Anyone else sick of hearing about a trucker shortage?

If the reward is sufficient, finding and keeping drivers won’t be an issue. Reward being the complete package, pay, benefits, life balance, etc.

I’m your perfect example. I don’t need a lot of money at my point in life. I’d be perfectly happy with a part time local job that I enjoyed, paying as little as 20k per year. I’d take that over an OTR job paying 60k. I enjoy trucking but never thought the reward was sufficient for the risks and lack of free time. All that changed when I found my current job where I’m on track to pull down 100k plus. I’m still a short timer, but I’m driving because the reward is sufficient.

I’ll be gone in a year or two for that 20k job, but I’m staying for now. Guess what, if they started paying 130k plus I’d probably stick it out even longer. It’s all about the reward if companies want drivers.

 

I am driving past billboards in a Mid-West city with three companies offering bonuses of $7,500, $10,000, and $15,000. Why the bonuses if there is no shortage? An owner operator friend of mine is getting over $3.00 per mile on loads. Three years ago he was getting just over $2 bucks per mile.

 

Don’t confuse retention issues with a shortage. Companies have been offering bonuses for as long as I’ve been driving. Why, because it’s a cheap way to lure drivers to the seat. How many of these bonuses actually get paid? Not very many because as soon as the driver realizes it’s just another crap outfit, they leave. Wash, rinse, repeat...

 

And every time I turn around there is another stupid story about self driving trucks..so new folks think we'll maybe I better find some other trade

 

The level of freight being moved in LA is a record amount. They might just be capacity constrained or short of workers. They can get the freight off the boats but they struggle to get it out of the port. The empties are stacking up in the port too, boats don't want them and they are low on chassis. Plus some of the containers have to be taken to a whare house and get hand unloaded. The stuff is not palletized.

Some east coast ports higherred more people, like 25% more workers. I haven't heard that with LA.





You want this podcast.

 

He shouldn't haul cheap freight...

 

Because they pay very low wages so if a driver actually stayed long enough to earn full bonus he’s made LESS money than working elsewhere in most cases.

 

Unions.

Unions allow them to do little or nothing.
Every time I see a job, i can tell in a quick glance if its union, or not. Union jobs take 10 times longer to complete, will have flaws, and be 10 times over budget. Some years ago not far from where i live, maybe 25 kms away, they built a new bridge across a small river. This should have been an easy task, it wasn't spanning miles or anything difficult. Well they screwed it up, and it took years to complete what was supposed to be a 4 month job. Funniest of all was that the bridge and hwy were so far away from meeting each other as they should, they had to tear out a section of brand new hwy they just finished, and move the road over, and build it up about 15 feet in elevation to meet the bridge.
In 2018 the city of Pr. George decided to build a new parkade downtown. They began in 2019 on the build itself. Here we are late 2021, it still isn't done, and is 30 million over budget already, it was supposed to cost about 5 million to build, and take 7 months. Why, its union is why.
Private sector workers would have been on time, and budget.
Fire everyone at the docks, change the name, reopen non union, train the new hires, and watch them produce 20 times the cargo output after a month on the job.
To err is human, to really mess something up, all you need is a union.

 

Lousy jobs? Lousy pay?

 

i was sick and tired hearing this back in the 1880's.