The driver shortage (solved)

Fair point but there's a lot more revenue in the back of LTL trailers then truckload freight trailers.

More money may help keep some interested in staying with it but those will not be enough to sustain the truckload industry. So, they'd end up paying more wages to the same inept crop of "drivers" who simply don't have the work ethic needed. Why pay a premium rate for a sub-standard product?

I'm a firm believer in a "rapid and aggressive wage escalation program" that you don't see much out here. But you have to earn your bones, prove your worth and dependability first.

 

The truth is according to the laws of supply and demand (an economic pricing model) there is no such thing as a shortage. If the quantity supplied goes down, the price must go up. Drivers are the supply and jobs are the demand. The price will adjust to equilibrium, that is to say the amount of drivers willing to work for what the jobs are willing to pay. Shortages only exist when there is external forces keeping the prices low.

 

Kind of like the high paying LTL's and UPS parcel runs new hires on extra board before they get a steady bid run.

Also during the ICC era many of those low turnover high paying trucking employers were moving high paying regulated truckload freight. The unregulated industry of today doesn't even have to adhere to the fair labor act rules that protect fast food workers . So 40 years later the big experiment has been completed and we know the result. I'm not nessarily advocating a return to economic regulation of the industry (ICC), however I do feel that it would only be fair to have the industry adhere to the Fair Labor Act, a law that governs most other industries in the US.

 

Yes, the big truck load carriers have made high driver turnover a part of their business model and freight is moving. Instead of the Truckload Carriers Association members complaining about a lack of drivers they should examine their business model, but they don't because their really isn't a shortage of drivers, just a high turnover business model.

 

Advocates of economic regulations would argue that free markets don't always yield the optimum results for society/country. I think we're seeing this politically with the debate over job/industry loss to globalization in the US . Globalization is of course a product of free market ideology. Ironically the Chinese (a big globalization winner) are not necessarily disciples of Adam Smiths philosophy.

 

The trucking companies may be accepting the reality of inability to raise freight rates while keeping the customer and the reality that without raising driver pay a large portion of new drivers will be gone soon.

 

Deng Xiaopeng, the father of Chinese economic reform, would disagree with you. His first moves in the 1970’s of opening up domestic agriculture to the competitive free market is straight out of Adams Smiths book. One can argue that China has embraced Smith’s model more closely than the US.

 

I remember the driver storm of the 90s when every one had trucks sitting on the fence and checkbooks started opening , and was economy driven .
This latest storm is a different animal and multi faceted and I think things are going to get hot and times will be good for awhile for drivers and owner ops .
Things are heating up but it hasn't hit the point yet where carriers are on they're knees begging for drivers ...but they all short drivers .
Right now they are just throwing out a little here and there but it will get interesting for sure !

 

I don't claim to know anything about any Models, but China after they were exposed to the west took some of our ideas and looked back to their own history far enough back to regenerate what is coming say 200 years down the road with the new Belt system they are building. (Quite aggressively I might add)

I remember the ICC era. If I am right, you had to prove a place for every truck and load you hauled before you were allowed to run it. I could be mistaken.

You are not going to dismiss a 747 pilot instantly for something rubbing his aircraft on the ramp as a preventable as we rub out newbies and some experienced hands who make a whoops once in a while. Physics can be unforgiving among other things. But we go through a awful lot of truckers in the first say 3 years time, with more particular in the first 6 months.

I think sometimes how interesting it would be when all fleet OWNERS buy nothing but robot trucks in say 20 years time and not hire a single driver for anything. Then whoops that load is late. How do you blame a computer robot? You don't.

Im not sure I would be able to sleep at night with 1000 trucks without people in them roaming the nation in god only knows what weather conditions and so on and how much I stand to lose come morning when customers call the office demanding where is my late freight by the dozen. and there I am looking up computer dots around the USA wondering what to do with all these robots that are late. Id be out of business the following week.

I have a mix of feelings towards the industry. Partly because I have been at times treated badly and bit back equally at times myself. I recall a load that went really sideways for reason of payroll or something I forget exactly. But anyway that trailer was put aside into a truckstop on a drop and signed into that truckstop for the company to find another driver and bobtail to it to repower asap while I went home.

That trailer contained tires for ford for a particular assembly plant which had to stop without those tires for a while. That yelling probably continued to this day. I lost a year not being hireble when the true extent of possibly millions plural that were lost in stopping and restarting that stupid plant over a short time because of some tiny amount of money problems. That was a very very very long time ago and I still get a little bit upset when fleets get tight fisted thinking they have a load in the bag and drivers don't matter. They are wrong. And so was I. Almost like a divorce so to speak.

It was not necessary that kind of loss. Hollywood could not make up some of the losses that happen to people in trucking whatever they might be doing specifically trying to make a living. Not just existing but actually attempting to thrive. Not everyone is going to get there.

 

The ones I like are the ones on my facebook feed begging for drivers that hosed me in the past and had that our poo poo doesent stink tude ...they can pee up a rope !