Can you be a really good truck driver and still be bad?

Driver shortages are greedy desires to have an infinite number drivers when the company won't/can't improve pay & conditions to the point they attract enough qualified drivers. There are many companies with little or no "driver shortage" and without a 100% turnover each year. Buying too many trucks & making too many promises is called a "driver shortage".

 

"Driver shortage" is like some irresponsible person with a minimum-wage job overspending on cigarettes, liquour, cable TV, luxury cars and then claiming they are underpaid. It is an excuse that shifts the blame away from the people making irresponsible decisions.

 

In your view, has there ever been a shortage of anything in recent history in the U.S.?

 

Why did the company buy the trucks? What did they see in the freight market that gave them enough confidence to add those trucks?

 

Quality people who have a good work ethic, responsibility and live within their means.

 

When I posted the example I didn't say why they bought it. I just said they bought or added 1,000 trucks to their fleet. Those newly acquired trucks are now without drivers. By the ATA defintion and your position, empty trucks equals driver shortage. The example I picked was to show a situation that I thought even a truck driver could understand how you have trucks without drivers and not a driver shortage but an excess of trucks. Apparently the deliberate not understanding you are showing easily overcomes my ability to explain. Feel free to read the posts where I wrote the words you are asking about. It would save both of us a lot of time. Nobody is going to take away your CDL because your were caught reading something, honest.

Almost everyone that CHOOSES to run a red light sees something or has a reason for running that red light. Having a reason for doing something foolish doesn't always change the act from foolish to wise. Although I am 200% confident you will now start arguing in favor of running red lights simply because your defiance is more important than learning anything. As I said numerous times before and you deliberately missed, just because a trucking company buy trucks/trailers and tells customers "yes" doesn't mean they now have a shortage of driver. They can and do make commitments HOPING to pick up extra business or to achieve some financial goal, or reach some fleet size landmark, or hoping to magically find the drivers to fill heir larger fleet. If the company stretches in anticipation of finding those drivers and then doesn't find them it doesn't prove there is a shortage. It proves they leapt before they should have. NOT one trucking company can pretend they never heard of the possibility of a driver shortage as the ATA has been pushing this excuse since the 1980s. A company expanding with little certainty about finding the extra drivers, no matter what the freight market is telling them, isn't making responsible decisions. If you keep asking questions about what I've written I will just respond with the post # where you can re-read the previous answer instead of wasting my time until you pretend to understand and then immediately pretend it wasn't explained AGAIN. You aren't even trying to be serious or understand. You are taking the words of the company and bowing to authority, no thinking allowed. "It must be true, they said it was." Billion dollar companies go bankrupt with regularity. NOBODY in industry looks to trucking as a model to be followed. Almost every item important for trucking success is a commodity of ne description or another yet they act like the labor of drivers is a commodity that doesn't react to supply and demand. There is hardly a commodity on the earth you can't increase the supply by offering more money for it. "Oh we boosted driver pay by 5 cents from 1991-1993 and we didn't get everyone in the country becoming a CDL driver so we just don't know how to get more drivers."

 

The example makes it's point regardless of WHY they bought the trucks or what signal they were reading. Maybe they bought 1,000 trucks because the Farmer's Almanac said the wooly worms have thick coats this year and that means drivers will be knocking on their door 24/7. If someone discovers tomorrow that they can mine Bitcoin using some cheap device in almost every home and they suddenly WANT 300% of the nation's electrical generating capacity to mine Bitcoin, the grid isn't suddenly short of electricity, the "miners" made too much demand. The system was never made to supply every demand for resources no matter how outrageous or sudden or fantastic the demand. It was made with a different objective and the fact someone wants vast sums of resources this instant doesn't indict the system they are making demand on, they are making unreasonable demands. They are free to buy and build their own infinite electricity supply system, the electric grid is not obligated to supply them with every electron they suddenly want. The grid operators should raise the price per kW until the high-demand customers lose interest or pay for the infrastructure to supply their outrageous demands.

 

Like what? Understanding, ability, honesty, delayed gratification, work ethic, focus, jail cells, etc?

 

I'd say there's a shortage of people who don't get mad when someone offers a different opinion/perspective.

 

I'd say there's a shortage of people who know how to hold a dialogue with another member and not hijack the whole thread.