Dropping like flies....

From the article;

" Last year, we wrote a commentary about California’s hostile environment for the trucking industry labeled “California’s Hostile Environment for the Trucking Industry.” "

 

I saw that and had a laugh. But seriously, California is killing itself.

 

Can we build the border fence,,,, in Nevada?

 

If you want to cut the 5th largest economy in the world off from the US, they could likely survive on their own.

Businesses often blame regulation when it's their own fault. I've seen enough of how stupid trucking many company owners are by now, I know who's fault it really is. Can read about it every day all day on TTR.

 

Running a trucking company in California is difficult but it's not impossible. In the time our little company has been in business we've seen many other outfits come and go.
Most of the ones who fail get caught in regulatory non compliance problems or tried to play fast and loose with the tax people. The days when you could do that are gone forever.
Northern California seems a lot easier to do business in than the bottom half of the state.
That being said, if we had to do it all over again we'd probably move the company to southern Oregon and still serve the area we serve now.

 

If you are keeping score, this is the sixth major trucking company failure of 2019.

If you call a 30 employee's a major trucking company you just may be engaging in sensational journalism.

 

My boss says it's almost impossible to get a new employee paid if he's got issues he didn't disclose on his application. (Child support, tax liens, bad life choices.) used to be he could hire a guy with "a past" and the guy could work a few months before trouble caught up to him, now they garnish him almost immediately.

But that's an aside,

Compliance is a full time job for two office people minimum. So just to open the doors you need a truck, two HR/tax/safety/compliance people (even if they share duties) and a driver/salesman/dispatcher.

So you probably need at least 3 profitable trucks to break even.

 

Keep in mind the largest company NEMF, is/was owned by a bunch of billionaires out in the Hamptons that had tons of money in other endeavors. They simply shut one of their least profitable investments, they had no passion for the business.

And in spite of 1400 units coming off the road in my area, we still haven't seen an increase in demand up this way.

 

Take the ones that have closed vs total number of registered trucks and it's around .0007%. Doesn't really make much difference.