Climate Express

Actually, I think it's the other way around.....the government kowtows to the big boys regardless of industry. In our world, for instance, Werner had elogs long before any other company did. Werner is a huge player in trucking. When did they start with elogs, mid to late 90s? When one big company does it, and its effective, other companies will eventually follow suit. The American way is to believe that those with the biggest money know what's best for all. Werner starts elogs, then other companies started using them early 2010s( I could be wrong there, feel free to correct me). When Swift, Prime, JB Hunt, Schnieder and all these other companies got on board, the writing was on the wall. The government sees these well known carriers doing it, so why not mandate the other 90 or so percent of the industry? Look at the argument of driver shortage. Why is that a popular discussion? Is there a shortage? Well....if you ask the aforementioned companies, they'll say yes. They've dominated the direct shipper market so they arent always reliant on the spot market. The ATA's data will come solely from those companies. Ask the small business guys, who have to rely only on spot market to get loads. They will say it ain't a driver shortage. Even with broker loads, in my estimation megas could probably put just about every small business under. Broker puts 5 loads on the board going from Denver to STL. Climate will say, "We will take all 5 of them." Climate has a reputation with certain brokers, so they have an idea what Climate will haul for, and you combine that with fire power, what can the one truck O/O do? The broker cut out back and forth negotiations and what not and moved 5 loads versus the 1 every so often. I got a little carried away...ooops....but point being, once the government looks at big companies (because its convenient) they will just legislate their practices. Now to be fair, there are a number of idiot drivers out here that poured gas on that fire. As drivers, we have to take a little bit of blame too.

 

Oh.....haha. You're right. All we can do is be patient.

 

It has. You're right. Because you've got Knight-Swift, Werner, Schneider, JB Hunt, Prime, and I'll throw Heartland Express, Covenant Transport, US Express in there. Heartland and Covenant in recent years have bought up decently sized companies. There are your largest OTR companies, then everyone else kinda falls wherever they fall. That driver that told you that, he had tremendous vision. He sees USA for what it is....a country that values big money/big business.

 

Yup...that author poured gas on my thought about driver shortage. It depends on which you ask. The larger carriers(with customer freight) say, yes there is. The independents/small fleets(90 % or the industry who solely use spot market freight) will say it ain't. I will disagree with one thing in the article. She says raising wages will help with retention. It won't. The money that is made in trucking is a major upgrade from where just about all of is came from. To me trucking is good money. What makes people quit is the lifestyle. Too many people see the money, and get into it without actually researching the industry. Trucking requires you to give up a lot, and most people don't want to give up weekends, holidays etc. It dont look appealing in the least. You can throw all the money in the world at someone, but if they love their life in a fairy tale, and the job don't add to that fairy tale, they will quit.