[HN Gopher] High schoolers are training to drive 18-wheelers ami...
___________________________________________________________________
High schoolers are training to drive 18-wheelers amid shortage of
truck drivers
Author : pseudolus
Score : 221 points
Date : 2021-10-19 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| bluedino wrote:
| Life on the road is tough. Lonely, eating truck stop food and
| sitting for 12 hours a day is terrible, not to mention being
| trapped in a truck for your whole life.
|
| Then there's the drugs and prostitution.
| cmckn wrote:
| It's really hard on your family too. I had a few friends in
| high school who's dads drove trucks, some of them single
| fathers. Those kids almost certainly did worse in school and
| got into more shit because their dad was gone all the time.
| It's a really tough gig.
| tomohawk wrote:
| This is not going to help. You have to be 21.
|
| Also, California's AB5 law has outlawed owner operators, which is
| a very large chunk of how trucking has worked for decades, making
| trucking a less desirable career. This is also one of the big
| reasons for the large backlog at the CA ports.
| tomschlick wrote:
| Is there anything that CA hasn't over-regulated to stupid
| levels yet?
| scohesc wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that a single state is able to cause
| such large supply problems nationally (and internationally)
| because of a law barring independent trucking companies from
| doing business in their state.
|
| But then again, it _is_ California so I'm not surprised.
|
| I just hope that maybe whoever is making the laws comes to
| their senses, because they're not just hurting California with
| this legislation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Also, California's AB5 law has outlawed owner operators
|
| No, it didn't. To the extent anything did, the application by
| the California Supreme Court of the ABC test in _Dynamex_
| (prior to AB5) did (which also isn 't _entirely_ true, owner-
| operators usually meet 2 of the 3 prongs of the test, and the
| third prong depends on the core business of the employing firm;
| some will pass and some won't.) AB5 actually created an
| explicit time-limited exemption to the ABC test for certain
| owner-operators of trucks (notably, in construction.)
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I thought the longshoremen were the bottleneck; you're saying
| they can't get enough trucks to the docks either?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| AB5 did not outlaw owner-operators; however, some owner-
| operator fleets have _decided_ not to operate in California due
| to possible driver reclassification from contractors to
| employees due to AB5.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Sure it did. That's why there's been a big lawsuit by the
| trucking industry to get it overturned, as it outlaws a
| longstanding business practice.
|
| https://www.caltrux.org/ab-5-faq/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Sure it did.
|
| No, it didn't. One because as the FAQ you link notes,
| owner-operators of trucks are _not_ categorically banned.
| Second, as your FAQ also obliquely indicates but fails to
| clearly and directly state, to the extent ant existing
| business process was banned, it was banned by the
| California Supreme Court decision in _Dynamex_ applying the
| ABC test to determine employee vs. contractor status, which
| is why the lawsuit it refers to against the application of
| the ABC test was _before_ AB5 was passed, and later amended
| to include claims challenging AB5, which codified the rule
| of _Dynamex_ , added exceptions, and made some consistency
| changes in other law so that relationships that were
| employment for some purposes under _Dynamex_ would not
| still be contractor relationships for purposes of other
| law.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| An owner-operator making a haul for Costco is not at all
| prevented from operating in California as they can satisfy
| the ABC test for contracting. Large logistic companies that
| hire owner-operators on a contract basis are impacted as
| their restrictions on the contracts bump the owner-operator
| into the employee rather than contractor bucket. This
| increases costs, so they are pushing back.
|
| Seems likely that there will eventually be a care out for
| trucking since that industry was not really the target of
| AB5 in the first place.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Seems likely that there will eventually be a care out
| for trucking since that industry was not really the
| target of AB5 in the first place.
|
| AB5 which codified the existing ABC test, made it
| consistent so that people in one working relationship
| with an employer wouldn't be employees for some purposes
| and contractors for others, and carved out industry
| specific exceptions to the test--those _exceptions_ were
| the specific "targets", not every other industry in the
| state where the existing judicially-applied ABC test was
| merely codified. Trucking already got some exceptions in
| AB5 (so they kind of were a "target"); they might get
| more.
|
| The gig-economy firm propaganda that they were _targets_
| of AB5, rather than just a particular moneyed interest
| that was out of compliance with the law before AB5, is
| inaccurate.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Fair enough. That you for expanding the conversation.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Is there really a shortage of truck drivers? Or are there enough
| people with the needed licences, but they'd rather work in
| McDonalds, because they pay more?
| Justsignedup wrote:
| This might be accurate. Also at McDonald's you don't have to be
| away from home for weeks or months at a time.
| gruez wrote:
| "Is there really a shortage of houses? Or are there enough
| houses, but they'd rather sell to investors/foreign buyers,
| because they pay more?"
| all2 wrote:
| This is actually a thing, though. Chinese interests own a
| huge amount of land in the US, for example, and they're
| buying more every year [0].
|
| [0] https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/07/china-is-buying-
| bil...
| rmah wrote:
| That article says "As of the start of 2020, Chinese
| investors owned about 192,000 acres of U.S. agricultural
| land valued at about $1.9 billion". That's out of 900mil
| acres of farmland in the USA. So about 0.02% -- hardly a
| "huge amount".
| all2 wrote:
| True. For added perspective, the top 100 largest land
| owners possess about 40 million acres throughout the US
| [0].
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-
| landowners-i...
| tpxl wrote:
| Land and building permits are way harder to obtain than a
| truck driving license.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I mean.. houses are an item.... a better question would be,
| is there enough (desirable) land to build houses on, and will
| the government let you build there.
|
| I live in a city where we have enough land, but the
| government wont let anyone build pretty much anywhere, and
| the housing prices are horrible.
| omginternets wrote:
| Is this a literary device or does McDonald's actually pay more
| than long-haul trucking??
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| $30 an hour driving might be more than $12 an hour at
| Macnaldo's or Prince Hamburger, you're only getting paid for
| the eight hours you're driving and not for the time you're
| away from home.
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on how you do it, long haul trucking is a worse job
| than McDonald's, if McDonald's is paying enough.
|
| > The average truck driver salary in the USA is $61,843 per
| year or $31.71 per hour. Entry level positions start at
| $45,970 per year while most experienced workers make up to
| $85,000 per year.
|
| McDonald's is approaching $20/hr around here, which is
| getting close to those entry-level positions, no special
| training needed, and you get to live at home with family
| instead of being OTR all the time.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Would be curious to know what general area you live in to
| understand how McD's can pay close to $20/h. Presumably a
| very high COL.
| runako wrote:
| McD's won't start everyone at $20/h, but in an
| environment where starting wage is $15-$17, shift
| managers will be at least within striking distance of
| $20/h. This is not necessarily in a high COL area.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I was just in rural Idaho and the McDonald's sign said
| pay starting at $15/hour. COL index is about 5% higher
| than national average, based on a quick search.
| bombcar wrote:
| No, it's a low COL area but there are just no workers.
| Closing shifts are $18/19 starting (at least according to
| the sign they've had stuck up since before COVID).
| dagw wrote:
| My understanding is that it really depends on how you
| calculate pay. Trucking is often paid pr mile driven rather
| than pr hour 'worked'. So if you divide your total wage by
| the number of hours you are in or around your truck then
| hourly wage can come out much lower than McDonald's.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Here in Canada, truckers have an entry wage of about $18/h.
| Starbucks pays $15-16 and from what I've heard anecdotally,
| has excellent benefits and flexible hours, neither of which
| are guaranteed as a long-hauler.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I used this as a literary device, because apart from many
| other unregulated professions, trucking requires special
| licences that most people don't have. Anyone can clean
| toilets, most just don't want to for the money offered. Not
| anyone can drive a trucks... so i was wondering is this a
| "not enough licenced people" issue to cover the work, even
| with "infinite pay", or just a "not enough pay" issue for
| people with licences and other job offers.
|
| But considering the other comments, McDonalds-like jobs pay
| similar amounts of pay for a lot better working conditions
| (less responsibility, stay at home with family, less
| dangerous,...).
| nsv wrote:
| Retail and food service management can be pretty lucrative.
| For an entry level position though I can't imagine this would
| be true.
| macinjosh wrote:
| It is my understanding that at least a part of the problem (not
| sure how significant) is that some new pollution prevention
| regs at California ports have sidelined many independent
| operators because their rigs do not meet the required
| standards. New trucks are extremely expensive so a good chunk
| of these operators have left the market.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| There is absolutely no labor shortage in america, it's 100% a
| fair wage shortage. Truck drivers are a bit like boot campers
| in a way, you can go and take like a 6-month course and become
| one. So the market flooded with these folks, and while let's
| just say a fair wage for a truck driver would be around 100K a
| year, most are only making 60 to 70.
|
| I bet if the trucking companies decide it to start all of their
| employees at 110k they'd have no shortage of people willing to
| drive.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The workforce participation rate is at an all time low. There
| are ~5 million fewer people looking for work than in 2019.
|
| This is like saying that there is no housing shortage, just a
| shortage of people willing to pay a fair price.
| thehappypm wrote:
| This is hugely due to (mostly) women leaving the workforce
| to take over childcare due to closed schools.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Then that sounds like a shortage to me. Raising wages
| isn't going to make the kids disappear.
| painfulpox wrote:
| Raising wages will make daycare a financially reasonable
| decision again.
| markkanof wrote:
| Wouldn't the wages for daycare workers need to be raised
| as well?
| schnevets wrote:
| +1. America has two different labor pools: those who are
| willing to compromise on their lifestyles and those who will
| only accept a living wage.
|
| One side of America has been celebrating a reduction of
| migrants entering the country for four years, and now
| suddenly business owners are seeing that resource pool run
| dry. Even if these business owners did not rely on immigrant
| laborers, their own workforce is finding more opportunities.
| In many ways, it seems like that particular populist
| administration has provided what was promised.
|
| Unless there is some major shift back to the norm, I can see
| businesses shifting to leverage labor more productively. I
| don't think this is a bad thing - America has always been
| addicted to its cheap, exploitable labor and this trend has
| gotten worse over the last three decades. Hopefully, these
| changes can continue to be more equitable to both sides. I
| could also foresee a reduction in excessive consumption -
| maybe a reduction in the number of "fast casual dining
| trends" and other horizontal growth trends.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Something not mentioned in the article, and I'm sad to see NPR
| ignore is that the trucking industry turned predatory in the past
| few years (mainly because I'm sure they reported on it in the
| past).
|
| Certain logistics companies have been pushing drivers into
| "owner-operator" scenarios, where they are responsible for gas,
| insurance, maintenance, and lease payments, while not being given
| the flexibility to drive for other companies. Leaving some
| drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay didn't
| cover expenses).
|
| I'm betting they are going after 18 years olds specifically
| because they are kind of primed to into debt for a career because
| the college admissions process kind of primes them to think this
| is normal.
| iammisc wrote:
| > while not being given the flexibility to drive for other
| companies. Leaving some drivers with negative paychecks
| (basically, their pay didn't cover expenses).
|
| This seems to me that the drivers should just file a self-
| written W-2 as a statutory employee and let the IRS figure it
| out. Not allowing an 'owner-operator' to work for other
| companies pretty clearly puts the 'owners' into the category of
| statutory employee.
| acdha wrote:
| That's easy to say if you can trivially find another job. If
| they're concerned about that and don't want to be in a tax
| case (which seems extra unappealing for someone who spends
| most of the day driving) they probably won't - and that's
| what those companies are banking on.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Truck drivers with a clean driving record can trivially
| find another job.
|
| Now if they are locked into some Uber-like scam where their
| employer financed "their" truck purchase it may be more
| complicated.
| caethan wrote:
| California regulatory requirements basically shut down
| drivers owning their own trucks: the cheap old diesel
| trucks aren't in compliance anymore. So there's a lot of
| scummy leasing arrangements for the newer more expensive
| trucks.
| acdha wrote:
| That's what the situation in this thread sounded like:
| those companies must have some kind of lever to force
| exclusivity and I'd assume it's something like a loan.
| iammisc wrote:
| You don't need to do anything. The IRS will fight this one
| for you.
| acdha wrote:
| The question is whether _they_ are confident enough that
| this will be true, not lead to retaliation, and some
| consequences will happen. If not, a lot of people might
| feel they're trapped.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| This banned in California last year as a boon to unions and it
| completely decimated the ability to ship products from
| warehouses in California. They destroyed the economy through
| legislation.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Yep the whole "owner operator" thing is just another scam. It
| seems like I'm seeing fewer of those on the road lately but
| that may just be that I'm seeing fewer of them not that there
| actually are fewer.
| klenwell wrote:
| My local NPR station, KCRW, actually did a great series on this
| years ago covering Long Beach / LA port:
|
| https://www.kcrw.com/news/articles/cargoland-a-brief-history...
|
| Here's a site they created dedicated to it:
|
| http://cargoland.kcrw.com/the-pirate/
|
| Since listening to that, a lot of the recent news I've been
| seeing, including this article, haven't been a surprise to me.
|
| I remember they talked specifically about how predatory the
| trucking industry is. They interviewed both the truckers and
| some of the representative from companies exploiting them.
| (Business model didn't sound all that different from Uber.
| Drivers pay for their own trucks, work as independent
| contractors, while large operating under control of companies.)
|
| I can't actually locate it on this site so it may have been
| reported in some follow-up stories. Or perhaps in details of
| actual story audio.
| orev wrote:
| Planet Money has a great report in this:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Certain logistics companies have been pushing drivers into
| "owner-operator" scenarios, where they are responsible for gas,
| insurance, maintenance, and lease payments, while not being
| given the flexibility to drive for other companies. Leaving
| some drivers with negative paychecks (basically, their pay
| didn't cover expenses).
