Driver shortage? or surplus

I love people commenting about lack of shoes when he could have been asleep.

 

Many megas that have built up a sizable customer list have as much freight as they can haul. Therefore is a matter of running as many trucks as they can find drivers. They’d hire twice or three times as many if they could. And they are all or most in that position. So in their eyes there is a shortage that can never be filled as long as they have the customers.

There are plenty of drivers, many just don’t stay for various reasons. The supply is huge. If the companies worked at keeping drivers, aka paid better, there would definitely be a surplus.

 

I've been saying since I started driving that it's a problem with turnover and retention, rather than a driver shortage.

Oh, and I'm one of those OTR types.

 

There are hundreds of ads on indeed in the GTA. OTR, Local, Short Haul. Not sure if that means anything but from a guy who just started to look into the industry, it sure looks like a shortage.

 

1) SADLY & UNFORTUNATELY, unemployment in the U.S.A. is well into the double digits. This also includes truck drivers. I work in retail, have been at my company 13+ years.

2) I have customers who are truck drivers, who have lost their jobs due to being laid off. They are a combination of local & OTR drivers.

3) When the customers of trucking companies go out of business, or have drastic nosedives in their business, this causes a serious ripple effect, causing trucking companies to have much less freight, or no freight to haul. As a result, drivers get laid off, regardless of whether or not they were local or OTR, there was NO freight for them to haul.

 

Over a billion and counting

 

It’s a confusing and complex topic until you really analyze what’s going on in the industry, then it’s quite clear, there isn’t a shortage.

First off, transportation rates and driver wages do not reflect a shortage of either drivers or carriers; they indicate more of a glut of both. The glut is due to the very low barrier of entry into the industry.

Carriers are always looking to hire for a few reasons: to recover from turnover, grow the fleet or to cover work they had outsourced. -It’s common for carriers to take on more than they can handle then have someone else cover the excess for less and still pocket from the deal.

Lastly, the good carriers rarely hire or put ads out. The ones seen constantly on the job boards have some underlying issue(s) that have made them an undesirable choice for drivers.

 

Those jobs really don’t exist for one reason or another. Lots of them are fake ads, so the company can apply for more work visas, some of them are 100% plus turnover rate inside of 6 months, so they can’t stop hiring. Some of them will string guys along to 3 weeks, until they demand to be paid; then fire them and hire more.

The most common reason tho, is they are so horrible, intolerable and stressful; that no one can do them. Esp when they get that first pay, gone in 60 seconds!

Someone once posted on here, that over 100 000 people in Ontario have an AZ/Class1, and don’t use it at all. Surplus, big time.

 

A shortage of $19 an hour drivers