Driver shortage

I believe insurance companies are also driving the hiring standards in this industry. This further reduces the number of qualified drivers. Can the small fleet owners on here weigh in?

 

100 wanna drive truck. 50 wont pass DOT, Drug (Including Pain medicine and legal state pot which is illegally at the fed level where all trucking is)

Out of that 50, hopefully 35 will have decent driving records and show a good work history to come to orientation. Call 5 gone by weeks end. That leaves 30. 10 will burn out in 90 days and quit, leave or be fired for preventable.

Out of that 20? Maybe a handful after 10 years including death, disability, jailing and injury among a thousand ways to screw up a CDL.

It DOES NOT help that the Post 9-11 security posture vs people wanting a CDL has gotten seriously hard. Even though I know my adult record is clean as a virgin and can get sec clearances etc. I still wont do it today. It's not worth it.

That's part of another reason that some truckers no longer run.

I think way back to about 1994. CDL laws for me was judgement day that year in Maryland for me personally. I have to convert from old Class A or go back to car license. I converted. That day hundreds did at that smaller DMV which was overstaffed for that work.

Many many good truckers simply failed to convert went to work in the auto plant or something good.

In addition JBH for example was training tens of thousands in their schools to support their fleet and growing business. Unfortunately once trained and they run a bit to learn how much nicer everyone else ran at that time they quit and took the CDL and training with them right out of JBH. So JBH Closed the schools. (I eventually worked for them at the end of my trucking OTR despite growing medical issues but it would be the very last experiment. Only because the wages and payroll with them along dispatcher was near perfect. So there is that.

Satellites showed up about that same time. Then computer engines. Instantly the governing started.

Edit. We were in split speed limits for trucks and cars in that era. Now we have no splits hardly anywhere and can get up to run at 75-85 legally to make time. But no herds of trucks stuck at 61 fill up I-40 all the way to Virginia from Memphis each night trying to pass one another every 10 miles while the cars fight to get around them.

Split speed limits by proxy all over again this time by companys themselves.

Then spread from there to what you see today.

I'll die a trucker. But I think the industry died itself about 2003.

 

I saw a short driver today.

 

Did you rest your drink on his head?

 

Nope it was hot.

 

Totally true

 

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