less, this could be a good introductory job for them. both parties know the employee will quit once he has enough hours to get hired by a better firm. the better firm has a different risk model, where they only hire drivers with X-month employment with no accidents. In return, they are willing to pay a premium.
blantonl 3y ago
I just recently went through the process at age 49 to get my pilot's license. Purely for fun, however the vast majority of the students that I trained with were just like many of the hopefuls in this article - pursuing a high paying career. I could write a book about flight school management dynamics. The personalities, the hopefuls, the dreamers, the wild power dynamics between a flight school and a student who desperately wants to get to the airlines (the promise land). The instructors, who all were just recently students now grinding out hours to qualify for an airline job. Safety. Studying and learning. Relationships. Accidents. The financial aspects are incredibly risky for many. The statistics: only 22% of students who begin training for the first step - a private pilot license - end up finishing. For those wanting to make a career or progress further, there's your instrument rating (to fly in bad weather), your commercial license (to fly for money), your flight instructor license (so you can teach - which essentially is your only path to gaining experience/hours without having to pay for it out of pocket), and then your Air Transport license, which ... airlines. That requires 1500 hours of experience. It truly was one of the more fascinating adventures I've done.
- hollerith 3y ago
  >teach - which essentially is your only path to gaining experience/hours without having to pay for it out of pocket Flying for a military organization is another path, is it not? Or do the airlines no longer want former military pilots? I know they used to hire a lot of them.
  - blantonl 3y ago
    Yes, this is an avenue into the career of being an airline pilot. However being a military pilot doesn't directly translate to being what is essentially a bus driver, and there is extensive retraining that has to occur. But yes, the airlines recruit and bring in a ton of military pilots.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      A few months ago a former Navy guy mentioned to me that you can tell if your pilot is Navy or Air Force by the landing. Air Force pilots will come in nice and smooth, but Navy pilots, having been trained to land on carriers, will hit hard. I don’t know if there is truth to that, but if so, I’ve definitely had more than a few Navy pilots.
dchuk 3y ago
I’ve worked in freight tech for almost a decade (as in, I specifically work on a bunch of different software for drivers to use amongst other things). Many of our customers are the biggest fleets in the world. Each has their own relationship to driver turn over. The ones who don’t struggle with turn over do 3 things: 1) they pay them well (sometimes 6 figures+) 2) they route their freight in a way that gets their drivers home consistently and frequently 3) they don’t separate between “employees” and “drivers”…everyone is an employee, everyone matters Truck driving is a top 3 occupation in America, everything we consume relies on trucking at some point in its lifecycle. The simple fact here: everyone sucks at planning freight moves in a way that affords drivers ability to get home frequently. Almost all freight moves are the result of humans bashing away on keyboards connected to AS400 terminals. You’d expect some insanely well architected network optimization algorithm (and some fleets sort of have that don’t get me wrong), but in reality, planning freight moves is basically still just note cards on a cork board, just typed into computers. The dilemma here is that fixing these things with software is very hard, almost always requiring practical operation experience in trucking in addition to deep tech knowledge. There are some leaders in the space who claim “we don’t have a driver shortage, we just suck at planning freight moves optimally enough”. I subscribe to that idea 110%, while also acknowledging it’s a generally unappealing job for an increasingly white collar-oriented younger culture we have entering the workforce. It’s important we keep seeing investment flow into freight tech, and hopefully not too much into the misguided self driving truck efforts that will never be feasible in our lifetime for practical/legal/cost reasons (though I’ll admit the safety advancements those investments throw off are great…my point is just that trucks will not be moving without drivers for decades/potentially ever because of so many different variables, including the most important one: trucking is a single digit margin business, and Americans expect everything to only get cheaper and faster that they consume, so increasing logistics costs through more expensive automated equipment is at odds with the consumer demands). It’s also important we respect truck drivers. They do a hard job most of us would never do, but we all depend on them doing it so we can live our cushy lives. They can’t be the butt of jokes.
- Solvency 3y ago
  "The dilemma here is that fixing these things with software is very hard, almost always requiring practical operation experience in trucking in addition to deep tech knowledge." But...why? Surely we have the tech, data, processing, and decades of collective analog wisdom to do this. If Amazon can optimize their entire delivery network, why not trucking? (I get it's still a challenge but surely not insurmountable? And likely incredibly profitable as a saas... so what are some of the less obvious complicating factors?)
mhb 3y ago
An entertaining book about trucking. But perhaps much has changed since 2017: The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236118-the-long-haul https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236118-the-long-haul

