Fair to assume the driver shortage is real?

no i did not hire any of them

As for job jumpers they hear about $0.02 / mile more and they want it , just look on this site a posters posts about a company with positive input he gets bombarded with a 100 ? about where they hire , what trucks, where do they run , will they hire me with a dui and on and on

And we do not pay CRAP WAGES also drivers get paid for what they do , Hub mileage all their Drop / Hook's , Tarp, Untarp + waiting time , border crossings

 

shortage of drivers for crap pay....no shortage of drivers for good pay....

 

So I guess I was a sucker for working @swift .25cpm, my reasoning was well"......gotta start somewhere

and yes many of you made fun of me in my 62 mph swiftie truck.....

And yes I did piss many of you off by staying in the pass lane

 

Strict and picky companies:
swift
wener
schneider
jb blunt
and to add to the list 'fleet master' who are offering me .33 cpm and wonder why I won't call them back

 

I will not give them the satisfaction, and it kinda pisses me off that having 4 yrs exp they offer .33 cpm and .03 cpm bonus upon successful deliveries / dot insp.

 

In fairness to the OP, we are seeing a shortage of qualified drivers in the flatbed side of things, and we are slowly seeing the effects of such. Pay is ever so slowly increasing, rates are climbing, better benefits are being offered to the drivers, so on and so forth.

Older drivers are retiring, or in some cases dying off. I can't get through a week in the office without hearing about another "old school driver from back in the day" who has hung up his keys for the last time, either through retirement or health complications leading to that inevitable end we all face one day. And the few younger drivers who are willing to join the industry stick with dry van and reefer because they don't typically want to deal with the tarps and chains (a common complaint that is almost as old as trucking itself), or dive into the gas/oil fields as soon as possible for the big money paychecks (and who could blame them?). Plus, my own personal experience shows that many of the younger fellas coming into the field just don't have the work ethic of the older drivers. I consider it bad when there's a driver in his twenties who I can outwork and outdrive with minimal effort, especially when one considers the fact I am bone lazy.

So yes, I do think there is an actual driver shortage coming. The trucking industry as a whole has not done anything to tempt young men and women into the field as a career. The folks coming in don't want to work as hard as we flatbedders do, as a generalization (there are some younger folks coming into flatbedding, and I appreciate every one of them. There just aren't enough of them, unfortunately). And the older folks are either retiring, croaking, or moving into other positions in the field or office.

Buckle up, boys and girls, its gonna be a wild ride!

 

Left jb @.39 cpm so this was a totally out of the ballpark figure - this is the problem attracting drivers