Why is it so hard to find good drivers?

You're exactly right. It takes better than "Fair pay" to get better than "Fair drivers". I have 20 years of carhaul experience and wouldn't sniff a job that advertised "Fair pay".

 

Do you unload vehicles in the busy streets in urban areas , have a friend that works for countryside and has almost been run over a few times , cops dont like him much either.
Told me the horror stories wondering around the auction lots looking for vehicles buried in the snow with dead batteries , that could be why.

 

One thing I have found lately is carriers seem to think the "run the newest equipment" is actually a selling feature. Ask alot of seasoned professionals and they will tell you they want the BEST truck for the job, not some under-powered, fleet spec'ed, plastic, auto-trans, nanny systemed, DEF,junk.
I myself would rather run a REAL truck, pre 2005 and properly set up for what it needs to do. And BTW, just my opinion lol

 

I have no experience with car hauling other than when I tried to get a car hauled a few years ago.

no company would tell me when they would pick up or deliver the car.
And they wanted a deposit to even consider taking the load and then demanded cash paid to their driver when / of the car was delivered.

and they all sounded like Russian mobsters.

we just drove the 1100 miles each way with a trailer and picked it up ourselves.
It’s hard to find drivers a because trucking is a really crappy job.

Every single person you deal with in the industry treats drivers like they are dog doo stuck to the bottom of their shoe.

Recruiters lie about the pay, dispatchers lie about everything
Brokers lie about everything by and skim money off the top for doing nothing but answering the phone.

they want you to work 70-80 hours a week and live in a truck and be away from you family for weeks at a time.
They proclaim “You earn one day off for every 7 days out”
Like it’s a good thing.

Ooh. I can’t wait, work 70 hours on the road for slightly above minimum wage and get one weekend off every two or three weeks . Yay! what a job!
I get to spend hours every week doing pre and post trips, for no pay,
I get to spend hours every week fueling and getting the oil changed and the truck washed, for no pay.

I get to spend hours every week sitting and waiting at shippers and receivers for no pay.

in the case of car haulers, I get to park illegally and dangerously in the middle of the freaking road and unload cars.

99.9% of trucking companies treat their drivers like garbage and wonder why they can’t find drivers.

If you train them and treat them with respect and pay them very well, they will stick around .
Otherwise, good luck. The ones you get left with are the bottom of the barrel who can’t get a job doing anything else.

My nephew wanted to be a driver. And I was not able to talk him out of it.
I paid for him to go to hvac school and he did that for a while and then I paid for him to become a certified welder and he did that for a while. And he finally said he just wanted to drive.

I paid for him to attend the community college a third time for CDL class and warned him to find a job with a trucking company where he wouldn’t be competing with immigrants and felons, since there’s an endless supply of both , who will always work for less than you will.
The place where he worked welding , was mostly felons, most of em decent people who just made stupid mistakes, but they didn’t get paid squat , because the owner knew that no one else would hire them.

One trucking company that was recruiting at the CDL class had a client with very high standards , required all of the drivers that come onto their property or transport their items to have an extensive background investigation, and only 3 of the 25 students in the class were eligible to fill out the application, due to past criminal or credit or driving history records.
and since it was over 200 pages for an extensive background investigation and had a six to eight week wait time for the results , my nephew was the only one of the three to bother filling it out .
After the three month wait, he got hired, and after getting half pay for the nine month training class, he’s averaging 89 cents a mile driving one of the companies brand new trucks.


this thread below explains why companies can’t find good drivers.
They treat them like garbage, and pay them minimum wage when you add up all the hours you actually spend away from home and working.
The rookie

 

@Ziggy319
As a fairly new driver, some points i agree with, others i don't.
When I interviewed companies I thought I would fit with, I looked for a few things very specifically...
I wanna know ...
Pay scale
Growth opportunities
Benefits
Equipment quality
What are you asking of me
How do I make more money
What's the long term prospect of your company
How safe are you
How trustworthy do you present yourself?
Are you up front and honest, or did you hesitate answering me?
Are you looking for the right answer, or speaking bluntly?

I turned 3 offers down because I felt they were blowing smoke up my rear end.
Others rejected because the benefits sucked, equipment sucked, people didn't care (trash in the parking lot, crappy cars (don't take care of their toys) employees talking trash about the company, etc.
I chose the company I work for now, not because they pay top money, but for the overall feeling I got interacting with them.
They were actually the lowest paying offer except 1.
But, benefits are solid, reasonably priced, time off is solid, and schedule is somewhat flexible.
The tm answered every question honestly, regardless of the results.
The equipment is solid, well cared for, and things get fixed in a timely fashion.
Spare parts are readily available.
Choosing acompany to drive for is a lot like finding a wife.
You'll never get everything you want, but the whole package has to be solid and mostly what you need.
So long as you play games with prospective drivers, you'll never find quality.
You will find shady bottom feeders, because that's what you're projecting.
Project quality, honesty, and being legit, and you'll attract the same.

 

Hardly.

But I gave up trucking ,
It’s a long story but in the 90s I was making very good money with my tractor leased on to a company that owned thousands of trailers and moved them long distance on the railroads.

made so much money and the company was growing , they were always looking for o/o’s and small fleet operators and I was making so much money with one truck that I bought several more and hired drivers.
I had the same issue you do,
Couldn’t find reliable drivers for local and regional work. And it seemed everyone was a convicted felon, armed robbery etc .
My wife is an accountant and she calculated that my drivers worked 65% as hard as I did.
Plus the maintaince on the trucks just went through the roof.
I could get years from a clutch and they would get maybe 9 months.

after about a year of five times the stress and headache trying to drive my truck and keep drivers in the other five trucks and I was making less money than I was making with just one truck.

I was going to sell the extra trucks and keep driving mine, but sold them all in less than a week and at the same time I got an offer for a normal 8-5 Monday-Friday job for basically the same money I was making driving and having the stress of maintaining a truck.

I’m in a different job now but I get a take home truck, and paid by the hour from when I leave my house until I get home or check into a motel.


If I have to stay overnight somewhere the company pays for the motel and meals.
And anything over 40 is overtime or Comp time.
When I stop and refuel the truck I get paid by the hour, when I get it washed I get paisley the hour , when I get the oil changed I get paid by the hour .
If I have a flat tire, I get paid by the hour since it happend after I left the house and began my workday.

why anyone with marketable skills to do something else besides driving and make the same money and be treated like a human and paid by the hour and home every night would keep being a driver and keep being treated like they get treated , is beyond me.

The company my nephew works for treats their drivers pretty good but has some weird stuff too, they require the drivers, when they return to the home terminal to stay onsite usually overnight and drive the truck into the shop. And wait while it gets inspected and serviced. Their mechanic can’t or won’t drive the truck into or out of the shop.

Now I like the idea that they do a DOT inspection on every truck and trailer , not once a year, but every single week after every trip .


But making the drivers stay around and do it for no compensation and burning hours of service , is just weird.
Trucking is the only occupation that Expects people to work hours and hours for zero compensation .