|
| So basically the trucking industry looked at Uber and Lyft and
| said "Oh, hey. Neat."
| ozim wrote:
| No, from what I remember 10yrs ago when Uber was still
| starting it was already quite popular to push people into
| 'fake B2B' arrangement.
|
| I remember truck drivers, paramedics and others pushed into
| 'fake B2B' for years and there is quite a lot of regulation
| in EU that if you have a single customer as a single
| proprietor you might be checked if it is 'fake B2B'.
|
| Being an "app company" just made it easier.
| maltalex wrote:
| Today's high schoolers are going to retire in the 2060's.
|
| Something tells me that being a truck driver isn't going to be
| much of a career by then.
| adolph wrote:
| > Something tells me that being a truck driver isn't going to
| be much of a career by then.
|
| Github: "You rang?"
|
| https://copilot.github.com/
| mywittyname wrote:
| Everyone should expect to change careers a few times in their
| life. Forty years ago was 1980. The world has changed
| dramatically in since then.
|
| Even if you are in ostensibly the same role in 2060 as you are
| today, what that role looks like is going to be completely
| different. Unrecognizable even.
| svachalek wrote:
| A few things off the top of my head, as a programmer in 1980:
|
| - Quite possibly you still used punch cards to enter your
| programs.
|
| - Probably you had a degree in something other than computer
| science. Math, physics, electrical engineering, something
| like that.
|
| - Probably you were the only one working on whatever
| application or system you worked on.
|
| - Probably you didn't have any kind of internet or email
| access. If you needed help figuring out a problem, you went
| to books.
|
| - Very likely you didn't have any kind of proper source
| control, automated testing, or bug tracking.
|
| - Most likely you didn't have any software libraries to work
| with other than whatever came in your language core library.
|
| (I learned to program in 1981, but I was only 9 years old at
| the time, so some of this is secondhand.)
| Jyaif wrote:
| Totally. They really should be training older folks that have
| 10-20 years of work ahead, not young kids.
| schnevets wrote:
| I would argue a competitive salary at 18 can make the world of
| difference for a graduate who doesn't have the resources to
| attend college (as long as they were taught financial literacy
| by a parent or school)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Operating machinery in general will surely still be a thing by
| then, which shouldn't be too hard to pivot to.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure, but one machine operator replaces between 10 and 100
| people doing the same task manually. What do you do with the
| others?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I mean forklifts, cranes, rollers, that kind of thing.
| bluGill wrote:
| Assembly lines can replace a lot of that. My company has
| several miles to move parts. Get the part off the truck
| (Just in time - nothing is on the truck if we don't need
| it that day), attach it do the line, 30 minutes later
| (after going all over the factory) the guys detach it and
| put it in the cnc laser. Then back on that line to go to
| the bending operations, then off to welding, then paint,
| then to final assembly. Parts can be on and off a dozen
| times in a process that takes days.
|
| We don't have a line like a traditional car factory final
| assembly because we need to be more flexible, but there
| are conveyors going all over. (interestingly final
| assembly is still pushed down the line by hand)
| runako wrote:
| They've been saying the same about factory and warehouse work
| for several decades, and yet Amazon (who has spent over a
| billion $ buying robotics companies) is hiring hundreds of
| thousands of people in the US at higher than prevailing wages.
|
| Further -- we know that employment in a job trails off over
| decades, it doesn't fall off a cliff suddenly. Truck driving
| jobs are still increasing. I would wager that the average
| 18-year-old truck driver today could retire from that job when
| she's in her 60s.
| bluGill wrote:
| I used to work at a factory. In 1950 there were 2000 people
| on the assembly line. Today there are 200. Today they make
| just as much as in 1950, perhaps more depending on how you
| measure. Sure there are still people there, but automation
| keeps getting better. Not too long ago 80 people lost their
| job when laser CNC cutters became good enough to do their
| job. Even where manual work is done, rechargeable tools
| tighten the bolts faster than a manual wrench.
|
| Things have gotten a lot safer too. Many less people have
| nicknames like "stubby" or "lefty" because the automatic
| safety stops the machine when (not if - repetitive work leads
| to forgetting to be safe) body parts are in the way.
| runako wrote:
| > In 1950 there were 2000 people on the assembly line.
| Today there are 200
|
| I had a feeling this would get raised. The obvious retort
| is that the US has been creating tons of manufacturing
| jobs, but that due to changes in our trade regime, those
| jobs are generally created overseas. One could very easily
| imagine modifications to our existing trade regime that
| create incentives to employ Americans in factories, if such
| an outcome was desired.
|
| Yes, factories are more automated, but factory workers
| globally are still a huge and growing segment of the
| workforce.
| maltalex wrote:
| > factory workers globally are still a huge and growing
| segment of the workforce.
|
| Do you have a source to support this claim? It's
| obviously a huge workforce, but growing? Automation is
| happening all over the globe. I couldn't find exact
| numbers, but it feels like factory workers are going the
| way of the farmers.
| runako wrote:
| Here's one source:
|
| https://www.bruegel.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/RP-19-04-...
|
| Page 12 details change in manufacturing employment
| 2001-2014. The US dropped 4 million manufacturing jobs
| over that period, but Vietnam and Indonesia _each_ added
| nearly that many. Total employment in the sector
| increased by 56 million. That 's over 4 million new jobs,
| annually, over the period.
|
| Even the US has been adding manufacturing jobs the last
| 5-10 years. 2018 saw the addition of 300k manufacturing
| jobs in the US:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
|
| If there were some automation on the near horizon that
| could slow that job growth, there's a 5-year addressable
| market of $50B _for the jobs added in 2018 alone_. I am
| skeptical such automation is on the near horizon in any
| state where it is ready to be widely deployed.
|
| The dot-com crash overlapping with China entering the WTO
| slide in manufacturing employment was especially brutal.
| A third of US manufacturing jobs relocated in 10 years.
| ("Relocated" instead of "lost" because Americans are
| still buying those goods, and their production did not
| become completely automated in that timeframe.)
| syshum wrote:
| Let me know when they manage to automated cross country freight
| trains, then we can talk about when they will have automated
| interstate trucks, let alone intrastate trucks (which make up
| probally 60% or more of the driver jobs)
|
| in 2060 there will still be a huge demand for drivers. Fully
| Automated driving is vaporware, even if they make the tech work
| which they are still decades away from, there is legal and
| political hurdles that will be even harder to over come.
| bluGill wrote:
| The main reason we don't automate cross country trains seems
| to be unions. The technology is there. If railroads had the
| will it would be done. However the productivity of a train
| driver (pulling a long train) is high enough that it probably
| isn't a high priority for the railroads even though they
| could. Trucks are so much less productive that automation
| makes more sense even though it is a harder problem.
| syshum wrote:
| And you do not think there will be not Union, and Political
| issue with Automating away one of the largest employment
| sectors in the nation?
|
| For crying out loud we still build tanks that the military
| has not wanted for years because its a jobs program, and
| your telling me States and Federal government are just
| going to stand by and allow all of those primary, not to
| mention the thousands of secondary jobs just go poof, with
| no push back
|
| HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
|
| I love how people only talk about the technical problems
| here, the Technical problems with level 5 Freight Trucks
| are HUGE, and likely at least 20 years away from solved...
|
| The political problems with it however are far far far far
| more daunting
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Isn't truck driving in the US a horrible job? Pay is shit.
| Sometimes you work for free. You can't really have a family like
| you could in other industries, and every year your pay stays
| stagnant if you're lucky.
|
| My friend operates a truck. He owns his own and only with that is
| he able to earn 80k a year. And even he is looking to get out
| because 3 months on the road at a time means no family life.
| [deleted]
| dudul wrote:
| TIL 80k is a shit salary and truck drivers don't have families.
|
| Truck driver is certainly not a dream job, but salaries are
| fairly good compared to the median in the US. And its not more
| difficult to have a family than if you're in the military or a
| night nurse or any other job with unusual schedule.
| watwut wrote:
| > And its not more difficult to have a family than if you're
| in the military or a night nurse or any other job with
| unusual schedule.
|
| Military has huge divorce rates. And it is not like women
| were super eager to date military guys seriously. In a lot of
| ways it is worst then being with truck driver even, due to
| forced relocations every couple of years.
|
| Night nurse get to be present outside of shift. Night nurse
| gets to be present parent. That is impossible for a soldier
| on deployment.
| syshum wrote:
| 80K for a owner operator is shit, he is not bring home 80K in
| salary, out of that 80K he has to pay for the Truck, Fuel,
| Insurance, Repairs, Self Employment Taxes, License Fees, and
| a whole host of other things
|
| My Guess that is eating about 50% of that revenue way, so
| then his pay is probably around 40-45K gross profit before
| taxes.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| 80k is very good money in much of the country.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Yes but it's not quite comparable to jobs where you're home
| every night
| bombcar wrote:
| You could sell the truck and buy a backhoe and make as much
| or more, and stay in the area.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Those who don't have the equity to buy excavation equipment
| can also rent it on a per-job basis. That's not really an
| option with semi trucks?
| bombcar wrote:
| You can rent 18-wheelers, but the rental price ends up
| being such that after expenses, you'd be making not much
| at all (they're aimed at companies).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There is no free lunch. Every blue collar business that you
| can cook up either comes with significant start up costs or
| a decade of crap jobs working your way up the ladder. The
| money you make is directly proportional to the amount of
| stuff you do in house from customer acquisition to
| maintaining your machines. This comes with employees,
| paperwork, compliance, etc, etc or it caps your scale.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| still need a truck to haul the backhoe around
| poo-yie wrote:
| True, but it says that the guy owns his own truck. Those are
| not inexpensive to pay for (purchase price, insurance, and
| maintenance). I can't imagine what it costs just to replace a
| few tires.
| zdragnar wrote:
| 80k a year is fantastic pay in most parts of the country. In
| fact, the median US household income is 67k.
| [deleted]
| dntrkv wrote:
| It sounds good on paper until you consider the facts. Being
| an owner-operator means you maintain your own truck, find
| your own loads, and take care of everything related to your
| business (insurance, licensing, rent, parking, etc).
|
| Just maintaining a truck is crazy stressful. It might be ok
| for some time until something major breaks on your truck and
| you're not working for a week and you're out an additional
| $5k for repairs. Just hope you're not stranded in the middle
| of nowhere and have to pay thousands to have your truck
| towed.
|
| It's also in the top 10 most dangerous jobs. It's incredibly
| stressful. And all the latest regulations will put you on
| edge at all times. When you're an owner-operator, you are
| constantly walking the line between pissing off customers and
| losing your license.
|
| It's such a demanding job nowadays.
| beart wrote:
| my father makes 100k driving for a major carrier. of course
| that's working 6 days a week. he's also 65.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Given his age, he's probably been in the game a while. Does
| he own his truck? Is his truck paid off? How old is it?
|
| What does he haul? It is specialized?
|
| Does he cover his lease, insurance, gas, etc from his own
| pocket? Do you know about how much that is monthly?
|
| How many miles does he drive on average?
|
| I don't mean to bombard you with questions, but there's so
| much variation in pay you need more information than just
| salary to really understand that number.
| tyrfing wrote:
| 100k is pretty normal for Teamster drivers, with a company
| vehicle, benefits etc. Of course, those positions are
| extremely easy to fill. There's not even close to a labor
| shortage there.
|
| Downside is 60 hour weeks for 30 years.
| carapace wrote:
| > Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania
| who studies the trucking industry, says adding young drivers
| won't solve the industry's biggest problem: retention.
|
| The article linked at "retention" seems much more interesting to
| me:
|
| "Is There Really A Truck Driver Shortage?"