33 points by samclemens 3y ago

> Long-haulers, lauded as the backbone of our economy, live out of their trucks for weeks at a time, often working eighty-plus-hour weeks while earning little more than minimum wage. The economist Michael Belzer has equated commercial trucking to working in a “sweatshop on wheels.” The shortage is, in fact, a retention problem: annual turnover at large fleets in recent years has exceeded 90 percent. 90% turnover. That is insane.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
That insanely high figure is also why the predicted labor strike against automation of long haul trucking likely won't happen. Very few love the job and most who have experienced it quickly leave. It's one of those cases where not many will be put out of work should self driving ever come to be. Short haul on the other hand seems to be growing, pays better and probably is more difficult to automate.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Factory workers and coal miners in the 1800s probably didn't love their jobs, either. They still needed them, though, and thus... organized labor.
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    If you have 90% turnover it means that people indeed don't need this particular job.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      They may need a trucking job, though. It depends quite a bit on where they turnover to. If they're largely jumping from trucking company to trucking company, a strike is still entirely feasible.
      - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
        I would disagree with your reasoning. The high turnover and a short tenure means people are not very attached to the job but more importantly it also means the drivers in any given trucking company don't know each other very well and it would be quite difficult for them to organize for a common cause such as a strike. Way to easy for the trucking company to play the drivers against each other.
dchuk 3y ago
What’s actually insane: for many fleets, 90% turnover would be considered amazingly good. Some fleets suffer from 300%+ turnover!
noshortage 3y ago
these non-trucking magazines that constantly claim there is a driver shortage should explain the extreme excess in supply and shortage of demand. do we need these drivers rolling at below cost before we start claiming the shortage is over? the data we look at in the trucking industry isn't indicating a shortage, many of us in the industry are perplexed by the constant "driver shortage" claims but i think people might just be used to news that doesnt tell the truth
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
  Claiming labor shortages in particular industries increases supply, which lowers wages.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
It may be partially intentional, or at least advantageous to the companies. There's a common model where a company pays for the driving school and then the driver leases a truck from the company. The driver is technically an owner-operator, and has all the expenses and risks of that, but are contracted to the company to "pay off" the school fees and so are effectively an employee. If they quit the company gets the truck back and the driver has to repay the school fees. A very cheap & low risk way for the company to have drivers, if they can manage the turnover.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is the case, and the turnover usually involves the driver going to another company. Often those big "signup deals" you see for drivers are to pay off the previous company if necessary. Once a driver has some experience they will settle down in a company that doesn't turn over as much, or actually become a real owner-operator.
toss1 3y ago
>>90% turnover. That is insane. Yup It screams to me: Bad Management There are evidently companies that can retain workers There is obviously a lot more demand for trucks rolling on the road than supply
gosub100 3y ago
this might be how they want it though. The industry knows there is a steady stream of newly licensed, but completely inexperienced drivers. If some companies are willing to take the risk on them, but pay less, this could be a good introductory job for them. both parties know the employee will quit once he has enough hours to get hired by a better firm. the better firm has a different risk model, where they only hire drivers with X-month employment with no accidents. In return, they are willing to pay a premium.

