True or not true: Trucking Industry Struggles With Growing Driver Shortage

Automation is not around the corner.

Yes there is a driver shortage kind of. But it’s more companies not wanting to cough up the money for decent pay.

It’s always the same ones looking for drivers here because they pay horrible. All the guys paying 23+ are fine.

 

Do not worry about automation of trucking jobs. There are way too many issues surrounding the idea, and there are plenty of threads over it.

As far as a "driver shortage" it is complete BS. You can not dispute the fact that for every driver utilizing his CDL there are 2 drivers who hold a CDL but are currently not using it. Why? They can have a better life doing something else. You can believe there is a shortage when someone says "we couldn't find anyone to bring it to us, at any price". Until that happens, what happens is the price for labor continues to rise, until the position is filled. Should the price rise higher than the maximum budgeted cost for trucking the goods, then the goods themselves must increase in value, translation: the end consumer will have to pay a few pennies more. The free market at work.

 

I don't know about the driverless trucks being right around the corner,except in certain special applications-I bet you could start now and go 20-30 years or so before seeing "driver-less trucks" everywhere (reminds me of "horse-less carriages"-we need to coin a new word) To me the problems are insurmountable right now-but when it DOES happen,I believe it'll have to be one or the other-ALL driverless,or NO driverless-I don't see how they can co-exist without a lot of turmoil

 

No, the industry isn't "struggling" with it. If it was, actions would be taken to remedy the alleged problem.

 

Large carriers will have a very tough time keeping up with an improving economy and losing large numbers of drivers daily [for a host of reasons]. However that does not necessarily mean entry-level wages will be rising drastically. There are plenty who will work for peanuts, simply because they don't know what their potential and/or current value is.

It's really just hard to find good drivers or drivers who don't mind being abused, depending on the carrier.

 

Some of the megas are resorting to hiding their names in CL ads or using agencies to find help. For a while CRST had ads that didn't mention the company name at all, it was only the driverapp.com link that gave it away.

Anyone who doesn't know who the bad ones are hasn't done their homework. It's all out there a million times for anyone to read. But the average news listener isn't going to bother digging.

 

I just clicked a job on Craigslist asking for heavy haul drivers. I click the link and it’s swift. Gtfooh Swift.

 

Swift. Heavy haul. That should end well. I look forward to the meme's.