Can you be a really good truck driver and still be bad?

We had a female driver come in looking for work. During the interview she asked if her immediate supervisor would be male or female. She said that she'd had trouble with male supervisors in every place she'd ever worked. I thanked her for stopping by and we'd be in touch if we had any openings that matched her qualifications.
Some day when I need the entertainment I'll call her previous employers. It might be interesting.

 

My friends step father in law drove team with his own father at Old Dominion for a long time. He then went on to work at a truck driving school.

This same seasoned veteran instructor recently put my dry van across a yellow pole HARD. He also ripped the steps off my buddies new Cascadia in a separate incident.

Been a driver his entire life and an instructor and he still sucks. So yes, it’s possible.

 

Just because you have a CDL doesn't mean you can maneuver a truck.

 

Well......I still find the whole driver shortage thing to be subjective. In a lot of ways, it's empty calorie discussion because I feel it depends on who you ask. The narrative about driver shortage is really being passed from the ATA, or whatever lobbyist group, and they're most likely getting data from megas, or small to medium sized companies with mega capabilities. They're only speaking from that 10 percent of the industry. The other 90 percent, owners and small fleets have a different viewpoint. The laws are the same, but it's really two different groups of trucking and I've been apart of both worlds. In my opinion, both can make case for either narrative.

 

There would definitely be drivers that are terrible even if there are no motorists. How many times have you seen a truck flying through the truck stop? Not to mention those that run off the road unprovoked.

 

If you have a 5 gallon fuel can with a hole near the bottom. Does your gas can have a fuel shortage or a defect? If I put a fuel hose in the leaky can and fill it up, is the fuel shortage over, or does it still have a hole in it?
There is no driver shortage, it's just propaganda used to demand govt solutions which will pay the people chasing away drivers lots of money to attract more prospective new drivers. Just because a big industry pays "journalists" to repeat the propaganda on cue doesn't mean that propaganda is true. I'll bet I could convince you that journalists spreading the stories of a Super-predator type of criminal might just be a propaganda campaign used to get the public to demand increased spending for prisons and police. The prison builders and the trucking industry use industry created talking points to convince taxpayers to pay for infrastructure and programs the industry or applicants used to pay for, but now that propaganda is mainstream why not get the public to pay for the expense of the industry? In a post-modernist world there is doubt about everything, reality hasn't changed there is just a big industry making sure everyone is sufficiently confused about everything.

 

The word shortage definitely exists and has a pretty simple definition.

I think you're mixing the cause with the current state of things.

In your example of the gas can, if YOU have less than you need it's a shortage, more is a surplus, and just right is equilibrium. Your gas can with a hole has a bias towards shortages.

The gas can itself needs nothing because it's an inanimate object.

As it relates to freight. People talk about driver shortages because it's easier to control and adjust than consumer demand but not as easy to control and adjust as prices.

So talking about driver shortages is just short hand of the longer equation describing the relationship between consumer demand and freight capacity as indicated by freight prices.

The two main components of freight capacity are drivers and equipment. Once again, the driver pool is easier to adjust than equipment in terms of speed and broad impact.

Prices are a signaling device and as such shouldn't be interfered with unless you want to distort and obscure the environment.

The tools for impacting consumer demand on a macro scale are legislative and monetary. Monetary being the easier of the two with interest rate manipulation.

Due to transportation being one industry in an interconnected economy of many, when price signals primarily in trucking indicate the rise in consumer demand is outpacing the rise in drivers it's more prudent to avoid the sledgehammer of interest rate control that will affect the entire economy and instead opt for the scalpel of driver employment.

In summary, driver shortages are real, saying the term "driver shortages" saves a lot of time, and saying driver shortages doesn't mean the other factors of the equation don't exist.

 

You've put a lot of thought, maybe too much thought into this lol. I don't know that there is or isn't a driver shortage. I haven't seen any facts either way for real. Folks who think there is, have reasons why. Folks who think there isn't, like yourself, have their reasons why. I really don't care one way or the other. All I said it depends on who you ask. I only said in inclined to believe that there may be shortages in certain sectors of trucking. That's only an opinion, lol you ain't gotta recruit me to your opinion lol It really ain't that serious.

 

If you're employed in this industry it's a good idea to know if the driver shortage being talked about is real so that you know if you should seek a raise as a company driver or stay put.

And for all other positions in the industry, really being able to gauge the reality of today separates winners from losers tomorrow.

There's a lot of competition in the game of separating fools from what they value.

Shady brokers, shady dealers, shady businesses, and shady drivers...