18-20 year olds possibly driving

You gotta come out to the country where kids gotta work. I know quite a few folks in their early 20s that work their ###es off.

I was 18, day after graduation and was on the road looking for work. Had a job and was making $$$$ within 2 weeks, putting in 12 hour days wrenching in the oilfield.

 

Is there a shortage of 20,000 square foot mansions along the ocean you can buy for $500 or is there exactly as many of those homes at that price one would expect? Unless someone implements slavery we will ALWAYS have as many truck drivers as the pay and conditions attract. That number of truck drivers may be more or less than what customers want. Customers want an infinite supply of truck drivers, trucks willing to work for nothing. Why is the number of drivers that customers want the "real" number of truck drivers the country needs? People are free to enter the industry or avoid it. There are exactly as many truck drivers as there should be. In 10 years or 100 years here will be exactly as many drivers as pay and conditions attract. As old drivers retire customers and companies can pay more for drivers to move their freight or seek other ways to satisfy customers.

 

Just from experience I would rather train a young eager to learn 18 year old, over the convicted felon who knows everything, feels they got this after one day behind the wheel, thinks the world “owes them, is looking for a short cut to success, who feels every suggestion is an affront to their manhood, thinks they will be telling dispatch what loads they will be getting.

 

I've got several thoughts about this.

First among them is that EVERY GENERATION has complained about the work ethic of the kids coming up behind them. Just like they complain about the rise in vulgarity and bemoan the loss of 'traditional values'. Yet Pompeii has graffiti that makes 4Chan look tame.

The second is that work ethic is a learned behavior. We can talk all we want about how "my dad taught me to work hard" all we want, but I'd bet that if we went back in time and talked to your first co-workers about your work ethic the best we'd find is "tries hard but is clueless, he'll learn though". I don't understand why we expect new entrants to perform as well as veterans, but we do. Folks should do some reading on the navvys - it took years before a 'new hand' was able to handle a full day's work.

My next thought is that young people today are less willing to eat dung than they were 20 years ago. 20 years ago, if you wanted a job in the trades or manufacturing (or office work for that matter) you needed to know someone. Options were limited and any job was better than no job. The plant I'm working out of right now has been having 'performance issues' since October. The 'poor performance' was due to the new machines being installed 2 inches offset, which turned an automated process into a manual one. The extra work resulted in forced overtime - mandatory 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week. Overtime pay is great, to a point. However, if you are having to pay for extra child care that overtime pay doesn't go very far. A neighboring plants changed their "now hiring" signs for "tired of 12 hour shifts?". The plant was supposed to be shut down for the mondays after Christmas and New Years. At 1400 on the 21st the plant announced that those would be normal work days. That announcement cost them 3 dock workers, the second shift lead, and a 'sick out' on the 23rd. 20 years ago there would have been grumbling, but everyone would have shown up to work. In today's labor market, there is no need to suffer that kind of abuse (the plant had told us a week prior). Add in the fact that the under 30 workers watched their two income households knuckle under, sacrificing family time for the company's profit only to be screwed over time and again. Is it any wonder that those kids have absolutely no interest in sacrificing their quality of life for the company's profit? For the last 3 weeks the shipping manager has been moaning about "work ethic" and "lazy people" while doing nothing to alleviate the situation. He could take over the 1st shift lead's office responsibilities so the 1st shift leader can focus on training the new hires. Or he could cover the half the gap created by losing the 2nd shift lead. The guy puts in his 40 and goes home. Why would any new hire put in the extra effort for that man?



My final thought is that work today isn't the same as it was in "yesteryear". Nor is the "way things were" the optimal way of doing things. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" comes to mind. We should be looking at ways to improve, not lamenting a "lost uptopia" that was really a dystopian nightmare.

 

How can it be any worse with the yo-yos we have on the roads right now? Many of them are way older and can't seem to keep their rig in their lane, figure out the proper time to use their high beams, can't seem to pick a suitable speed or let alone maintain it after passing, too many seem to think there is value in passing somebody who's going a whopping .00000000025mph slower and clog the left lane for 20mi, and seems like a hefty chunk of drivers don't seem to understand the value in using their mirrors.

 

You said it all in this quoted part of your post. Very well said.

 

I think these young drivers can’t tailgate and bully 2 and 4 wheelers any more than the current bunch.

My cousin’s son was running his $500,000 combine at age 9 by himself, so there may be a few that can do the job.

Most drivers are only as professional as they were taught.

 

When I was 20 I was working as a tradesman paying on a mortgage and raising a family.

 

Trusted to repair trucks, probably with minimal supervision too. That's perfectly ok but somehow driving a truck at that age isn't. Strange eh?