THERE IS NO DRIVER SHORTAGE (?!)

Not everyone wants to be in the trades, including me.
Some of us are cut out for a more nomadic working life, such as trucking or merchant seaman or foreign oil fields or mercenary. I wonder if Wagner Group is hiring?

 

true, i'd venture a good percentage like the nomadic lifestyle. and i suspect many of those are single, in one way or another...divorce, widowed, just a lone wolf type.

we NEED all sorts of blue collar types.

not every can be or ever will be an instagram, or fans only star........

 

Where did I say it was a job? In 2011 I went to North Georgia Tech in Clarkesville GA for their commercial truck driving program. Was 10 weeks long and since it was a tech school not some mill like you probably attended I was able to use the Hope Grant and I got college credit as it counts as an elective.

 

Thank you for asking this question. I wish they would be required to teach how the system actually works.

There has been a driving force in this industry, it has always been the Mega carriers. They created this revolving door, which spins at different speeds. Right now, they are spinning slowly because we have too many drivers in trucks that shouldn't be there.

OK why?

Well, if you understand how these megas get their work done, you will understand why.

It has to do with how capacity is managed. Capacity is the number of trucks that are available for customers.

Capacity is spread out across different parts of the country or regions where their customers are located. They will have trailers sitting waiting for the customer's need, moving their product on demand, and this is part of the problem; they need drivers on demand to move that freight.

They will hire, say 20 drivers and put them to work for BS loads, and when their main customers call, they are flying over there to get that trailer out of there and delivered so as not to lose the work to their competitor.

Drivers get tired of waiting, and because they pay them mileage, the costs are minimal for them to keep them on the books. The trucks are a wash, so they can afford to run someone with crap work to keep them busy.

Right now we have too much capacity, too many drivers, and too many foreigners in trucks, that it is a slow time in the industry to hire.

So, back to why you see this, well, they have to keep the drivers coming in, that revolving door can not stop, even if they have no one beinbg put into trucks, they have to keep those apps coming in and putting lies ontrucks or on craig's list is cheap and easy which has people buying into this crap as if they would make the big bucks.

Now we come up with another reason why this revolving door is moving: retention in this industry is really poor. The last time I checked, there was 125% overturn rate for large and mega fleets, this is really bad but I think it has hit 95% because of lack of hiring. While small and medium fleets do have retention programs, the large and mega fleets do not.

OK I hope you get all of that, I am not doing my best to explain all of it with the interuptions I am dealing with, it gets really complex when you throw in the 1099 abusing fleets and the foriegners who should not be on the road at all, but you may get it.

 

So, what are you trying to say?

 

I don't know, maybe I need to get a job with Swift?

 

The driver shortage debate is a matter of perspective. The narrative is passed by the government, who uses mega carriers or carriers with mega capabilities as the measuring stick. What I mean by that is, those companies have direct freight, and they have the ability to get more loads from those customers. They could dominate the spot market(broker freight) if they so choose, and that segues into my next point: the other 90 percent of the industry is made up of small or upstart companies, owner/lease operators, lease purchase drivers. They all run off the spot market, as in load boards. It's 2 different worlds in trucking. Big corporate companies will say it's a driver shortage because they think their world is trucking. The little guys will say there is no driver shortage because it's too many trucks and not enough freight in the spot market. You'll always see those signs to keep applications stacked up. It's like some form of encouragement to enter the industry from the powerhouse companies. Also, different sectors of trucking have more saturation than others. Dry van and reefer has less demand than flatbed and tanker does probably. That's only an example. All that said, it depends on who you ask.

 

Megas don't have the capacity available to dominate spot. That's why spot exists in the first place it's excess loads. Megas account for about 5% or less of available trucks out there.

The perceived shortage is just driver turnover. Churn. The only reasons for it are low wages and poor working conditions. There's hundreds of thousands of CDL holders in this country that don't drive trucks for a living because they've been there and done that so there you go. A large pool of available drivers.

 

There is never a shortage of cheap freight and never a shortage of employers looking drivers just smart enough to hold a steering wheel but dumb enough to work for cheap pay.

 

There is a big shortage of professional drivers. Idiots with a CDL are a dime a dozen.