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t...
|
| > Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money's newsletter.
|
| > In a 2019 study[1] published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor
| Statistics, economists Stephen V. Burks and Kristen Monaco
| investigated claims by industry leaders that the trucking labor
| market was somehow "broken" enough to create a decades-long
| shortage. ... A thorough investigation led them to conclude that
| the trucking labor market is ... not broken. Yes, they say, the
| trucking labor market is "tight" -- meaning that companies are
| competing to fill open jobs -- but it functions in the same way
| as any other labor market.
|
| > "There is no shortage," says Todd Spencer, the president of the
| Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. His organization
| represents more than 150,000 mostly self-employed truck drivers
| around the United States.
|
| > The big trucking companies want to secure a steady supply of
| cheap labor, and the ATA [lobbying organization for the nation's
| big trucking employers, the American Trucking Associations] has
| spent years lobbying the federal government to loosen regulations
| in the industry. It's now pushing for the DRIVE-Safe Act[2] in
| Congress, which would allow 18-year-olds to begin driving trucks
| across state lines. Right now, drivers must be at least 21.
|
| > The real problem, Spencer says, is not a shortage but
| retention. According to the ATA's own statistics, the average
| annual turnover rate for long-haul truckers at big trucking
| companies has been greater than 90% for decades.
|
| > "We have millions of people who have been trained to be heavy-
| duty truck drivers who are currently not working as heavy-duty
| truck drivers because the entry-level jobs are terrible," says
| Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania
| who studies the trucking industry.
|
| > Compared with other blue-collar occupations, the median annual
| income of trucking is actually pretty good: $47,130. But long-
| haul truckers commonly work extremely long hours, often 60 to 70
| hours per week or more. And drivers are typically not paid by the
| hour. Instead, they are typically paid only for the number of
| miles they drive. The average truck driver gets paid 52.3 cents
| per mile, according to the Department of Transportation. Even if
| weather or traffic slows them down and extends their working day,
| they get paid the same. Moreover, they're not compensated for the
| significant time it takes to load or unload their trucks. And
| they're not compensated for their "off time," even though they're
| miles and miles away from home.
|
| > Being a long-haul trucker also means living out of your truck,
| because motels are pretty expensive and often don't have parking
| for big rigs. Meanwhile, finding parking to rest anywhere is a
| growing problem. Truckers sacrifice their health, sitting on
| their butt for hours and hours and eating junk food on the road.
| And the job is dangerous: Truck drivers are 10 times more likely
| to be killed on the job than the average worker.
|
| > But, Viscelli says, through political lobbying, legal activism
| and harsh business practices, big trucking companies have made a
| difficult job even harder, especially for entry-level truckers.
| He says the companies have been "systematically degrading trucker
| working conditions." Scholars have referred to trucks as
| "sweatshops on wheels." Viscelli says the industry is rife with
| minimum wage violations and what he calls "debt peonage."
| Basically, new drivers become indentured servants, going deep
| into debt to get training and to lease trucks from their
| employers
|
| > The debate over whether to call this a retention problem or a
| shortage may seem like mincing words. But it matters for the
| solution. The ATA and its allies argue that the "shortage" means
| the government should further relax regulations and make it
| easier for anyone to become an interstate truck driver. Insurance
| and rental car companies know that teenagers are much more likely
| to get into an accident -- which is why they charge them more.
| But the "shortage"! We need teenagers to do the job!
|
| > Frame the issue as a retention crisis, however, and the onus
| falls on the industry to make long-haul trucking more attractive
| as a profession. After decades of stagnant wages and shriveling
| opportunities for blue-collar workers, this is the market working
| on their behalf for a change: forcing employers to pay workers
| enough to do a really hard but vital job.
|
| [1] March 2019 "Is the U.S. labor market for truck drivers
| broken?" https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2019/article/is-the-us-
| labor-ma...
|
| [2] https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-
| releases/senator...
| leros wrote:
| On one hand, I think it's good that high school kids are getting
| into blue collar work like trucking.
|
| We can't complain about lack of people doing these jobs and then
| also be upset that young people are taking these jobs.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is a symptom of the decline of union labor in trucking and
| deregulation causing a race to the bottom. I'm unsure we should
| be happy high schoolers are being pulled in, versus making
| trucking jobs more secure and paying a living wage.
|
| There is no lack of workers, only workers willing to tolerate
| poor working conditions and pay.
|
| "This paper examines the forces that have reduced truck
| drivers' earnings. First, using 1973-91 Current Population
| Survey data, the authors find that deregulation accounted for
| one-third of the decline in drivers' wages, with a larger
| negative effect on non-union workers than on organized workers.
| Second, using unique survey data gathered in 1997, they explore
| the effects of three specific factors frequently cited as
| sources of blue-collar wage decline. This analysis indicates
| that only one new technology, satellite communication systems,
| had important effects on drivers' earnings, increasing them
| through improved efficiency and work intensification; education
| had no important influence; and union membership increased
| earnings by between 18% and 21%. They conclude that the two
| dominant and intertwined sources of wage decline and increased
| wage inequality among truck drivers have been deregulation and
| de-unionization. (Author's abstract.)"
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5119434_The_Effects...
|
| (can get the paper from SciHub, a family member is a truck
| driver)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Unions are a red herring, they've been mostly confined to
| specific economic niches (like port work) for decades and in
| trucking being in a niche pretty much always pays better.
|
| This has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with
| regulation and better administrative technology making the
| "mega-fleet body shop" business model more viable and owner
| operators and small fleets less economically viable.
|
| Swift has always paid crap and we've regulated everything
| else out of existence, same story as many other industries.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Citations?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I'll play this one the way you play them. I'm gonna post
| my disagreement and then take my sweet time finding some
| links (of dubious relevance and quality) and then I'll
| edit my post to add them. Or not. Time will tell.
|
| Edit: That was too easy.
|
| https://truckingresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/ATRI...
|
| https://truckingresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/10/ATRI...
|
| From the 2018 report:
|
| "driver wages were highest in the "Other" category at
| 67.7 cents per mile, reflecting the specialized skills
| and credentials that carriers in this group require. For
| instance, many Tank haulers are involved in the movement
| of hazardous materials, which require a special
| endorsement on a driver's CDL."
| duxup wrote:
| I've got some visibility to the logistics industry. My experience
| doesn't quite fit some of the posts in here / that story.
|
| Drivers have been making LESS over the years for a few decades
| now.
|
| Nobody wants to hire 18 year olds generally, insurance wouldn't
| allow it any way...
|
| Logistics companies who hire drivers have been complaining about
| driver shortages but not increasing wages for years as well...
| and they actually seem to meet demand just fine. Issues at choke
| points like ports don't seem to be a pure driver supply issue
| from what I've seen.
|
| The logistics industry is super price sensitive, people will
| complain... but they'll also wait to ship a thing to save a
| couple bucks (I'm not kidding when I say a couple bucks) all
| while complaining.
|
| The drivers you hear who make a good living have specialized
| skills / work for specialized companies and do not reflect the
| industry as a whole.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Logistics companies who hire drivers have been complaining
| about driver shortages but not increasing wages for years as
| well..."
|
| Sounds like a lot of companies and industries these days,
| including mine for software devs.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > complaining about driver shortages but not increasing wages
|
| This is the core truth in virtually every "<worker> shortage"
| story. It's true for every profession, every occupation, every
| market. Pay a market wage and the problem goes away.
|
| What the headlines _really_ should be is "Rapid change in
| wages causes headaches for employers".
|
| I mean, it's true that short term shocks to wage levels (and
| covid has been one hell of a shock) cause disruption to
| markets. That's worth covering. But the root cause is not and
| never has been a "lack of people", it's that the population of
| people willing to work at the now-sub-market wage is smaller
| than employers want.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _What the headlines really should be is "Rapid change in
| wages causes headaches for employers"._
|
| It's more like employers are feigning a labor shortage
| because they want access to the cheap and abusable visa labor
| they exploited before the pandemic.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I watched a grown man, a skilled and conscientious man, learn
| to drive an 18-wheeler in California and try to make a living.
|
| It is dangerous, it will test the nerves of the driver. You
| will be bullied, it is the culture. The price pressure on
| wages, for a fully qualified and competent driver, were
| relentlessly _downward_ in the USA.
|
| The ports here are full of refugees sleeping in the cabs of
| their leased trucks. The callousness and stupid-on-stupid
| business practices are a cacophony. Civilized people need not
| apply to either end of it.
| president wrote:
| That's life. Not everyone can afford a cushy 6-figure desk
| and chair job.
| avs733 wrote:
| The problem is society can't afford the outcome of paying
| truck drivers less.
|
| Lower paid, younger, less experienced, more exhausted, and
| passed off truck drivers are an increased danger to other
| drivers.
|
| That is an externality, to say it's just life is pretty
| much saying it's acceptable to underpay people as longing
| as the only risk is to others...
| thrashh wrote:
| Yeah I think it's ridiculous that people forget that we
| only got to this point because previous generations built
| a framework which we currently live in and where many of
| us can prosper.
|
| If we want to abandon that and go back to the centuries
| of fiefdom where we barely made progress, by all means do
| it somewhere else.
| [deleted]
| avs733 wrote:
| Corporations willing to hollow out the foundation of
| society is their fault, not people who get told to "find
| a better laying job"
|
| If your job is essential to the functio of society you
| should
|
| 1) have a living wage
|
| 2) have a group advocating and bargaining in Your
| interests
|
| 3) have a say in the corporate management
|
| Essential employees are essential to society, not to
| corporations. Society (I.e., government) should assure
| they are treated in a functional way
| john_moscow wrote:
| Nope, not really. Economy is sort of a closed loop. There
| is that much basic resources and this much people, and it's
| all about how it gets distributed between them. "Sort of",
| because it creates incentives for people to do some things,
| and if these incentives are right, the economy creates new
| value.
|
| In an anarchy it boils down to who's got a bigger gun.
| Under feudalism, it's about what class you were born to.
| For a brief moment in human history in a bunch of Western
| countries it was about who managed to create something of
| value and sell it to others. But that would also mean
| bankrupting inefficient behemoths to make room for the next
| generation, but we stopped doing that in 2008.
|
| So now, if you have bought a couple of Walmart shares back
| in 1970s, you're good. If you have purchased a house prior
| to 2010s, you are great. But if you are younger, you're
| screwed. The media tells you that living in a box and
| having no family is OK, and if you are ambitious - go play
| a victim and get forced non-monetary recognition from
| others. The incentive to create things is gone, so the
| society is inevitably converging to some weird corporate
| feudalism, and that only means further degradation for
| those except the hereditary elites.
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| Maybe you're being ironic, but it sounds like you're
| whining... there are "other" Walmart shares, nowdays it's
| easier and cheaper to buy them...there are houses
| which'll appreciate in value (most? do) but wealth does
| have that bad habit of holding you still, those shares
| need researching, the house repairing... and anyway I'm
| sure you prefer to travel...
|
| I never did understand why people keep up with their 9/5
| 5 days a week (and in Europe a month holiday ) when they
| could save more, spend less (on heating) by heading south
| in the winter... in a way the most important thing people
| from the west have is their passport which (unfairly)
| allows them pretty much freedom to travel anywhere...and
| a basic salary which would cover a years expenses for a
| couple months of work...
| chris1993 wrote:
| Having school age kids, and social connections in
| general, make a nomadic life challenging.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| A sense of place and belonging is critical to life
| satisfaction. If we can't settle down and build a life in
| a community, then that is not a slight obstacle to
| happiness, its a major detriment to the health of the
| population.
|
| I'm of the opinion that we are more animal than we
| remember, and the human animal thrives in a participatory
| community. I reject that casualness of your point.
| john_moscow wrote:
| >Civilized people need not apply to either end of it.
|
| That's a big part of the problem. We are gradually
| transforming our economy so that bigger and bigger chunks of
| it are run by people living in miserable conditions, driven
| there out of desperation. The media cheers it as giving
| another chance to disadvantaged, and goes out of their way to
| redirect the average person's ambitions away from
| accumulating wealth. And if you oppose it, they will just
| claim that you hate all those poor people, rather than
| disagreeing with the lowering of the average living standard.
| The end game is slums for everyone (except the ruling class
| of course).
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You are onto something here, I think. And it certainly does
| not help that driving was one of those few remaining jobs
| that did not require a lot of education. To me personally
| it seems like recipe for a disaster to basically prime a
| chunk of your population for an anger for being left behind
| by 'the rich', who set the system up to skim few more bucks
| from labor savings and "the poor", who are desperate enough
| to take their spots in those jobs.
| JPKab wrote:
| The entire USA logistics industry is filled with toxic, below
| average IQ, bro-to-the-max managers. It's like Wall Street,
| but dumber and no math requirements. See my other comment in
| this thread for details on that.
| typon wrote:
| It's an extremely difficult and dangerous job. The drivers
| deserve to be paid more than the current wages. Driving ruined
| my dad's health permanently - the long term costs aren't even
| factored in usually.
| dajohnson89 wrote:
| What are the health risks?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Sitting for 8-12 hours a day in a cramped position is bad
| for your back, neck, shoulders, hips. Name a joint and it's
| gonna get messed up eventually. There's also a risk of
| blood clots and generally anything that can be caused by
| poor circulation, especially in your legs. Add to that poor
| sleep from sleeping in your cab or possibly a crappy motel
| if you're lucky, not getting enough sleep, rarely being
| able to exercise or eat well, and obesity and muscle
| degeneration start to become pretty serious risks, too.
| typon wrote:
| This is exactly what happened with my dad
| [deleted]
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You can compensate for all those things, and some drivers
| do. Taking walks on their breaks, doing calesthenics,
| bringing good food from home, etc. Many of them don't,
| just as many other people don't take care of themselves
| and are fat and sedentary.
|
| The amount of sitting a software dev does is comparable
| if not more to most truck drivers, I'd guess.
| mywittyname wrote:
| These people piss in bottles to avoid stopping. These
| people aren't taking many breaks to stretch and get some
| exercise.
| tripa wrote:
| These people!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Some are. I know them. Many don't, I agree.
| specialp wrote:
| I can get out of my office chair, stretch, and then
| return back to my seat in a minute as much as I'd like.
| An 18 wheeler has to exit the highway, find a place to
| park that accommodates large trucks, put on the brakes,
| Climb out, walk around, and then go back to the highway.
| All while not being paid a salary but being paid by the
| mile.
| eweise wrote:
| Vibrating in your seat all day long can't be too good for
| you.
| undersuit wrote:
| Here is a picture of a trucker(Bill McElligott) of 28 years
| from the US: https://i.imgur.com/cjVnT4V.png
| celim307 wrote:
| From acquaintances I know, the combination of long periods
| of sitting, stimulant abuse, lack of healthy food options,
| inconsistent sleep, air quality from being around other
| trucks, stress from the job, and mental isolation from
| being away from friends and family all are really hard,
| even for a year. Now imagine a 30+ Year career.
| neverartful wrote:
| Driving accidents
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Thank you to share you first hand insights.
|
| What do you think about this YouTube video that has over 4m
| views? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQXVgniI-hw
|
| Basically, this guy says take it on the chin for a year or two
| and keep a clean record. Then you can easily change companies
| and earn a solid middle class salary. Do you believe it or
| think his wages are bit "bubbly"? Honestly, I'm not involved in
| the logistic industry, but his video looks "no-BS" and straight
| forward. If was looking for solid working class / middle class
| job, I would be watching this video for tips!
