Is it slow for everyone

Speak for yourself, I still sleep with my horse!! lol

 

Yeppers. The truck to load ratio is really bad right now on this lane. Produce will start up soon enough, then you'll be on top the rate world again!

 

Last February we had a big snow event which gave me an excuse to take a lot of time off LOL. But yes, February is typically a slow month.

 

Yea. With a White Volvo parked in Elk Grove Village.
I do love to wear Addidas pants and in Sumner time will wear flip flops. As a matter of fact, miss them now very much.
Ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha!

 

Well, I'm catching up on some paperwork here in N. CA in my white Volvo too.

I'm wearing Nike track pants and NB tennis shoes though. No flip flops for me. Even though it's sunny and heading for 74 degrees here today.

 

Just my humble opinion, but my thoughts on the whole thing are as follows, the whole world took a huge dump in 2008, then we had 8 years of VERY SLOW growth, plus a LOT of Quantitative Easing by the Gov. nobody REALLY wanted to bet big on if it was over and for how long.

Then another election, a couple of tax changes and some regulations get cut and EVERYBODY that had been sitting on the sidelines for all those years wants to jump in, from the O/O that had been keeping his old truck together with duct tape and baling wire, to the small business owner who was worn out from covering excess hours and work because he/she didn't want to take a chance on hiring anyone else or upgrading equipment, to the large corporations that had tons of money sitting off shore that they were afraid to invest or weren't sure where to invest.

Everything and everybody jumps into high gear and production, jobs, manufacturing, speculation, investment, all goes through the roof, now things have slowed a bit for various reasons, time of year, bulk of large original orders are already thru the system, a possible pandemic in the works, a large long GM strike, we are in an Election Year, etc. Now you have some people/companies that are closing the doors, mostly, either they weren't on solid ground to start with or they are falling prey to exaggerated operating business costs to Workman's Comp, Cargo/Liability, Taxes, etc. Some of them simply because of overestimating business goals, some because of not up to par business practices bit them in the butt.

Basically, you are at the "end" of the Rubber Band syndrome, a LOT of people got greedy, some overspent, some got over leveraged, it can happen to the best of us, BUT, it will turn around soon enough, I think people in general have a bad habit of embracing too much of the good times and not remembering enough of the bad times, Again, JMHO.

 

Exactly. People have short memories. They keep saying how terrible today is because they don't remember what it was like before the recent two year spike.

 

Even though the stock market is down nearly 2000 points in the last two days due to an overseas freakout on the coronavirus, I'm bullish on reefer rates in the near term.

Check out prepper food websites and prepper foods on Amazon. They are out or all but out. All its going to take is a few social media posts and more confirmed cases in the US to spread panic and there will be a run on the grocery stores like we saw in Italy yesterday.

 

The hell with talk about freight. Every one out on the water today hit the bag limit on sheepshead. It was a very good day.

 

Lots of things in this world are counter intuitive - negative resistance, economies of scale/decreasing returns to scale, anything with the prefex "quantum".

I once had a trainee who darn near red lined the rpms on every shift. He claimed that he was being more efficient in both fuel and time shifting his way. One day we had a little extra time, so I had him take a lap around Terre Haute - about a 5 mile square with lots of stop signs, etc. As we left the Pilot I started a stop watch and reset the digital fuel gauge (not an precise measuring device but accurate for our purpose). I had him take a lap, then I took a lap and we compared results. I used less fuel and time. He claimed it was because I caught the lights better, so we did another lap. His results were the same as his first lap. Then we did one more lap where he shifted when I told him to - time and fuel were about halfway between his way of doing things and my results. Sometimes perception and reality are two different things.

People who say immigrants drive down wages tend to think in single variable equations. That if the supply of labor increases, the demand for labor will stay the same, thus decreasing wages. In reality when you change the supply of a commodity, you also change the supply and demand of other commodities, which then change the demand of the first commodity.

Say you have a 5,000 person, closed economy town. Then 200 people move to town - no new industry, they just show up. Those 200 people will be competing for the jobs of the 5,000 already there, but they will also be renting/buying housing, buying groceries, fuel etc. The higher demand for those other commodities then creates jobs which the 200 fill. An oversimplified example, but it illustrates the point.

Read it again. It talks about the different approaches to calculating the impact of immigration on wages. The only mentions to farms are "natives tend not to enter into manual farm labor" and that restricting low wage immigrants would more likely than not result in automation rather than higher wages.

You price a job based on the skills and the available labor supply.

In my early days I was a professional swim coach. I ran a private club team of 120 "athletes" age 8 to 18. I had 4 part time assistant coaches. In the summer I ran a community pool - lifeguards, swim lessons, etc - generally a staff of 20.

For my assistant coaches I paid them as much as I could. Two of them made more per hour than I did. Base pay for the lifeguards was $1 over minimum wage, with at least at $.25 raise each year, swim instructors got $.50 over minimum without WSI, $1 over with. I also arranged private lessons at $20 a half hour for the better instructors, all of which went to the instructor. If you worked the whole season with no write ups, missed shifts, etc then you got a bonus. This is after my first year when I had no say in pay amounts. I fought with the Park Board over what I wanted to pay the staff. They saw no problem in paying minimum wage, whereas I looked at the fact they had to get certified and were subject to random auditing which could invalidate their "license". What I found over time is the better I paid, the better things went. There was less absenteeism, more professionalism, and less overall cost. I didn't have to run additional training sessions mid-summer to replace guards, I didn't have to pay overtime, and I didn't have to work as much.

In short I found the same result as Henry Ford when he made his "best decision" - doubling his workers pay rates. In theory, and in Wall Street's opinion, it would cut into, if not kill Ford's profits. Ford did it to create stability in his workforce, but a side benefit is that his workers were able to spend more, which generated profits for others, who then bought Ford automobiles.

One thing I don't understand about your push back to paying a living wage - if a person working a 40 hour week can't afford to house, feed, and clothe himself he is eligible for governmental assistance - welfare. Welfare is funded through taxes, that you and I pay. Why should you and I accept the burden of supporting low wage workers while someone else profits?

Please do.

So for you have been light on providing the reasoning behind your thinking.