blantonl 3y ago

I just recently went through the process at age 49 to get my pilot's license. Purely for fun, however the vast majority of the students that I trained with were just like many of the hopefuls in this article - pursuing a high paying career. I could write a book about flight school management dynamics. The personalities, the hopefuls, the dreamers, the wild power dynamics between a flight school and a student who desperately wants to get to the airlines (the promise land). The instructors, who all were just recently students now grinding out hours to qualify for an airline job. Safety. Studying and learning. Relationships. Accidents. The financial aspects are incredibly risky for many. The statistics: only 22% of students who begin training for the first step - a private pilot license - end up finishing. For those wanting to make a career or progress further, there's your instrument rating (to fly in bad weather), your commercial license (to fly for money), your flight instructor license (so you can teach - which essentially is your only path to gaining experience/hours without having to pay for it out of pocket), and then your Air Transport license, which ... airlines. That requires 1500 hours of experience. It truly was one of the more fascinating adventures I've done.

hollerith 3y ago
>teach - which essentially is your only path to gaining experience/hours without having to pay for it out of pocket Flying for a military organization is another path, is it not? Or do the airlines no longer want former military pilots? I know they used to hire a lot of them.
- blantonl 3y ago
  Yes, this is an avenue into the career of being an airline pilot. However being a military pilot doesn't directly translate to being what is essentially a bus driver, and there is extensive retraining that has to occur. But yes, the airlines recruit and bring in a ton of military pilots.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    A few months ago a former Navy guy mentioned to me that you can tell if your pilot is Navy or Air Force by the landing. Air Force pilots will come in nice and smooth, but Navy pilots, having been trained to land on carriers, will hit hard. I don’t know if there is truth to that, but if so, I’ve definitely had more than a few Navy pilots.

dchuk 3y ago

I’ve worked in freight tech for almost a decade (as in, I specifically work on a bunch of different software for drivers to use amongst other things). Many of our customers are the biggest fleets in the world. Each has their own relationship to driver turn over. The ones who don’t struggle with turn over do 3 things: 1) they pay them well (sometimes 6 figures+) 2) they route their freight in a way that gets their drivers home consistently and frequently 3) they don’t separate between “employees” and “drivers”…everyone is an employee, everyone matters Truck driving is a top 3 occupation in America, everything we consume relies on trucking at some point in its lifecycle. The simple fact here: everyone sucks at planning freight moves in a way that affords drivers ability to get home frequently. Almost all freight moves are the result of humans bashing away on keyboards connected to AS400 terminals. You’d expect some insanely well architected network optimization algorithm (and some fleets sort of have that don’t get me wrong), but in reality, planning freight moves is basically still just note cards on a cork board, just typed into computers. The dilemma here is that fixing these things with software is very hard, almost always requiring practical operation experience in trucking in addition to deep tech knowledge. There are some leaders in the space who claim “we don’t have a driver shortage, we just suck at planning freight moves optimally enough”. I subscribe to that idea 110%, while also acknowledging it’s a generally unappealing job for an increasingly white collar-oriented younger culture we have entering the workforce. It’s important we keep seeing investment flow into freight tech, and hopefully not too much into the misguided self driving truck efforts that will never be feasible in our lifetime for practical/legal/cost reasons (though I’ll admit the safety advancements those investments throw off are great…my point is just that trucks will not be moving without drivers for decades/potentially ever because of so many different variables, including the most important one: trucking is a single digit margin business, and Americans expect everything to only get cheaper and faster that they consume, so increasing logistics costs through more expensive automated equipment is at odds with the consumer demands). It’s also important we respect truck drivers. They do a hard job most of us would never do, but we all depend on them doing it so we can live our cushy lives. They can’t be the butt of jokes.

Solvency 3y ago
"The dilemma here is that fixing these things with software is very hard, almost always requiring practical operation experience in trucking in addition to deep tech knowledge." But...why? Surely we have the tech, data, processing, and decades of collective analog wisdom to do this. If Amazon can optimize their entire delivery network, why not trucking? (I get it's still a challenge but surely not insurmountable? And likely incredibly profitable as a saas... so what are some of the less obvious complicating factors?)

mhb 3y ago

An entertaining book about trucking. But perhaps much has changed since 2017: The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236118-the-long-haul https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236118-the-long-haul