Bloomberg story on driver shortage

The link is not working.

 

I recognize the link as being that from Drudge.

As far as the smokey and bandit movie? It's a nice story. Basically a fantasy, and a badly scripted one at that. A barrel of laughs. But the film has little resemblance to actual trucking.

The only value in the movie actually for someone as old as I am is to see that old iron rolling down the two laner with the speedo buried at the bottom with the engine running well with some music. (Not the sound track, but the power song of a natural breathing non computer engine... something that has been taken from us all...)

 

If there was a real shortage as companies have claimed for 30 years wages would be higher. When there is a recession companies then can scoop up premium drivers however those drivers will depart once the economy rebounds and they can go back to their old high paying jobs. Its happened time and again the past 40 years.

 

Doesn't every industry complain about a worker shortage and not enough young people going into whatever field?

Not enough people pursuing STEM jobs.

Not enough willing to work 'Dirty Jobs'.

Not enough new doctors.

Not enough people learning to Code.

I know, let's blame Colleges and Millennials instead of reviewing poor hiring practices or scaring people with absurdly high demands for education, expensive certifications, or unrealistic expectations of work experience.

It's not just trucking, most industries are full of ####, leaving misleading info like this, and then unqualified graduates don't understand why they're not getting hired.

 

Or not enough young ones going to sea in merchant marine or gaining related college work to go to sea and use the learned skills there.

I don't know anything about this STEM you speak of, it makes me feel close to a grotesque Dept of Education gone wild trying to grow students without a free will... /tease...

Doctors require so many years and huge amounts of debt. Then you incur more debt what with lawsuit insurance, mal practice etc. And it spins out of control with a proper clinic, staffing, billing services, record services. (You should see the two rooms that were exam rooms in my reg doc's office filled to ceiling with old paper health records dating back decades to opening (I used to pour the concrete slab and footings for that building of that clinic so Im one of the first patients there after it was built...) That is one of the big things that bind me to white county arkansas,

I put in my sweat, tears and blood pouring concrete to rebuild schools and houses destroyed by the tornados one bad day... so many projects in the area like 30 to 50 miles radius. Even the courthouse in Little Rock by the Capitol. They have columns of concrete 5 feet thick every 10 yards going straight to bedrock about 60 feet down. I poured dozens of them under there. That took months. The arena in Little Rock is parts of my work as well. If you ever go there make sure you never use the lower level as the upper level structural flaws were repaired (So they say...) due to inadequate rebar... and you wonder how i find out about these things. So far it's held out pretty good...)

I actually did a little Coding, I can do a little bit of HTML enough to build a 90's style webpage, nothing fancy. and feed it with content. But when you get into three dimensional worlds for gaming using two specific types of design environments I ran screaming from the room. I like to game but NOT. THAT. MUCH. It's a form of breaking big rocks into little rocks in a prison gang.

And the so called dirty jobs? Just try to breach the perimeter of our water department's main pumping station and tower number one. We draw from 7 to 12 underground pumps plus two pipelines for our water. And the security is beyond belief. That's one example.

I can go on. But the younger generation is going to have to suck it up, get hard and get to work. If I can do it, they sure as hell can too.

 

STEM is just fancy for science, technology, engineering and mathematics

As for Millennials, it seems like many of those willing to suck it up and work are stuck in Retail or Food Service jobs without a clear path to advance, or they're putting in the time to hope for promotion. Especially if they live in small towns.

 

Without proper education and guidance millennials will land dead end jobs such as we have offering mediocre wage at best. Although there is big money to be had in management at retail and food service those jobs will usually go to better educated prospects. The key is education with a degree or diploma that does not include the words "truckin institute"