How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

This is one of the reasons a lot of people are cheering that Luigi guy. We're getting fed up with being bent over by faceless, soulless corporations that just keep sucking us dry financially, wrecking lives as a matter of business, and never facing any meaningful consequences. I've been libertarian/right wing for most of my life, but if it came down to socialism vs. capitalism today? Not gonna lie- I'd have a hard time picking a side.

 

I won’t get Union or Political because it’s not allowed, but the same people complaining today about rates and or good jobs absolutely hate Unions. The bigger issue in my opinion is that many of the younger Union folks who still have the good jobs with pensions are voting for those politicians who absolutely hate unions.
Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it.

 

This is the article or one very similar to the article that I read around 2014.

 

I quibble with the statement "Not a retailer that uses carriers. Not a tech company that dabbles in logistics. The largest carrier."




Amazon claims 15,259 power units and 42,486 drivers. JB Hunt 25,280 and 24,116. While JB Hunt's driver counts seems low, Amazon having 2.5 drivers for every truck is more suspect. Regardless, JB has more tractors. I suspect that Amazon's inflated driver count includes their parcel vans or all their 'independent' contractors who run their own numbers. Hunt also runs 5x the miles.

Now look at UPS and Fedex



They dwarf Amazon.

Amazon is still reliant on outside carriers, both through Amazon Relay and 'traditional' contract carriers. Right now, they're still a tech company that is dabbling in logistics. That will change, because they're the big stack at the table and can afford to place foolish bets to steal the blinds. The one and only thing that will stop them is if they get held legally liable for the actions of their contractors. The second that happens, Amazon's interest in becoming a carrier will evaporate.

 

It's an odd quirk of humanity that we struggle with the idea of enlightened self interest. Making small sacrifices to one's own self interest to further the interests of the whole tends to be a hard sell. Meanwhile 'rational selfishness', where the individual's decision making is focused solely on themself and takes no regard for larger impacts, is lauded.

"I climbed the ladder, now let me steady it for you" versus "I climbed the ladder then kicked it over, if you worked harder you could put the ladder back up and climb it".

 

No one on TTR believes this, but I used to be a Young Republican. Then I got a job at a bank and my views started to shift. Ever since then, the older and richer I get, the more liberal I get because I understand that my well being is increasingly out of my hands. Modern capitalism more closely resembles mercantilism - anybody quoting from Book I or III of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" today would get labeled a socialist.

 

I believe the post was referring to Parcel Carrier. It didn’t specify parcel but that was my guess on the post as to why the post office was listed first after Amazon. Amazon doesn’t own the planes they operate either but they built a rather large air distribution network.

 

Happy Friday.

So I am originally from Germany, it was West Germany when I was born, but I have some distant family members that were still in Eastern Germany before the Unification in 1990. I was there when the wall stood but also when it came down. I actually have a piece of it (granted, the stupid thing was made of concrete and was 96 miles long and about 15 feet high so there was enough to go around). Anyway, what struck me out about the border was the guard towers that were spaced on the opposite side of it. The towers were manned by skilled marksmen of DDR Grenztruppen and the Staatsicherheit (Border patrol and State Security aka Stasi). Those rifles were not pointing at people trying to sneak in. Those rifles were pointed at their own population trying to sneak out to the West. It was not uncommon to hear it in the news that there was a shooting on the Eastern side.
The West was rich with resources and was capitalistic. The East was extremely impoverished and socialistic. Nothing over there worked, not full time at least. The electricity was hit and miss and so was clean water at times. Modern luxuries they had none since there is no competition for goods and services. The State provides everything and everything belongs to the State. I visited my family members there one time and they lived in like a concrete/stucco house that was heavily damaged. I asked about it and they said those were bullet holes from the second world war, nobody really has money and it is not a priority to repair damages from almost 5 decades ago. Splendid.

Fast forward and I find myself in the USA, and I thought Western Germany had it made... Americans are disgustingly wealthy. It is absurd. You can go to a warehouse store and order a pallet of dog food if you wanted. Your sandwich shops will legit sell you a sandwich by the foot. Clean water so abundant. you fill private swimming pools with it in people's back yard. The poorest person has more wealth than the average East German. What you all enjoy over here is what happens when people are allowed to compete against each other by trying to provide the best goods or services. Every year things get better, faster, and in many cases almost always cheaper. You would never see this if the State all owns it, yet there is a movement that wants to do exactly that.

I understand America's health care system is completely skewed towards those that can afford it, and the high profile shooting of the CEO from United Health was a clear indicator how fed up people have gotten. While I 100% don't condone murder, there is something to be said about people that enrich themselves by denying their own premium paying customers their medical claims, many of those claims were life saving surgeries. To me that is not capitalism. That's predatory behavior, but the answer is not the European or Canadian model.

If you ever want to see what a government run hospital looks like, check out the VA hospitals. They run 170 hospitals with a budget of $140B of tax payer money. The quality of care is good, but the access is atrocious. How do I know? I actually go there. I actually was seen March 19 of this year. I told the doctor was pretty banged up and had some recent chest pain. Sounds pretty bad he said and insisted I come back for a follow up where he would schedule me for cardiology. I left and got a call the next week about scheduling my important follow up. Earliest they had was July 23. I contacted them a few weeks ago and told them my chest pains were getting worse and my left arm was going numb. The lady on the phone really could not care less if I was dying from a sucking chest wound as they were still booked. Then last week someone finally contacted me back and said someone canceled (presumably died from waiting) and there was an opening mid June now.

I mean that's what a government run hospital system looks like. And sadly the VA is filled with Vietnam vets and older for the most part because this free healthcare is all they can afford.

Sorry, this rant is going way longer than I thought. I honestly don't know what the solution to all of this is, but I have had experience with multiple health care systems all over the world. The trinity of health care is: Affordability, Accessibility, and Quality. You can only pick two but will always forfeit one. Employer tied health insurance is the best system I have both seen and experienced.

There was one more topic I wanted to unravel about private equity firms buying up entire subdivisions so they can rent out the American dream to desperate people wanting to be homeowners, but I'll save that for another time.

 

If I recall correctly you worked for Holland, forgive me if I confused you for someone else. The Wife and I got together many years ago when I was on the the same health insurance plan you had at Holland. It was the Cadillac plan of all insurance plans, Teamcare that I had while working for UPS. It was the same plan I had at CF, Allied Systems and Jack Cooper. She works in medical sales now and we make more than enough to pay the higher deductibles on our current Insurance Plan which is owned by her employer. She still talks about how good our insurance was when I was a Teamster and as far as we know, nothing is comparable today.