True or not true: Trucking Industry Struggles With Growing Driver Shortage

So true ! ..like the jb hunt and cr England drivers I saw platooning on ice in Missouri the other day ...at 60 mph .
Brainless morons .

 

There is a shortage of drivers if you start from the premise
This contract pays X per mile. Our company expenses are Y per mile. That leaves Z profit which is very close to the minimum we think is justified for this business. So, if we can only spend Y on ALL EXPENSES, INCLUDING DRIVER PAYROLL we are already paying the maximum possible in pay. Unless the trucks become 20% more efficient or fuel/insurance suddenly cost 20% less we are in a rock and a hard place. No room to budge. The company options then are finding drivers who lust after making what the company pays (ex-cons, recent immigrants, the chronically unemployed, etc.). When all that leaves you with empty trucks you call the reporter/editor/candlestick maker at the local fish-wrapper and cry about the driver shortage.

The economics of trucking, I believe, don't really support higher pay. Customers are free to pick transporters with lower rates and good-enough performance. Until trucking companies revolutionize their operations, whatever that means, their costs are probably near the bottom of possibility. Something will eventually change, but I don't see why replacing most of the back office isn't more likely than replacing drivers. Nobody will know how this will work out until it happens. There will be as many theories of what might happen as people guessing but unless someone is will ing to throw away a paycheck now so they aren't the last driver replaced by a robot, what's the point of trying to guess what happens? There is no prize for guessing right or bonus points for most anxiety generated. Have a plan if you have to leave driving, google trucking jobs every few months. Stop worrying. Remember how peak oil was going to end our economy. If you've never lived through mass-hysteria it's scary at first. Then you realize those people are always scared and the "reporters for one hysteria just move to the next hysteria. They've been warning about the last 9 out of 1 of the last real dangers. They are mostly wrong, most of the time.

 

One of the main reasons this is my last week in the profession. 20 years is enough.

 

The same with me. I will never forget where I was and what I was doing the day I decided to hang it up. Then as luck would have it about 6 months later I had to start using 2 kinds insulin injections and about 3 months after that I had to start taking Anticonvulsants after a serious seizure and having an EEG done. Having epilepsy aint all that bad. About once every 3 or 4 weeks I get to take a trip and never leave the farm.

 

I’m 57, and type II diabetic. Well, that and I’m just sick of it!

 

You'll find there is a huge driver turnover with most of the large companies of course they won't be coming out any time soon to admit this, however its a fact of life in the transport industry, as for driverless trucks not sure how that would work out anyway, i've yet to see a computer being able to discern the difference between a red / green light. Or how to back onto a dock, how to fuel up, how to obey traffic signals etc etc.

 

I'm 60 and a type 2 diabetic that can no longer take the pills. This is one reason I get up on a soapbox about drivers taking care to eat right. I made those same mistakes when much younger. Those injections 4 times a day start to hurt and my fingers stay sore from the testing. I would not wish this life on anyone. I got sick of it many years before I finally hung it up. I just had to make sure my investments were such I could live on them. I have NO faith that social (in)security will be around all that much longer!

 

Sad to hear this.

 

Then I think in a certain time robot trucks will eliminate human costs, payroll drain and losses so that companies can remain profitable.

If the rates do not go up overall, then the industry must fail in time because cost of living, inflation etc every thing rises over time.

 

I'm one of those. Held my Class 1 for going on 6 years now. Its something I'm keeping in my back pocket for now. I love trucks and love driving them but I don't think I'd survive a week at a mega lol.