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

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.