| kingaillas wrote:
| That's a good video: humorous, informative, interesting.
|
| >If was looking for solid working class / middle class job, I
| would be watching this video for tips!
|
| You might want to watch more videos, move over to his youtube
| channel... because he quits trucking earlier this year:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8AnMzhZZE
|
| The downsides caught up to him after ~3 years. He also worked
| his salary out to roughly $8/hr (see video for details)
| considering time spent "on the job".
|
| So, perhaps this isn't the solid advertisement for the
| industry you were thinking it is.
| neither_color wrote:
| _"The first thing I do when I wake up is reacclimate my self
| to the baffling reality of conscious experience"_
|
| I felt that. This video makes it seem pretty cool actually,
| minus the packaged foods and microwaved meals.
| duxup wrote:
| It's hard to speak to anyone's given experience.
|
| It's not impossible that anyone could drive well for a while
| and land in a good place, but that's not the industry I see.
| I don't see people suddenly getting paid well after 30
| months.
|
| I don't have first hand experience with the Walmart example,
| but I've heard from others they get their pick of the most
| experienced drivers / don't pay poorly, but they're not the
| industry and the idea of just meeting their minimum to be
| considered and magically getting a job sounds a bit silly.
|
| To me that's a YouTube video that implies a lot, isn't
| impossible, but doesn't say much about the odds of any of it
| being true for a given person either ...
|
| The industry I know has demand for drivers, but the outcome
| of that isn't what you might think. There's "demand" where
| they demand folks who aren't paid well, and then there's real
| demand.
| JPKab wrote:
| You forgot the part where people under 21 years of age aren't
| allowed to drive big rigs across state lines.
|
| Electronic logbooks are the main reason drivers lost wages
| recently. Turns out that the market had adjusted to an
| equilibrium that expected drivers to fudge their log books, and
| once the ability to fudge was removed, the absolute morons who
| fill the ranks of logistics companies wouldn't up their rates
| and the market equilibrium was broken. This caused drivers to
| leave the business. It can't be overstated how absolutely dumb
| the average desk jockey in the logistics space truly is. Having
| had to deal with a few different companies over the years
| (Hapag Lloyd, various CPG companies, Marten), there was no
| contest in offices with just straight up low-IQ but cocky jocks
| filling the desks. A brother-in-law is in the transportation
| industry, and he routinely uses fancy words he doesn't
| understand on calls (I hear them when I'm visiting) and nobody
| on the call is capable of calling him out. A recent example was
| when he was saying that "we need to work on improving the
| linear regressions on our deliveries"........ I tried to
| explain to him that the term wasn't what he thought it was, and
| he literally couldn't absorb what I said. He is in charge of
| hundreds of millions of throughput for a massive food
| corporation whose products are in every household in the
| country. Near as I can tell, the entire industry is a bunch of
| mediocrities with spreadsheets spending most of their days in
| meetings comparing their numbers and getting yelled at when
| they don't line up correctly.
| avgDev wrote:
| I used to be friends with a few truck drivers, and all of them
| were making money because all of them were cheatings the books
| non-stop. It was basically a job requirement. Drive 48 hours?
| No problem.
|
| This has been made a lot more difficult with the electronic log
| books.
|
| Edit: Just want to add some additional information. Trucking
| companies at least were my friends worked, were extremely
| toxic. They made close to $100k. However, their personal life
| suffered greatly. Dispatchers would call them non-stop, even
| when they had doctor visits/family gatherings scheduled. The
| dispatchers would give them loads, that were basically humanely
| impossible to be delivered on-time by the book. Some of them
| would be awake all day, and leave in the evening then drive 24
| hours+. Dispatchers would often scream at them, when they would
| call because they were falling asleep and were not going to
| make the delivery on-time because they needed a nap.
|
| Some of them actually crashed, because they saw a "deer"
| lol.....they fell asleep.
|
| These friends were uneducated, and made terrible financial
| decisions, such a purchasing expensive cars and modifying them.
| Little to no savings. This put them in an awful position in
| which they had to keep driving no matter how toxic the
| environment was. Unfortunately, I don't really know how they
| are doing today, as we grew apart.
| duxup wrote:
| Yup, there was a big hit to guys driving extra hours when it
| became easier to spot them.
|
| It was easy to make extra money, but it was at the cost of
| all of their time. It kinda inflated how good a living you
| could make...at least looking at the end results. But it also
| wasn't very realistic.
| watwut wrote:
| Driving too much is not just at the cost of time. It is at
| the cost of life, drivers and whoever he crashes into.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Christ, lay off the damn moral superiority complex.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Driving too much is not just at the cost of time. It is
| at the cost of life, drivers and whoever he crashes into.
|
| Do you really think a middle aged truck driver is (was)
| holding the steering wheel for 16hr straight as a matter
| of routine business? Of course not.
|
| Tropes like that make for easy online virtue points but
| that wasn't the reality for the overwhelming majority of
| people who were cooking the books.
|
| These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's no
| different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT guy
| doing the same thing. What they sacrificed was their
| outside of work life. Nobody is working those kinds of
| hours and having a life outside work. You would have
| physical complications from that in very short order.
|
| And occasionally someone would go overboard, drive 36hr
| straight and cause a crash. And because that's an easy
| thing for people who have zero knowledge of industry
| incentives and feedback loops to get their panties in a
| knot over they made it "extra illegal" because you can't
| make being an idiot illegal.
|
| And so now the industry cuts far less tasteful corners
| and pays everyone crap and you have drivers who have
| barely memorized the pre-trip, have barely and hours
| behind the wheel, can't read english, and who choose a
| different career in short order and are likewise treated
| as disposable.
|
| So the net effect is more or less a wash but a handful of
| people get to get big raises and some politicians can pat
| themselves on the back for "solving" logbook fraud.
| piva00 wrote:
| > These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's
| no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT
| guy doing the same thing. What they sacrificed was their
| outside of work life. Nobody is working those kinds of
| hours and having a life outside work. You would have
| physical complications from that in very short order.
|
| And how does this justify as something safe? When I
| worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just mentally
| exhausting work I definitely went downhill after a while.
| Safely behind a computer. If you are driving a 20-40 ton
| truck while being as tired as I was, doing stupid
| mistakes as I was, you are definitely endangering others'
| lives.
|
| I really don't understand your counterpoint here.
| Clubber wrote:
| >When I worked 6/7 days a week, 60-80 hrs doing just
| mentally exhausting work I definitely went downhill after
| a while.
|
| >If you are driving a 20-40 ton truck while being as
| tired as I was, doing stupid mistakes as I was, you are
| definitely endangering others' lives.
|
| I assume you drove home after your exhausting day, which
| according to you is endangering others' lives, so what's
| different when you do it?
| Frondo wrote:
| Not the OP but guessing the difference is that he wasn't
| driving a loaded tractor trailer at freeway speeds to get
| home from work.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| The danger from a 2,000 pound car is not comparable to
| the danger from a truck that weighs up to 80,000 pounds
| (or FORTY TIMES as much). And that's not even considering
| overweight loads.
| Clubber wrote:
| I mean both will significantly kill people in an
| accident.
| Fogest wrote:
| I worked 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher and was
| mentally exhausted after those shifts. I had an hour
| drive home each of those shifts. There were definitely
| many shifts I wasn't driving home safe. Luckily my hour
| drive was like that because I was "temporarily
| relocated". The employer gave us the option to go book a
| hotel stay so I had some days where I was too tired to
| drive home safely and would stay in the hotel 5 minutes
| away.
|
| And that's just me in a small little sedan, not an
| overloaded 18 wheeler. For context, I also do have a
| commercial drivers license. Driving for 60-80 hours in a
| week is just not safe. There is no way to try and justify
| that it is.
|
| The only people doing that many hours of driving a week
| "safely" were probably high on cocaine. Cocaine usage was
| quite prevalent in the trucking industry because of this
| huge push to have drivers fudging logs and overdriving.
|
| There are tons of studies out there that prove that
| driving while tired can be just as bad as driving drunk,
| if not worse depending on how deprived of sleep you are
| and how long you've been going.
| Clubber wrote:
| Here's the current rules. They seem pretty reasonable
|
| https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-
| hours-136...
|
| For example, drivers who transport property in the same
| state are subject to state regulations but not federal
| regulations. Whereas drivers who deliver materials from
| state to state must comply with federal regulations.
| Among the regulations: A reset occurs
| when a driver has had marked 34 consecutive hours off
| duty. The workweek starts after the last legal reset. For
| example, if you begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, then the
| workweek continues until 1 a.m. the following Monday.
| Each duty period must begin with at least 10 hours off-
| duty. Drivers may work no more than 60 hours
| on-duty over seven consecutive days or 70 hours over
| eight days. And they need to maintain a driver's log for
| seven days and eight days after, respectively.
| Drivers may be on duty for up to 14 hours following 10
| hours off duty, but they are limited to 11 hours of
| driving time. Drivers must take a mandatory
| 30-minute break by their eighth hour of coming on duty.
| The 14-hour duty period may not be extended with off-duty
| time for breaks, meals, fuel stops, etc.
|
| I would say the only issue is on your required break
| time, you sit around doing nothing and not get paid for
| it. If you are at home that is fine, if you are a long
| haul trucker, you're stuck at a truck stop waiting for
| time to complete.
|
| As a side note, as others have mentioned, truck drivers
| have been getting paid less and less over the years, and
| that's not accounting for inflation; plus it's rough on
| relationships, so it's no wonder there is a shortage.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The safety issues the parent posts were talking about are
| greatly increased when these rules are circumvented in
| order to drive a bunch more hours than that.
| piva00 wrote:
| And you assume it wrong, having a car is a luxury in my
| native country and I was only able to afford one after I
| got into a comfortable 9-19 work schedule.
|
| Don't assume that everyone is American or that American
| culture for commuting is widespread across the globe.
| Clubber wrote:
| Good public transportation is a luxury in the majority of
| the US. Most jobs in most places require a vehicle +
| license + insurance + maintenance. In my city, we have a
| bus service but it can be 2 hours late on a consistent
| basis. Sometimes they don't even show up and you have to
| wait for the next pass and hope it shows up. Sometimes
| the driver is sick and there is no replacement, so no
| bus. Also, many places will fire you if you are late, so
| you need to be at the stop 2 hours before it shows up
| just to be safe, and you might not even be safe if the
| driver is sick. This is a medium sized city.
|
| So in many places, your options would be sleep at work,
| or drive home tired.
| piva00 wrote:
| Yeah, I will let you know I'm originally from Brazil, now
| a Swedish citizen. So any problem you've encountered in
| the USA I've probably seen worse.
|
| A bus from my hometown to the office, a trip of about 25
| km, took me 3 hours somedays, usually would be between
| 1h30m-1h45m. One way.
|
| > So in many places, your options would be sleep at work,
| or drive home tired.
|
| Please, there are other options, they are just more
| inconvenient than what you are used to accept living on.
|
| I've slept in offices' cafeteria room because I had no
| public transportation back home more times than I could
| count on all my fingers and toes...
| jfrunyon wrote:
| "There are other options than sleeping at work. You could
| sleep at work."
|
| I too have slept in a break room. I've also slept under a
| desk in an office (spending 8+ hours outside until
| everyone went home). And I'm in the US.
|
| The grass is not always greener on the other side, my
| friend.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Why would you assume that they drive home? Regardless,
| there would hypothetically be massive differences such as
| distance and size of vehicle. Both are bad.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's
| no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT
| guy doing the same thing.
|
| Hi, IT guy here. When I'm sleep-deprived, there is
| absolutely 0 chance of it causing some family to die.
| It's very different.
| watwut wrote:
| > These guys were putting in 60-80hr 6/7 day weeks. It's
| no different than the plant maintenance tech or the IT
| guy doing the same thing
|
| The difference is that IT guy won't crash truck into
| another car when overworked. Truckers did.
|
| And it was not because they were idiots. It was, because
| humans are affected by tiredness. And it did not happened
| because of some larger goal, but because it is cheaper to
| pressure trucker to drive too much.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| "We can't stop $badThing because they might do
| $evenWorseThing !!"
|
| No thanks on that analysis, maybe trucking companies
| should stop unsafe driving practices and stop exploiting
| their workers.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most of them didn't really have an opportunity for a life
| so you can't blame them. What are you going to do when
| you are 10 hours from home and hit your maximum allowed
| to drive time? Legally you can only stop at a truck stop.
| If you wake up at 6:30, spend an hour on breakfast, then
| drive for 4 hours, with a 10 minute break every hour (30
| minutes) , then stop for an hour for lunch (at 11:30),
| then drive for another 4 hours with half hour brakes
| before an hour for supper (now 6:00), then two more
| hours, it is 9:00. For a normal 8 hour sleep night you
| now have an 1.5 hours to kill in a middle of nowhere area
| with nothing to do. Most people don't need that much time
| for breaks. You can easily see how someone would want to
| cheat for more pay - there isn't much else to do.
|
| Now for health our hypothetical trucker above should get
| out and move, but face it, most people aren't getting
| their exercise.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from
| home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time?
|
| Uhh... keep driving home because HOS regulations don't
| apply when you're off duty?
| https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-
| service/personal...
|
| "The following are examples of appropriate uses of a CMV
| while off-duty for personal conveyance ... Commuting
| between the driver's terminal and his or her residence
| ... Authorized use of a CMV to travel home after working
| at an offsite location"
|
| Although frankly the answer is "stop somewhere and sleep
| because your trip is too long to do in a single day" and
| I'm not sure why you think that somehow that's too much
| of an inconvenience for them.
