Let's talk about the 'driver shortage'.

There is no driver shortage. We just have a shortage of drivers willing to drive something that looks like this for $0.13 a mile and getting 1099 at the end of the year.

 

I don't see a driver shortage. There are plenty of applications from unemployed drivers, but the majority are not worth hiring. Then you have the drivers that go from job to job to job, thinking that the next company will be better, but are just making themselves unemployable.

 

Driver shortage is 100% made up myth. I know everybody outside the industry doubts that, but most don't know jack about trucking. Some spokesman from mega-crap trucking or from one of their lobbying groups puts this crap out in the media on a regular basis to entice more suckers for their training schools, more subsidies from the government, and more fresh meat to run down the cost of labor.

This truck training is a major business for these people. For example take Swift, Swift has 5 training schools that rotate fresh meat every 3 weeks. So with 52 weeks a year, each school can bill for 17 classes: 52/3 = 17.
If at least 25 students pay $4000 at each of their 5 schools: 17 classes x 5 schools x 25 students x $4000 = $8,500,000 to Swift. More money, more money, more money. That is money with little or no overhead and that doesn't even count the kickback from the hotels that they house the Students.

After that a mega like Swift will cash in on the EEOC benefits for hiring a lot of these students. Accounting for half of the wages paid for truck drivers at these mega's.

They need the fresh meat and the cheap labor to drive down the going rate of freight and screw all the independents out of business.

It is supply and demand. The more students that invest in their crappy training, the more that will demand employment from the mega-crap to try to recoup that investment. The more that need to drive a truck to pay the tuition/investment, the cheaper the rate you can offer to get the job done. The lie is their just to increase the supply and lower the rate.

 

I was not defending 36k a year. Not sure where you deduced I thought that. I actually didnt say anywhere in this thread what i thought was fair. I work for a company where I have made 60k+ for the last several years I've worked here. And I can tell you, for what I do, it often doesn't feel like it's enough. For one, in 2000 I made 54k. And I felt like I had more money then. Cost of living just keeps going up. 60k is what a starting wage should be right after training is over. Some of us have 2, 3, or more decades doing this with great records. We are also dependable enough to get the job done well with minimal supervision. We should be in the 80k range at least. I was asking what you as a company owner, thought was fair, and what you'd be willing to pay. Now, since you stated 60k as a fair wage, do you pay that to your employees? When I was referring to that 72cpm quote being baloney and bunk, I was not saying paying that much was wrong. Just that I thought that lady was full of wind, and that they did not really pay that. Her saying they did was the baloney part. I'd likely have applied there if I thought it was true. And I'd have done everything I could to keep them happy they where paying me that much too. Just like I try to make sure I earn my money here.

 

The only shortages I see in trucking are drivers with common sense, and places to park.

 

.... Making themselves unemployable by way of too much work history
This is another good reason to stop and take a good hard look at the trucking companies track record
Before applying for them

Why waste more time on worthless trucking companies?
Everyone knows how much they lie their butts off to get drivers into their equipment, ....... so be wise to this

 

There's no "driver shortage". There is, however, a very real shortage of dependable and qaulified drivers.
I spent the last week helping a friend of mine interview and hire drivers. He had seven openings due to buying new equipment. I know that's not a big deal to the megas but for him it was a pretty good jump.
He placed ads in the local papers, put the word out with his drivers to let him know of qualified friends, and also put an ad in CL.
The rules for application were simple...five years experience, a clean driving record, no felony convictions, a hazmat endorsement, a valid medical, and a clean drug test. It's an hourly job with overtime, mostly local, with great benefits. His drivers average about 60 grand a year.

There were over one hundred applications for the seven jobs. Of the one hundred over seventy of them were immediately disqualified for not meeting the hiring standards listed in the ads. As in "I only have a year's experience, can you make an exception?" Or, "I have two DUIs, and a drug conviction but I've been clean for three weeks now". Or, "My record is clean except for the three speeding tickets that weren't my fault anyway". My favorite was "I had four wrecks in the last five years but none of them were my fault because the cops hate me and other people drive crazy". Those went in the round file.
We checked references for the remaining thirty. If you know the right questions to ask a former employer you can get the answers you need. Of the thirty applicants there were ten who former employers would definitely not ever in any circumstance rehire.
Of the remaining twenty applicants, five asked for more time before they took their drug test and another five failed the drug test outright.
Okay, we were down to about 10 applicants. Two of those refused to work nights or weekends...even with a shift differential...so we wound up with eight qualified drivers out of one hundred.
Driver shortage? Not really. A shortage of drivers...absolutely.

 

A shortage of qualified drivers....
Personally, I take good care of my cdl and it takes good care of me
... Therefore I can work for pretty much any carrier I want
But I'm very picky, why? ....
Because to me, this is more than taking on a new truck driving position, this is an investment into the company .... I plan to stay on board for awhile to protect my work history, if I find out that I have made a bad bet, I will start to look for the back door and stay with ( unless it's unaffordable) the company for at least a year
.... Keeping it positive on the way out the back door

 

In all fairness to the two who refused to work nights and weekends, was it stated explicitly in the ad that it was required? Sounds like they just didn't like the terms of employment you were offering and decided to keep looking, but were otherwise "qualified"

 

You're right, night and weekend work wasn't mentioned in the ads. It was one of the first things mentioned during the interview. One of the guys was a single father and didn't want to leave his kids at night. That's understandable. He seemed like the kind of driver anybody would be glad to have.
The other guy had been out of work for over three years because he "couldn't find exactly the right kind of job". He also didn't like the make and model of truck he'd be driving. He also didn't like the fact that most of the trucks are daycabs. He didn't think much of the kind of hauling he'd be doing either. I doubt if he would have been happy anywhere.