OTR TRUCKER SHORTAGE and Young Drivers

Im trying to figure out the $105 per week....I understand every one is different and have different eating habits but anything past $50 per week, whether eating at the truck stop or getting groceries is loose with money

 

Heck when I started out as a young buck, 10 cpm was good pay!lol Will be hard to find a job that will start you out on top of the ladder? Just sayin.....

 

But when you can't pay your bills for the first year on starting pay, why waste your time?

 

14.00 in Knorr bagged rice. 10 in ham, dutch oven, 2 in a bag of red potatoes, another 2 in small onions, baby. All of which can cook in TWO 12 volt dutch ovens.

You can buy maybe 6 of the steam fresh similar broccli or greens frozen, put them into your floor cooler temporarily. Eat on them rather quickly with microwave inside truckstop or in your sleeper.

Boil 18 eggs. 3 bucks or so. Eat no more than three in the morning with a little bit of shredded cheese to your taste and a chop off that ham you brought in.

It's not much but you are approaching 40 dollare here. Still room for a couple of morale based foods that are fun to eat and a little bit of standard spices to relieve the tedium if you rotate to different ones each meal.

 

Seems like they're trying to lower the driving age to get new kids in who will work for cheaper.

This is incredibly short sighted (what else is new?) because they will burn a generation earlier than usual.

What do I mean? Let's make some assumptions:

40% will not like it.
20% will like it okay but ultimately move on for a better paying local job.
25% will crash out. (Either actual accident, DUI or other stupidity, or unfortunately fatalities)
10% will like it but will move on to a better trucking job (LTL, O/O, small fleet, local,)
5% will stay OTR with a mega.

But this past decade gave trucking corporations a huge gift, an entire generation of labor was forced out of comfortable local work and HAD to find work to pay the bills. As the saying goes, "trucking isn't going anywhere" so they had a huge glut of labor. People bored with office life, laid off in the Great Recession, or old enough to fondly remember Burt Reynolds movies.

This new generation will be different, some will go into trucking at a young age and never want to do it again so if they don't impress the next generation of truckers they probably won't be people willing to do it for the next 40 years!

Assuming the robo-truck is 10 years away, (doubtful) maybe this won't be so bad. They're just running out the clock until all the greasy 'cogs' can be removed from the machine.

(Personally, I'm predicting a sort of drone service, like how we fly Predators in Afghanistan. Trucks will be fully automated on the big road and taken over by 'pilots' in huge call center type buildings. There a driver will bring 7-20 trucks an 8 hour shift into and out of a facility. Probably take over all the office space from the dispatchers, that will all be digital.)

If my prediction comes true there'll be a "sunset" career for "real" drivers until full automation is a reality.

 

yeah we hear ya buddy bring wages up to $3000 per week there will be no driver shortages then that's for sure.

 

Owner/Ops should be making that much. We just were just contracted for 6 trailers from Philly to LA. We're getting about $3/mile for the job, but the boss wants to consolidate the load into 4 trailers, pay the drivers 125% and pocket the rest.

 

Man you’re an Entitled millennial -
You want $3000 a week
I started with $300 a week at swift in 2011.
Good luck - actually do us a favor- call the recruiter and tell them you want $3000 a week and tell us how that goes