| Animats wrote:
| > What are you going to do when you are 10 hours from
| home and hit your maximum allowed to drive time?
|
| Railroads have had to deal with that since the Hours of
| Service Act in 1907. After 12 hours, train crews and
| dispatchers are "dead on the law", and have to stop the
| train. The railroad tries hard to prevent that. They
| don't schedule people for the full 12 hours. There are
| crew change points. Railroads put train crews up in
| motels. Ferry crews around in crew vans. Once in a while
| a train does end up stopped for that reason, usually
| because some other problem tied up traffic.
|
| Interestingly, while there's theoretical work on the
| Truck Driver Scheduling Problem [1], there doesn't seem
| to be someone offering this as a service. That might be a
| startup opportunity for someone.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S24
| 0589631...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Some railways are using "Driver Status Monitoring", which
| uses things like eye tracking to check the driver is
| alert.
|
| Even with the best shift scheduling software, it's
| difficult to handle cases outside the railway company's
| control -- like the driver being tired because they were
| kept awake by external noise, stress etc when they were
| trying to sleep.
| derefr wrote:
| Perhaps dystopian to say, but this sounds like a perfect
| use-case for 5G-streamed VR MMO games. Have an hour to
| kill in the middle of nowhere? Jack in!
| spockz wrote:
| Or read a book. Watch a movie. Write a book. There are
| many things to do.
|
| Also on the mandated Sunday stop I see many drivers
| maintain their trucks and cabs. Life doesn't have to be
| boring.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| That's really interesting. I've a similar anecdote from a
| different industry: pizza delivery.
|
| I'm old enough that my first job was right at the cusp of
| computerized order entry (as opposed to handwritten tickets)
| at the small pizza shop I worked at in high school.
|
| Prior to the computer order entry system drivers would
| routinely "lose" one or two tickets a shift and just pocket
| the cash for the order. One of them told me that the
| computerized ticketing basically halved their actual take
| home pay.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Electronic payments and accounting remove the ability for a
| lot of low level corruption.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gsz7Gu6agA
| massysett wrote:
| I take your point but I wouldn't call theft "take home
| pay"...
| lamontcg wrote:
| Except if everyone does it and nobody really gets busted
| for it, then it is. You just don't like business being
| run that way.
|
| The end result of 30 years of deunionization and
| relentless downwards pressure on wage growth and you wind
| up with employees cheating the system wherever they can.
|
| Something is certainly going to break in this
| society/culture in the next 5-10 years, because we're not
| on a sustainable path. A wage-price spiral and a lot of
| inflation would probably be the least-painful thing to
| happen.
| derefr wrote:
| The question, to me, is whether the people with "lost"
| orders actually got a pizza in the end. If they didn't,
| then it _is_ theft--if not by the individual, then by the
| company whose structure incentivizes the individual 's
| behavior. (Similar to how Wall-street investment-auditing
| _firms_ were ultimately responsible for incentivizing
| their auditors to mischaracterize the risk of certain
| asset classes in 2008.)
| lamontcg wrote:
| I thought it was obvious that the delivery person takes
| the cash at the door in exchange for the pizza and
| pockets it. If the pizza isn't delivered, there's no cash
| to pocket.
|
| Oh and I'm not arguing it isn't theft. I'm arguing that
| the system we've built basically demands that people
| steal from their employers in order to survive.
|
| If you don't like our sort of downwards spiral into a
| trustless third-world society where everyone is trying to
| scam everyone else then you might want to look at what
| policies you support that crush wages for people who
| aren't at least software devs.
| halJordan wrote:
| I understand that the dictionary follows usage, and i get
| that you have a rhetorical goal, but with that logic
| Enron was simply overpaying its employees.
| Gunax wrote:
| I think there's an aspect of whether it's expected or not
| here.
|
| If the culture of the delivery drivers was that this was
| a perk of the job that everyone sort of knew about, then
| I think it's reasonable to call it a type of
| compensation.
|
| Sort of like how unreported cash tips are a type of
| perkany rely on, even though no contract could ever
| stipulate that.
| racl101 wrote:
| Good. Fuck people who make normalize theft and dishonesty.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Manager must have been in on the scam then.
|
| I worked at a pizza shop with paper tickets. Every single
| one was accounted for at the end of the day. If any tickets
| were missing, that was out of the manager's pocket, so he
| made sure he had them all.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _This has been made a lot more difficult with the
| electronic log books._
|
| I think this kind of thing is going to be huge in the next 50
| years. We have a lot of laws and standards that, in effect,
| allowed people to cheat a little but not too much (or break a
| few traffic laws but not too many, etc). All in all, that
| system sucked - it placed all the burden and risk on
| individuals to figure out how to cheat enough to make the
| system livable - but it was stable _as a system_.
|
| We are going to need to do a lot of work to find new
| equilibrium points where the various parties can cheat less.
| It will be made especially difficult because technology
| penetrates industries more quickly these days so it would be
| best if everything changed at once, but that also makes it
| more difficult.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _All in all, that system sucked - it placed all the burden
| and risk on individuals to figure out how to cheat enough
| to make the system livable - but it was stable as a
| system._
|
| - I think stability depends on what time frame you look at.
| Pushing how much time you spend driving, how little you
| sleep and so-forth may be stable for some period (weeks,
| months, a few years..) but it's not stable for a person
| longish term. Letting wages drift downward, so you wind-up
| hiring people with more problems (say, amphetamine
| addiction) may also be short-term stable but not long term
| stable.
|
| The actually instability of the situation I think is
| illustrated by "chameleon carrier". Companies that shutdown
| and restart when they accumulate too safety violations.[1]
|
| The thing about the situation is when things are being
| continually jury rigged to keep people working in the most
| profitable conditions for the carriers and the worst
| conditions for them, it's the opposite of stable, it's
| extremely fragile.
|
| [1] https://www.teletracnavman.com/resources/blog/the-hunt-
| for-c...
| aeturnum wrote:
| Saying the system as a whole is stable does not mean
| there are no unstable parts. Goods get delivered at an
| acceptable cost with an acceptable loss rate - even with
| chameleon carriers and any other bad actors that exist.
| Suddenly changing how easy it is to break the rules,
| without changing anything else, could destabilize that
| equilibrium.
|
| > _I think stability depends on what time frame you look
| at._
|
| What is the timeframe that you are thinking of where our
| goods delivery network broke down due to individual rule
| breaking (as opposed to, say, a global pandemic)?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _What is the timeframe that you are thinking of..._
|
| -- When we're talking of a system, "stability" is roughly
| the property that a small perturbation in the system
| causes it to return to the position that it was
| previously in. The pandemic was significant shock but the
| notable thing we see is that the system.
|
| _...where our goods delivery network broke down due to
| individual rule breaking (as opposed to, say, a global
| pandemic)?_
|
| The individual rule-breaking (working more hours than a
| person could stand) still allowed day functioning of the
| system but it created situation it was easy for a lot of
| people to just quit driving and hard to find more drivers
| to replace them. Hence, the system was fragile to shock.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _it created situation it was easy for a lot of people
| to just quit driving and hard to find more drivers to
| replace them_
|
| That situation seems pretty exceptional to me. I think
| it's fair to call an equilibrium that requires a covid
| pandemic to disrupt "stable." I think you'd be hard
| pressed to find an industry that hasn't been disrupted,
| so I am skeptical that we should understand trucking to
| be revealed as being unusually weak.
|
| If you just mean that capitalism is inherently unstable,
| then yes of course, but that doesn't seem closely related
| to the space for rule breaking as the space varies from
| place to place and industry to industry.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _I think you 'd be hard pressed to find an industry that
| hasn't been disrupted, so I am skeptical that we should
| understand trucking to be revealed as being unusually
| weak._
|
| I never said trucking was unusually fragile for the
| America today. Many other industries follow the paradigm
| of barely paying enough and relying on a trickle of
| people willing to put with their framework and all of
| them are whining but not actually changing [2]. The
| description of the trucking by duxup in the base of this
| thread [1] is also a description of how a lot of
| industries operates. It's fragile, ugly and profitable.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28918853 [2]
| https://coloradosun.com/2021/10/03/labor-shortage-
| missing-wo...
| thrashh wrote:
| I actually vehemently disagree and will fight to allow
| people to break the rules. I love that gray areas exist.
| Gray areas are where art and ingenuity is born. Gray areas
| allow me to break the rules at work to push improvements.
| Gray areas are what I use to show people how things can be
| better.
|
| I hope we never reach a state where technology actively
| defeats us.
|
| The only time that I think it's responsible to have total
| enforcement is when the rules perfectly capture reality and
| every facet of it ...which to say is never.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Gray areas are where art and ingenuity is born.
|
| Gray areas are also where all manner of corruption is
| born. Officials soliciting bribes, nepotism, exploitative
| labor practices, these things _love_ gray areas.
|
| They also keep bad rules around and encourage selective
| enforcement to target the disadvantaged. Lincoln said it
| best: "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to
| enforce it strictly."
| thrashh wrote:
| Sure, but those are symptoms of larger problems.
| Increasing enforcement is an act of hiding the symptoms
| and it does not and will never solve the underlying
| problem.
|
| For example, I encounter far less discrimination and less
| racism living in where I do now than in other places, and
| yet the laws are practically the same here as in anywhere
| else. The reason I experience less discrimination here is
| due to the encompassing framework that everyone here is
| subjected to as part of their experience growing up. The
| strictness of the laws is irrelevant to that issue.
|
| If you want to change how people act, you need to change
| the entire framework that people are growing within.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Sure, but those are symptoms of larger problems.
| Increasing enforcement is an act of hiding the symptoms
| and it does not and will never solve the underlying
| problem._
|
| That's sometimes true but I'd just note this has nothing
| to do with the original argument made praising gray
| areas.
|
| The drug war is a place where there's an escalating war
| between dealing and enforcement, yes. But most dealers
| aren't having a lot of fun in this gray area.
| dml2135 wrote:
| I may be missing something, but increased enforcement
| sounds like a great way to solve the corruption problem?
|
| Eg. Public servants make ends meet by fudging timesheets
| => Enforcement clamps down on practice => Employees
| bargain for higher pay to make up for difference =>
| Public gets a more transparent accounting of their labor
| costs
| thrashh wrote:
| To me adjusting the level of enforcement is like the
| "fine" knob. It absolutely needs to be adjusted according
| to the situation.
|
| But it's not the "coarse" knob. You can only turn
| enforcement up or down so much before you need a paradigm
| shift.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's great until we're talking about safety. I'm not
| willing to have my family run over by a semi truck with a
| drowsy and over worked driver for the sake of protecting
| these grey areas.
|
| Safety rules are written in blood, after all.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| A good regulatory scheme will give people flexibility in
| how they comply with the rules so that productivity and
| innovation aren't (overly) constrained. If you find that
| you constantly need to break rules to be productive then
| it means you need regulatory reform, not less oversight
| or enforcement within the current regulatory context.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > vehemently disagree and will fight to allow people to
| break the rules
|
| The new rules save lives. Crash accidents involving large
| trucks statistic:
| https://zarzaurlaw.com/category/blog/trucking-accidents/
|
| 'Sure, that will save a few lives but millions will be
| late.' is a Simpsons quote, not a good argument.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I love that gray areas exist. Gray areas are where art
| and ingenuity is born. Gray areas allow me to break the
| rules at work to push improvements. Gray areas are what I
| use to show people how things can be better.
|
| A longish life has confirmed this to me, over and over.
| alistairSH wrote:
| In systems that are safety-critical? Yikes.
|
| The reason we now have electronic tracking of freight
| truckers is because they used to be notorious for taking
| uppers and driving as long as possible, causing all sorts
| of nasty accidents. That isn't ingenuity, that's selfish
| greed, both on the part of the driver and the dispatch
| companies employing them.
| wonder_er wrote:
| > That isn't ingenuity, that's selfish greed, both on the
| part of the driver and the dispatch companies employing
| them.
|
| I believe it's "selfish greed" on behalf of the company,
| but a reasonable response to difficult constraints, on
| behalf of the driver.
| short12 wrote:
| Massively endangering others by the thousands is not a
| reasonable response just so they can shave a few hours
| off their trip
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Exactly. I want absolutely zero gray areas when I'm on a
| highway in the middle of Indiana at night and cross paths
| with at least a few hundred semi trucks. The less gray
| the better.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Hey some of us live here :)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| To your point, a few winters ago I was driving up the NY
| Northway (north of Albany) in January, in a heavy snow
| storm, and cargo trucks were consistently passing me at
| 70+ mph.
|
| One deer or one owl into traffic...it would have been a
| complete charlie foxtrot.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _I actually vehemently disagree and will fight to allow
| people to break the rules._
|
| I think we agree actually. I didn't say it was good that
| rule breaking is getting harder, just that it's a fact.
|
| We have a lot of enculturation around a certain level of
| surveillance and visibility. Things are quickly becoming
| more visible and we will need to adjust. Preserving grey
| area can be part of that, but only if we decide to
| preserve it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _I actually vehemently disagree and will fight to allow
| people to break the rules. I love that gray areas exist.
| Gray areas are where art and ingenuity is born. Gray
| areas allow me to break the rules at work to push
| improvements. Gray areas are what I use to show people
| how things can be better._
|
| Hmm, this sounds so appealing, yet I think it's terribly
| confused. I think you're confusing the "gray area"
| between what people and rules say and what people do,
| with "areas of slack". Slack areas are where people can
| take initiative to do what they want (following the rules
| or not). Gray areas can be that sometimes, were more like
| that in the past, but today, gray areas are often _areas
| of over-determination_ - the rules are contradictory, you
| could be punished or suffer for violating any of them and
| you have to carefully calculate which violation will let
| you survive. There 's no joy in that kind of shit. And,
| as mentioned by other posters, breaking some rules can
| kill people.
| bumby wrote:
| I have mixed feelings on this. I actually think this is a
| reasonable response to overly rigid systems but also
| creates fertile ground for unethical behavior. Ideally, I
| think we need systems with rigid guardrails, but that the
| distance between them is proportional to the amount of
| risk incurred by what you call the practice of "art".
|
| Bending the rules is great in some areas, but I don't
| think it should apply across the board. Ignoring rules is
| fine in low-risk scenarios (particularly when the risk is
| not borne by someone else) but I don't want, for example,
| my commercial airline pilot to get too artsy when it
| comes to his approach for landing, or the programmer
| writing critical code for the autonomous vehicle to
| unilaterally decide they know better, or the electrician
| I hire to flagrantly disregard consensus standards.
|
| From previous work in safety critical code, I regularly
| confronted situations where rule-breaking was done as a
| means to an end, while not being cognizant confronting
| the risks that incurred because of cognitive biases.
| People also loved gray areas in this role because it
| limits accountability. I'm sure there were people who at
| Enron thought they were playing the gray areas as an
| artistic endeavor to maximize profit, but I don't think
| incentivizing that behavior is the best for society.
| PeterisP wrote:
| At least in this case, breaking the rules kills a lot of
| people - IIRC out of all the truck-caused fatalities,
| more than 1000 deaths/year in USA can be directly
| attributed to drowsy driving.
|
| Sleep-deprived truckers should not be a thing, it has
| pretty much the same effects as driving drunk, but much
| more common so causes more crashes and more deaths.
| Breaching the rules for that should have as much
| tolerance as those intentionally driving drunk and
| endangering others that way.
| xmprt wrote:
| I agree in general but there are some places where gray
| areas benefit the employer more than the employee and I
| think this is one of them. If everyone is forced to cheat
| the regulations to get their jobs done then it's no
| longer just a gray area and the regulations are
| pointless.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Next 50 yrs? This will be lucky to still be an issue in 5
| to 10 yrs. Soon enough, the long haul routes will be
| autonomous. Humans will handle the short haul from some
| rural / suburban hub to the suburban / urban final
| destination. Autonomous might not be able to do "the last
| mile" but that's not what cause ppl to not want to be
| drivers.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I'm personally skeptical about the immediate practicality
| of autonomous driving, but either way, I was not just
| speaking about driving. I was talking about nearly every
| area of rule around 'public order.'
| spoonjim wrote:
| Would you support speed limit enforcement by checking
| license plates at the beginning of a stretch of highway and
| at the end and auto-ticketing anyone who averaged over the
| speed limit?
| phillc73 wrote:
| Average speed cameras? They already exist in the UK and
| certain parts of Europe I'm familiar with.
| milankragujevic wrote:
| Yes, can confirm, such cameras exist in Serbia and
| generate electronic tickets available to the vehicle
| owner on a government website if the calculated average
| speed is above allowed.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I do not think the method you are describing would
| usefully increase safety so it seems like a bad idea to
| me.
| atatatat wrote:
| If you raise the speed limit 15% to where it should be,
| sure.
| vkou wrote:
| To what, 55 mph? It's the most fuel-efficient speed for
| the majority of vehicles, and is far less likely to kill
| people in an accident, than a collision at 70*1.15 =
| 80mph.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Maybe the state will have to outsource enforcement of these
| issues so that it doesn't have to admit to allowing some
| rule breaking. Anyone want to co-found Selective-
| Enforcement-as-a-Service?
| tehjoker wrote:
| That's called "the cops".
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Also Public Service Commissions.
| interestica wrote:
| I think we will see "micro fines" and electronic car
| systems in the next 10 years. Go over the speed limit for a
| certain period of time (eg, 10 mins)? Microfine. $5. Park
| in a no parking area for too long? Microfine. Don't signal
| your turn? Microfine, $0.50.
|
| Yes, a nightmare.
| hooande wrote:
| This is a terrible idea. It fixes the cost for speeding
| or not signaling to something that a well off person can
| easily afford. Even I would consider just paying a $5
| fine in order to speed to get to an important meeting,
| etc. A $500 fine for 10 minutes of speeding would make me
| think twice
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The thing that would hold that back is the huge stock of
| existing analogue/gas vehicles. For all the talk of going
| electric, no one is going to buy everyone a new electric
| car and no one is going to just prevent the gas cars from
| driving since the economy needs people to work. Not that
| I'm in favor of the CO2 pollution this implies - though
| I'm not in favor of your Orwellian scenario either, which
| would be plausible otherwise.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Thankfully, in the context of laws in the US, I believe
| the 4th amendment may be helpful here. But other places
| will not be as lucky.
| musesum wrote:
| Microfines was tested in Israel and backfired:
| https://priceonomics.com/effectiveness-of-fines-for-late-
| pic...
| black6 wrote:
| The anecdotes I hear about "cheating the system" before
| electronic logs are mostly along the lines of: stuck in
| stand-still traffic for 30 minutes, I'll log it as a break.
| Whereas according to the electronic log you're still
| driving.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Isn't the key to drive as a team?
| avgDev wrote:
| I actually talked to a guy that drove as a "team" but
| really just solo. He was proud he drove 48 hours non-stop
| and made more money.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| > ICC is a checking on down the line > Well I'm a
| little overweight and my logbook's way behind
|
| - Dave Dudley, "Six Days on the Road" 1963
|
| The give-and-take between making a living and obeying the law
| in truck driving is well established in our culture.
|
| Anyone who's interested I'd encourage to check out Dave
| Dudley's music. It's all there: racing time, avoiding the
| law, fatigue, loneliness, bodily harm, drug abuse, etc.
| petre wrote:
| In the EU it got harder and harder to cheat the digital
| tachographs. The latest generation of _smart tachographs_
| record GPS coordinates of start /stop points so one can no
| longer cheat with a magnet on the wheel's Hall sensor.
| Everything is signed cryptograpghcally, even the wheel
| sensors have a crypto seal, the only way to cheat is to use
| tampered firmware, which carries huge penalties. I'm
| surprised at how deregulated the US transportation market is
| by comparison.
| avgDev wrote:
| EU is way ahead of the US when it comes to trucking safety.
|
| US is a weird place sometimes. Business/Money trumps
| safety. Regulations are often met with huge push back even
| when they can potentially save lives.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| EU and US is just fundamentally different. It is hard to
| overstate that. But it comes with trade-offs. Workers in
| EU, in general, have better standards at work than in US.
| It helps that in EU, healthcare is not directly part of
| employer cost ( everyone pays into it ). EU tends ( I do
| mean tends, because it seems to vary greatly ) toward
| unions, whereas US truckers seeem un-unionized by and
| large.
| short12 wrote:
| Depending on how the driver is contracted 100k is not a big
| deal. Because the take home is not even close to that. For
| instance take off the fuel costs off that 100k just for
| starters
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Electronic log books are not "a lot more difficult." Google
| "truck electronic log cheat"
|
| In some cases it's just pulling a fuse or the right
| connector.
|
| In other systems you can literally tell the e-logger that
| you're doing a kind of driving that 'doesn't count' and the
| system goes "oh okay" and that's that.
|
| Reportedly a lot of state police commercial vehicle cops
| don't bother to check e-loggers because they're lazy and it's
| not as easy as flipping open a paper book.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The electronic logs are probably the reason these rules have
| been relaxed recently. When you could cheat, everyone just
| cheated because you needed to in order to make a living. Now
| you can't cheat and the industry is speaking up about it.
| milliondollar wrote:
| Actually remember a presentation from one of the logbook
| startups from a few years ago. The key feature that
| skyrocketted adoption was the ability to fudge (...er,
| "correct") the logbook manually. When it was automated, they
| had issues because it would basically lock them down to the
| rules.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I am curious if the shortage driven demand is setting these kids
| of for future career trouble. I would guess there might be short-
| haul drivers for quite some time, but long-haul and fixed path
| shipments are maybe not too far off the automation path? Will
| automation creep in slow enough for attrition to weaken the
| impact to drivers?
| watwut wrote:
| Possibly, but you have that problem with literally any trade.
| This is elective course in general public school, so they are
| not shortchanged of more general education.
| gerikson wrote:
| Automation is a long way off.
|
| It would have to very efficient to compete with a pool of
| driver-owners who would be motivated/desperate to undercut the
| automated fleet owners. Those will have to own the vehicles, be
| responsible for maintenance, and of course, shoulder
| responsibility for insurance/safety.
|
| Besides, what are you going to do when your expensive rig and
| its cargo drives to the shoulder in the middle of the desert
| with a software issue? Someone will have to get there and drive
| it home manually.
|
| _Edit_ for a classic look at long-haul transport of hazmats, I
| can recommend this piece by John McPhee from 2003:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/02/17/a-fleet-of-one
| listless wrote:
| I would agree with this. Andrew Yang made this a talking
| point for UBI, but it was always hypothetical. Automating big
| rig hauling is a long way off just based on where we are with
| the consumer sector. Even in cars that are currently
| automated, a driver is onboard at all times.
| kgin wrote:
| Starting this year in SF and expanding to 10s of cities
| over the next few years, this won't be true.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Besides, what are you going to do when your expensive rig
| and its cargo drives to the shoulder in the middle of the
| desert with a software issue?
|
| Same thing truckers do today: call a local towing/repair
| company to come fix it. There are mechanics everywhere who
| can deal with large trucks, all they need is a way to get
| paid.
| yonaguska wrote:
| The way I see truck automation going is that the drivers will
| still be there, but the skill of the job will be dramatically
| reduced, at least for long haul loads. I'm thinking it will
| be a lower paying job for drivers that "babysit" automated
| driving trucks. I don't believe this is optimal. A distracted
| driver is more dangerous, regardless whether they have a
| computer helping them drive. But, the incentives are there. I
| would much rather it looks like the airline industry, where
| computers have come a long way in assisting pilots, but the
| job still has stringent requirements of the pilot.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think the first step will be long-haul trucking across
| long, technically easy, high-demand routes. Think of a
| cross country route taking something from San Francisco to
| Chicago. A driver gets you out of San Francisco, through
| the valley, and through the Sierras. Once it reaches Reno,
| the driver exits the truck, then the truck self-drives
| across the Nevada and Utah deserts until you reach Salt
| Lake City. A new driver gets you across the Wasatch but
| then I-80 is easy again all the way from Wyoming to Chicago
| so it goes back to self-driving. A driver takes over again
| to navigate Chicago's busy roads. You've cut the driver out
| of 80%, and no driver is going more than 300 miles in one
| shot.
| yonaguska wrote:
| One nitpick, the driver will more likely simply drop the
| trailer off, and pick up a new trailer to go back back
| home with. The self driving truck will be valuable enough
| that you wouldn't want to waste any costly mileage by
| having it being actually driven. Another likely scenario,
| you'll want to design big drop off hubs that are
| optimized for self driving trucks to successfully park
| and drop off/pick up trailers.
| null_object wrote:
| For anyone thinking or saying - "isn't this something someone
| could do as an extra job at weekends" - from my personal
| experience driving some medium-size trucks in the UK while I was
| at university (helping a friend who had a delivery company),
| driving anything that's larger than a van is a totally different
| experience than driving any sort of car, and is both much harder
| work and a magnitude more stressful. Not to mention how f**ing
| difficult it is to reverse.
|
| And I wasn't driving anything near the size of the rigs being
| talked about here.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Just this past weekend I drove a 25ft truck for a 400 mile
| move. It was the first time I've driven something bigger than a
| car and I gained a lot of respect for truck drivers.
| Surprisingly difficult to do basic things like lane centering.
| brightball wrote:
| I spent 4 years driving a 35ft RV with our family. The trips
| were fun, the driving is scary.
|
| Wind affects you so much. You can feel big vehicles passing
| you. Every slight angle on a road makes you feel like you're
| going to tip over. You need special navigation systems that
| know your vehicle size so you don't get routed down a road
| where you can't turn around or a bridge can't support you.
|
| Definitely learned to appreciate truck stops and rest areas
| though. Parking overnight fills up so many times you'll end up
| in a Walmart parking lot because of all the cameras.
|
| It's an adventure. It could be fun and a lot of people love it.
| Some people especially get into long distance trucking.
|
| But IMO it's definitely a full time job with a lot of
| responsibilities. I'm shocked there aren't more accidents which
| is really a credit to all of these drivers and their training.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I have spent a little over a year traveling every few
| days/weeks with a 35ft fifth wheel RV.
|
| I hope to high heavens that you didn't have a normal bumper
| pull with a length of 35 ft. That would be utterly crazy!
|
| It is completely uneventful if you have a proper truck and
| hitch, even with a 30 mph crosswind, though I have never gone
| over 75 mph with this setup. If you EVER feel like you are
| not in control or the vehicle is unstable, your setup is
| fatally flawed, and you need to reconsider your hitch and
| truck setup.
|
| Open source OSMAND has truck navigation with weight, width,
| and height restriction considerations.
|
| Truck stops and rest areas should be your last resort. You
| need to make phone calls and strike deals with potential
| places to stay at discounted rates. Being nice over the phone
| goes a long way.
| brightball wrote:
| It was a class A (Tiffin Allegro).
| yardie wrote:
| There was one experience where the local Uhaul gave me a 20'
| truck instead of the 10' van I requested. It was the most
| stressful, surreal experience I ever had trying to maneuver
| that big dumb truck around city streets. And this was just to
| move a broke college graduate's stuff; basically a cheap futon,
| book case, and desk. Nothing in the truck was worth the damage
| of hitting or scraping a car.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In fairness, UK streets are often _tiny_ compared to those in
| the US (at least in my experience motoring around southern
| England for a week). I suspect that plays a nontrivial role.
| lallysingh wrote:
| That's true until the last mile or so of delivery. The back
| of the warehouse, etc can be a real mess to get to.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No doubt, but in my short experience in southern England,
| if you're not on a major highway, you're often on a lane
| just big enough for one compact car and sidewalks are used
| in case of oncoming traffic. Chicago alleys are positively
| spacious by comparison. I imagine truck drivers just learn
| routes with wider roads.
| foxyv wrote:
| I 2nd this. I've driven a truck with a long horse trailer just
| pushing the edge of the requirement of a Class A license since
| I was 16 and I can say it is HARD. That's without having to
| worry about a tractor gear box and clutch brakes on an 18
| wheeler. Everything you do has to be planned well in advance.
|
| You need to constantly look out for human squirrels driving
| econoboxes and trying to pass you on the right while you make a
| wide turn. Crowded gas stations truly suck. Bollards hide and
| try to eat your trailer. If you get into a corner and can't
| turn sharp enough you can get trapped by your trailer.
|
| Then there are the additional laws, weight limits, fines and
| fees, logging requirements, hour limits, hazmat, double
| trailers and a hundred other things that a trucker needs to
| know.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it depends. I've driven stuff like larger box trucks or
| pulling a larger trailer (even a tiny house!) without any
| issue. I wouldn't want to drive them in a city though. That
| would be stressful.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Just don't get in a hurry. That way you can look far enough
| ahead to predict any issues before they become pressing. When
| you're starting out, this also gives you time to remember how
| the transmission works (although all new rigs are automatics
| now, which might explain the high schoolers). All the idiots
| on the street with you can either pass or wait behind.
|
| Also please give cyclists some space.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree with this, but it doesn't solve all the issues of
| driving in the cities (maybe you're area is different). I
| would be concerned with the narrow streets with people not
| parked well, double parked, etc. Philly seems to be
| terrible to drive in compared to many other cities. If you
| do get into an accident, the police won't even come to make
| a report. The roads are generally in terrible condition
| too.
| all2 wrote:
| _Never_ drive them into a city. That 's one of my rules for
| operating a larger vehicle; if I can avoid urban/city zones I
| will. Sometimes you can't avoid them, but the rest of the
| time I plan to go around. Especially if I'm hauling something
| heavy.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Don't forget though, that American roads are very different to
| British roads - and presumably, much easier to drive a truck
| on.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Well, one of the differences between the US and UK is the US
| is much larger, and the long-haul 18-wheeler routes are going
| to take longer than a weekend to drive and back. Going
| between, say, Chicago and NYC takes ~12 hours... not counting
| stops. And that's one way!
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Aren't American trucks bigger though? Seems like the
| economics would encourage companies to make the biggest truck
| that can physically fit on the roads, to maximize cargo per
| driver hour.
| asdff wrote:
| The problem is a lot of American roads have poor clearance.
| You can find a lot of images online of trucks that have
| been opened like a sardine can along the top due to hitting
| a low bridge. You can't make the truck too long either or
| else it will be unable to turn on right angle
| intersections. When they deliver big things like wind
| turbines on American roads, its can be an extremely slow
| process with engineers spotting each and every single turn
| along the route.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| true, but then in the UK you're working with roads that
| aren't even really designed to host trucks in the first
| place. American roads are pretty grid-ish, British roads
| are all over the shop and much more organic in structure.
| asdff wrote:
| American roads are like that too in the east coast.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Slightly bigger, because in the US the regulation is on
| trailer length, whereas European regs are on total length.
| So Euro trucks are all cab-over designs, while American
| trucks are generally engine-in-front (easier to access for
| maintenance). But unless you're talking about a double
| trailer, not much difference.
| pc86 wrote:
| With cab size and fuel efficiency constraints I don't think
| it'd be as simple as "bigger = $++" but I could be wrong.
| antasvara wrote:
| That's an interesting point. It would seem that the idea
| truck would have the highest possible cargo to truck
| weight ratio for profitability purposes. The square cube
| law would seem to indicate that larger trucks are
| heavier, but add much more cargo space to compensate.
|
| However, larger engines could be less efficient per pound
| than their smaller counterparts. My intuition is that the
| opposite is true, but I could definitely be wrong on
| that.
| LanceH wrote:
| It only takes one choke point or low bridge or prohibited
| route to ruin your whole trip. While 99% of US roads may be
| bigger and wider, 1% of a 400 mile daily trip can cause major
| problems.
| mitchell_h wrote:
| Here's the problem with driving on the weekends. Unless you get
| hooked up with a company and they're ok with paying your
| insurance the answer is no. The TLDR here is that if you're and
| employee or contractor for a trucking company, you'll be paying
| insurance rates based on driving the legal DOT(in the states)
| limit.
|
| If you want to see what this looks like, google around for "hot
| shot trucking". It doesn't require a CDL under, I believe, 24k
| lbs. BUT it does require a special insurance since you're no
| longer a person, but a company.
| busterarm wrote:
| Y'all don't even have to look -- owner operator insurance
| cost is enough to buy a cheap compact car every year.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Each individual state may have more stringent CDL licensing
| requirements. However, every state must follow federal
| requirements as a baseline. One element in federal CDL
| operator requirements is a vehicle's GVWR. The federal
| requirement specifies that, when a vehicle has a GVWR of
| 26,000 pounds or less, the operator does not need a CDL.
| However, this does not mean the truck GVW can be loaded above
| the GVWR of 26,000 pounds and operated by a non-CDL driver.
| Federal requirements state the GVW must, in addition, be
| 26,000 pounds or less. CDL requirements become more confusing
| when the vehicle is towing a trailer.
|
| Moar info https://www.ntea.com/NTEA/Member_benefits/Industry_
| leading_n...
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| It's not about driving the truck. It's about camping in the
| truck for weeks shitting in a ditch and washing yourself with
| cold water.
|
| I know someone who is a truck driver and recently retired. He
| saw the company he worked for replace the natives with
| Bulgarians and Romanians.
| paganel wrote:
| My brother is a Romanian truck driver (he's on his way to
| France right now, if I'm not mistaken). He got into this
| career at 32 years of age because he couldn't make it anymore
| running a small cow farm, his farm couldn't compete against
| the subsidized milk coming from the likes of France or Poland
| (a temporary, politically-induced ban on selling beef to
| Russia also didn't help, his cows' value was halved over-
| night). What I'm saying is that every action has a reaction,
| those Romanians and Bulgarians are not into it to steal
| someone else's job, most of them were forced to do it because
| of economical and political decisions taken over their heads.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And it's not like local gigs are impossible to find. That is
| doing delivery for local company. Get back to home each day,
| for not that much worse pay.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Well sort of, most routes in America at least do have a
| TA/Love's with a shower lol.
| Factorium wrote:
| This is good. We should be training more people directly from age
| 15/16 for direct entry to the workforce.
|
| University should be only suggested to the top 20% of each yearly
| cohort, and senior highschool to the top 50%.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Why those numbers?
| varjag wrote:
| Yeah. Make it 2% instead of 20%, and suddenly 90% of people
| suggesting it start complaining.
| njharman wrote:
| "Entry to the workforce" is not a goal. It is a failure of
| society to force people to labor for ~half their waking hours
| just to exist.
| thehappypm wrote:
| In my opinion people really should have jobs. Our ancestors
| didn't sit around all day. They had "jobs" like hunting and
| gathering. Jobs and careers give people structure and meaning
| to their lives; a kid being a trucker is probably better for
| his mental health than having no job and just being a UBI
| recipient.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Why does the thing from which we derive meaning have to be
| a job? Why can't UBI recipients create art, have hobbies,
| meaningfully interact with their community during their
| day? Our ancestors didn't sit around - they did all those
| things, too, and those things also gave them structure and
| meaning.
| gruez wrote:
| >University should be only suggested to the top 20% of each
| yearly cohort, and senior highschool to the top 50%.
|
| that's going to be politically suicide to implement.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| It would be more palatable to offer free university tuition
| to the top 20 percent (which has been true many places in the
| past and is still a thing in some places _).
|
| _ my father went to high school in rural Illinois in the late
| 60's. He got a full ride "hardship grant" simply because he
| was a decent (not exceptional) student and came from a poor
| farming family.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| To be fair, the problem isn't the people not going to Uni,
| it's the chasm that exists in-between. A decent investment in
| trade-schools/polytechs and it wouldn't matter so much.
|
| But then, the UK fcked over a lot of its trades to become a
| "service economy", so who knows.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Is it just me or does it seem.. cruel, enlisting youth into what
| is a hard, and soon to be a dead-end job? They're saying
| "shortage of truck drivers" but that's just another way of saying
| "the pay is too low".
| exabrial wrote:
| This made me chuckle, as this is pretty common in the midwest.
|
| My first job was at 12 years old; I drove a 6 wheeled grain truck
| for our family's farmer friend in the July heat to help with his
| wheat harvest.
|
| No a/c, windows were stuck down, 3 speed. Bruce, the farmer,
| rigged up a pedal extension for me on the clutch.
|
| Plenty of kids down here can drive a skid steer, tractor, truck,
| or loader.
| poo-yie wrote:
| Two different things. Driving a farm truck on a rural road in
| Nebraska is very different from driving a tractor-trailer
| loaded in heavy traffic on the interstate.
| exabrial wrote:
| South Kansas actually, thank you very much.
|
| And I assume you mean that navigating a farm truck in heavy
| traffic on a dirt road going into the co-op, sometimes
| waiting for 2 hours to dump the load, with tight busy traffic
| passing both ways on a narrow dirt road lined with ditches
| that could roll the vehicle is different than what you're
| saying.
| syshum wrote:
| >>> work is dangerous, comes with low pay and and that the hours
| are unbearable.
|
| All of which is true for the majority of drivers. If the industry
| wants to attract people they need to get off the "per mile
| driven" pay scheme where truckers can spend hours, or even days
| unpaid waiting at terminals, docks, etc...
|
| Trucking today is a terrible job, with low pay if calculated on a
| per hour worked basis. Combined with most of the regulations
| being placed on the driver, not the company, with most of
| liability for violating the regulations born by driver not the
| company. There is a continual battle between doing what the
| company says, and doing what the law says. Drivers are stuck in
| the middle because it is perfectly legal for a company to have a
| driver break the law or drive an unsafe rig, the only person that
| has to pay the fine is the driver.
| cat199 wrote:
| > it is perfectly legal for a company to have a driver break
| the law
|
| IANAL but i can guarantee it's not - whether or not it gets
| enforced on the other hand...
| syshum wrote:
| The companies are very careful in the language and
| punishments. If a driver refuses a load because the trucks
| turn signals are out as an example, well the company will not
| come right out and say "You must take the load" but that
| driver will likely find himself sitting for possible days
| unpaid waiting for the next dispatch as punishment or they
| will be assigned the less profitable routes, etc
|
| I know personally more than a few drivers that would pay out
| of their own pocket to buy parts to fix trucks themselves so
| they would not end up in this dispatch punishment.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| This is the same story in the taxi business... cross the
| dispatcher and you're going to be SOL
| datavirtue wrote:
| Why isn't there a national truckers union?
| kingaillas wrote:
| Missing a /s tag? Isn't that the (International
| Brotherhood of) Teamsters?
| cudgy wrote:
| This might explain one good reason that there is a shortage
| of drivers.
| bluedino wrote:
| Ironically, Walmart is one of the best places for truck drivers
| to work.
|
| https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/thre...
| [deleted]
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Also programmers. Walmart is a massive Clojure shop, puts out
| some very good open source libs, and very much views their IT
| department as a competitive advantage and not a cost center.
| flexie wrote:
| The truck driver shortage reminds me on the fossil fuel
| situation.
|
| Generally, we hear that truck drivers won't be needed in the
| future: Trucks will drive themselves. But now we have less truck
| drivers than we need, and the future with self driving trucks
| hasn't quite arrived yet
|
| Similarly, we hear that fossil fuels should be out phased. And
| now we have an energy crisis with not enough oil and gas. The
| future of renewable energy isn't quite there yet.
| dntrkv wrote:
| There are 3.6M truck drivers in the US, and this number has
| only been increasing. The shortage has nothing to do with self-
| driving trucks. The problem is it's a dangerous, high-stress,
| and comparatively, low pay job. It has only gotten worse with
| all of the additional regulations in the past 5-10 years. Not
| saying I disagree with all the regulations, but the
| implementation needs work. Truckers are constantly on edge
| nowadays.
|
| Anyways, if they wanna solve the shortage, pay them more.
| Simple as that.
| gjs278 wrote:
| you will not solve the shortage by paying them more. it will
| still be too dangerous and stressful for anyone that isn't
| willing to do it.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Truck transportation is a bidding market. I think this is
| exactly what's going on, up to the point customers have
| private fleets that are losing people.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| One group I worked with they were yelling they did not have
| enough drivers. But we sent someone over and watched how they
| ran their op for a few weeks. The real issue was they had one
| guy who would only come in at 6:30AM sharp. The entire org
| had somehow worked itself around that one hard requirement.
| He was also the guy who signed off on shipments. So lines of
| trucks would sit waiting empty because no one could leave
| until it was signed off. They thought they needed more
| drivers because shipments were low. Just to keep up and more
| loaders to load the items. Drivers would show at 9 and would
| not even roll out until 1. When the real solution was to hire
| 2 more people to sign off on orders and put them on different
| shifts. Throwing more money at the problem would never fix
| it. They just did not have enough space for that many drivers
| to show up at the same time.
|
| They had designed their whole shipping system around max
| capacity at a particular time. They started adding more
| shipping capacity to cover it. When they really needed to
| shift when the work was happening. Once they fixed that they
| actually found they had overstaffed on drivers. They quickly
| found those guys more work as they were putting off orders
| because of capacity.
|
| The new rules are brutal on that sort of fix.
| infogulch wrote:
| That's a Goldratt Theory of Constraints kind of solution
| right there.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| very much so. A lot of LTL and shipping companies should
| re-evaluate how and when they load things. The rules
| changed fairly recently and those will create all sorts
| of spots like that. So the old routes and loadtimes
| probably no longer make sense. Where 1 guy coming in at a
| particular time was fine but now with the way shifts are
| going to be you may need 2 and shift the pickup time out
| by x hours. That sort of thing. The rule changes also
| constrained the actual number of hours drivers can do (so
| there is an increased demand for drive time). When I
| started with this stuff 20+ years ago it was 5x5 shifts
| were common and legal. But now you will have to make sure
| you give people their weekends and core sleep times and
| about a dozen countdown clocks per driver. Getting that
| scheduling right will be quite the linear algebra
| optimization problem.
| dnissley wrote:
| Re: pay, here's a comment of mine from another thread on this
| topic. You need to take into consideration that there are two
| sides to this market -- the supply side and demand side:
|
| There's a lot of stuff to ship, but margins on those things
| are very thin + demand for said stuff is extremely elastic
| due to it not being super essential so there's also not a lot
| of room for increased driver wages.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > There's a lot of stuff to ship, but margins on those
| things are very thin + demand for said stuff is extremely
| elastic due to it not being super essential so there's also
| not a lot of room for increased driver wages.
|
| Why should truck drivers subsidize these companies, then?
|
| A company should not be in business if it isn't sustainable
| without screwing the workers.
| gxs wrote:
| Why this is so poorly understood by people is beyond.
|
| Small businesses always complain about how they can't
| afford to pay more. But if you need to pay less than a
| minimum wage to make your business viable then... it's
| not viable.
|
| Well..if there were laws to enforce a higher minimum
| wage, all of your competitors would have to do it too and
| the price of products across your industry would rise.
|
| The myth here is that everyone would suddenly stop buying
| things, but with higher wages people can afford to spend
| more.
|
| Over the years we're in the same boat and the cycle
| begins again with a new minimum wage - that's ok.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The myth here is that everyone would suddenly stop
| buying things, but with higher wages people can afford to
| spend more.
|
| that is a myth. Only people on the bottom can afford to
| spend more. For the rest of us we don't get a raise.
|
| With higher wages prices need to go up for the same
| profit. Supply and demand may or may not allow prices to
| go up. Some marginal products go off the market. Some
| prices go up. People adjust to buying less things because
| they can't afford them. Slowly inflation catches up and
| wages are back to "too low" - this is a bad thing.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > Well..if there were laws to enforce a higher minimum
| wage...
|
| So why don't you argue to make the minimum wage $10
| million a year? Then everyone is rich. Hell, I wonder why
| the Sudan hasn't thought of that.
|
| There is surely an upper-bound on the minimum wage in an
| economy? What if you are already at it?
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > What if you are already at it?
|
| What if people _think_ we're at it because they don't
| factor in food stamps, Medicaid, etc.
|
| If the minimum was a _livable_ wage, maybe we could get
| more people off of so called "entitlements".
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's very essential, but it is independently transactional
| - I.e. very not sticky.
|
| It's the same reason that buying a drink is independently
| transactional and competitive vs buying health insurance is
| very non competitive and very sticky.
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's not the regulations causing problems - it's the price
| pressure seeking lower and lower standards. The rest of the
| drivers on the road don't want to share it with a truck
| driver on two hours of sleep, steering 15 tons of truck and
| cargo.
|
| Nor do they want to be around vehicles that have skipped
| their brake maintenance because they pushing operational
| hours to the edge.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Agreed 100%. The problem is the regulations have increased
| the difficulty and stress of the job while the pay has
| steadily decreased. That's why my solution is to pay more,
| not remove the regulations.
|
| Though there is plenty of room for improvement in the
| regulations. They need to provide some leeway for drivers
| that have been stuck in traffic for hours and can't
| complete a load that's just a couple miles away.
|
| Also, you have no idea how many truckers work around these
| regulations and go through insane hoops just so they can
| fudge the numbers. When you see that happening en masse,
| your regulations probably need some tuning.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I agree the solution is to pay more - that would also
| reduce the level effort being expended to bypass
| regulations by independent drivers. The problem is the
| independent drivers are squeezed between the logistics
| companies and the regulations. They need to form a union
| to get both better pay and better implemented regulations
| - but that's difficult the way the market for their
| services has been evolved to break them down into
| individual contractors.
| petre wrote:
| In the EU the transport regulations are doubled by
| workplace security, capped maximum work hours and minimum
| wage regulations. So far socialism has somehow worked
| fine in this sector. Still, 70% of the trucking market is
| served by East Europeans and Westen companies have
| registered fleets in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and are
| using staff from these markets specifically. It's not
| only because of staffing pressure, but also heavy
| regulation in the West.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| They can't just double salaries and still expect to have
| customers.
|
| At some point, companies will simply not purchase the goods
| if they can't truck it economically or will look for
| alternatives.
| ridaj wrote:
| If there wasn't a shortage then sure they might lose money
| by paying drivers more, but the supposed shortage of labor
| hurts more (it leads to business that they don't do at all)
| lowmagnet wrote:
| What are the low-cost alternatives to trucking?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Rail freight is cheaper than trucking in general
| bluGill wrote:
| Too bad the rail industry doesn't care to compete in
| general. Trucks run when you want them to. Rail means you
| need to rearrange your shipping to fit them.
|
| There are exceptions, but when it doesn't take much
| digging to discover rail doesn't care to get more of this
| business even though they could with a bit of customer
| service.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| Maybe comparing the bill from a trucking company against
| the bill from the rail; How much does it cost to get that
| freight from the train station to my delivery location,
| though?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Is it really so different? Trains offload at depots;
| similarly trucks don't take every piece of cargo on board
| directly from A to B.
| petre wrote:
| You still have to provide last mile delivery, loading and
| unloading operations thus it takes more time. Plus adjust
| the logistics chain. If you have big warehouses built for
| trucked goods, tough luck.
| [deleted]
| rwj wrote:
| True, but isn't that the while point of the supply-demand
| curve? Not enough drivers to cover the work means that
| prices should go up, and some marginal customers will go
| away, until the whole thing balances.
|
| It's odd the way people understand that increased prices
| will lower demand, but not see that demand will also drive
| prices.
| acdha wrote:
| Some customers won't buy but the driver's pay is only one
| part of the total cost and most businesses aren't running
| on margins that tight for very long. If shipping prices
| drift up, they'll adjust their usage or raise their own
| prices rather than voluntarily go out of business.
| rapind wrote:
| > At some point, companies will simply not purchase the
| goods if they can't truck it economically or will look for
| alternatives.
|
| I don't know why you were downvoted. Maybe people assumed a
| political position, but AFAICT you're just stating facts.
|
| If trucking in its current form becomes unsustainable then
| it'll evolve into leaner alternatives, or we'll simply pay
| more / consume less. Nothing wrong with that.
| acdha wrote:
| I think it's more the "assume a perfect spherical cow"
| style of argument. It's true that people will stop buying
| if the shipping price hits some incredibly high level but
| it's a complex system where driver pay is just a small
| part. The most likely outcomes are things like raising
| their own prices, becoming more economical in their use
| or packaging, shifting the delivery times & intervals,
| etc. -- things which happen all of the time without
| reaching such dramatic levels. The data I've seen has the
| cost of fuel being right behind compensation in cost and
| that fluctuates all the time without people halting
| purchases.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Automated electric long-haul trucking looks good but there's an
| issue that requires an on-board human: self-driving at present
| only makes sense for long steady stretches of freeway, say I80
| through Nevada and so on. Even though that's the majority of
| the travel time, human drivers will be needed for:
|
| (1) 'the last few miles' i.e dealing with local complexity at
| delivery points, and
|
| (2) unexpected emergencies (flat tires, etc.) and general
| maintenance.
|
| Something like a remote drone operator probably wouldn't
| work(for changing tires etc.) or be completely reliable
| (disconnecting in a snowstorm etc.).
|
| However, this could be an attractive work situation for many
| people. If you have an 8-hour straight automated run with a
| truck cabin, the operator can sleep, study, write code...
| hopefully something more productive than online games, anyway.
| Supplemental earnings could be possible.
|
| This also benefits the trucking companies as they can plausibly
| run trucks on much longer 20+ driving / day schedules, since
| operators can sleep on the automated streches of the freeways.
| wombatpm wrote:
| You can also run convoys with one team per 5 trucks. They
| will want to maintain a person in the loop if only for
| protecting from highway robbers. What happens if two cars
| ride side by side in two lanes, force the truck to stop and
| steal the load?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There's plenty of oil and gas. It's just the still available
| sources are difficult and expensive to extract from, requiring
| high prices to be worth it, but plentiful supply inherently
| drives the prices down, so it either needs to be kept
| artificially low via cartels or subsidized, which voters are
| understandably not big fans of given the history of fossil fuel
| subsidies.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Waiting for renewable energy to be "quite there yet" is never
| going to happen.
|
| These transitions will take place, but they will take place
| precisely because shortages like these force them to happen.
| jdlyga wrote:
| Kind of like how C++ developers are always in demand
| analyst74 wrote:
| Re: fossil fuel
|
| I have been following oil news closely for a better part of a
| decade now, the oil industry did not reduce capacity due to
| renewables. They respond to price, especially higher cost
| productions like fracking and oil sand. Consistently low oil
| prices since 2014 crash has scared many investors away, and
| it'll take some time of consistently high oil price before
| investor confidence return.
|
| Current high prices is a combination of inflation (primarily
| caused by money printing), OPEC+ not going full speed, and
| other high cost producers not ramping up due to lack of
| confidence.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > And now we have an energy crisis with not enough oil and gas.
|
| Citation required.
|
| > The future of renewable energy isn't quite there yet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
|
| You were saying? Wind and solar, cheaper than all fossil fuel
| sources for almost ten years now.
|
| The cost of solar has plunged by a factor of almost 6x
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/3-...
|
| Offshore wind is the most expensive renewable and is surpassing
| the cheapest fossil fuel source.
| sleepymoose wrote:
| It's not about the cost, it's about the availability.
|
| Go look at the percent generated by source and you'll see how
| far off we are from phasing out fossil fuels. Couple this
| with the projected usage of electricity in the coming years
| and the outlook is that much bleaker.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Ge.
| .. https://www.statista.com/statistics/192872/total-
| electricity...
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I think "quite" is doing a lot of work here. I agree with this
| characterization of the mechanics of what's happening, but more
| broadly I'd say western culture has been suffering a growing
| disconnect between dream and reality for some time now. What is
| seen as "futuristic tech", driven by endless hype machines,
| perpetually seems to be just a few years away, regardless of
| things like: physics, funding, business models, government
| aptitude and will, human behavior, public opinion, and frankly
| human ingenuity/adaptability. As a consequence, instead of
| planning based on the world we live in today and the most
| likely near term projections, we try to plan for entirely
| unrealistic futures. It's a mixture of being sold a future as
| being closer than it is or entirely different than it will be,
| and trying to will into existence a future we want (or want to
| avoid). Nobody wants to stay tethered to reality anymore, for
| various and varied reasons, so they try to act like it doesn't
| exist.
| Guest42 wrote:
| There's an endless supply of truck drivers, just a shortage of
| those willing to be underpaid and abused.
| flatiron wrote:
| I've had friends in the truck driving business and the
| hardest part is finding people who can stay clean with the
| drug testing. The Venn diagram of people wanting to drive
| truck and who recreationally use drugs seem to overlap a
| touch.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Again, you're only stating half the description.
|
| The hardest thing is finding people who won't take drugs
| _at that salary, with those working conditions_
| flexie wrote:
| And there is a seemingly endless supply of oil and gas. If
| you pay enough.
| Guest42 wrote:
| The price of oil and gas has been far more inflated than
| the price of truck drivers since 1970.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| Where you get such ideas?
|
| The average salary for a truck driver is $70,363 per year in
| the United States.
|
| https://www.indeed.com/career/truck-driver/salaries
| judge2020 wrote:
| I can see a lot of people still not taking it at $150k
| since it forces your lifestyle and free time to revolve
| around your job.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| This is delusional. The vast, vast majority of people in
| the USA cannot hope to make $150k per year, so you'd FOR
| SURE see people jumping into trucking if it paid that
| much.
| yardie wrote:
| Is that 1099 or W2 salary. If it's the former they are
| effectively closer to $35k once you add in expenses.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Median?
| windowsrookie wrote:
| $70,363/year is $1353/week.
|
| Say you're a trucker working 60 hours a week that's
| $22.55/hour.
|
| Here's the day of a truck driver...
|
| Most truck drivers are paid by the mile. If you're a long-
| haul truck driver you live in your truck. