Even The Feds Call “BS” On The “Driver Shortage”

Sounds about right. This is why Werner and other megas can take advantage until you quit and then just hire someone else. I haven’t quite figured out how they cover all the truck losses unless it is just a giant tax write off.

 

They make it up in volume....
And I know it sounds tripe, but it's still true in the Megas case. If they even net one quarter of one penny per mile they still make over 250 million dollars. Yes according to their MCS-150 they ran just shy of one billion miles in 2018

BTW, Swift did 1.8 Billion miles in 2017.

 

Yet somehow is is still cheaper to get new drivers than it is to pay the decent ones you have fairly. I hope more class action get filed by employees getting fleeced on paychecks.

Megas such as Werner skim off of every trip with HHG miles. A perfect example is if you do a shag run from the Werner terminal in Clint and run 30 miles to deliver in El Paso. Werner pays 0 miles for the trip and $20 shag. You are lucky if you clear $10/hr on a trip like that.

They are also very good at using drivers to stage freight and then pay them almost nothing while they sit there. $50 is the most I’ve gotten out of Werner for layover even for a two day sit.

 

Yeah. Swift tried that staging nonsense with me a couple of times when I was there. I always took advantage of the downtime to do a thorough pre-trip of my trailer. For some reason they always failed and I had to be taken off the load.

 

The ATA, like it cites in the article has been bleating about this for years, and the main stream media, which does a poor job of any real fact checking about anything just spreads the falsehood even farther.
The ATA represents trucking management, not the entire industry, not owner operators, not brokers etc. Their sole purpose is to keep costs down for their member companies, labor is the number one cost since fuel prices have moderated, they will do and say anything for that end. And lobby heavily for additional work visas, and help trucking companies recruit immigrant drivers which are flooding the industry.

 

I can sit and start typing.

By tomorrow the Moderators (Collectively) and a few fleet owners will have replied to me until I comprehend the enormity of the myth I have labored under all my life in my misguided thinking that Trucking Companies are what they are and that's that. Not so fast grasshopper. Whoa there sparky, we aint done with you just yet. Sit.

If America ever collectively understood the lie we labor under day in and day out we must fail as a country. We have been failed a very long time.

This is where I stop talking. I value my time here with TTR and let the rest of you hammer it all out.

In the meantime. I'll die a American Trucker and regret that it has taken so many years to fix what is fixable and never enough to sit down and fix what is truly broken among us. With that in mind, Chicago should be the first to burn. It's unfortunate.

 

I can understand why immigrants would come here and work for cheap. What I don’t get is why the industry allows so many drivers on the road that have no understanding of the industry at all despite the license.

I’ve talked to guys that don’t know what legal weights are and don’t know how to scale a load and others that have crumpled fairings and a fifth wheel plate all the way forward “so they can make uturns better”.

I have no doubt that my rate per mile is lower so dummies can roll trucks, rip off bumpers, and crunch fairings.

 

All these questions on here have been questions for years. Nothing will ever change unless there is change with the "middle man".. Whether you realize it or not Megas make money within their own company... A company like Knight/Swift, for example... They have Knight Transportation, Knight Refrigerated, and Knight Logistics. Logistics being the brokerage. They also do Lease Purchase with those less fortunate people who really think they are going to make it.

At the end of the year they have a huge tax write off, so cheap freight doesn't affect a company like them because everything is done "in house". If freight slows down or becomes cheap in the spot market, guess what they still have their contracts to fall back on and volume. Not to mention all the trucks and trailers are probably paid for.

There is no driver shortage. There is however a shortage of "good freight" because all the megas eat up some of the best rates. The market will come up eventually, but it may not be what it was last year.

 

The grunts (drivers) in this industry have been saying this for years. There is no "driver shortage", just a shortage of drivers willing to put up with the disrespect, working conditions and pay. Even the majority of new drivers they do manage to hire end up leaving the seat after 6 months to a year.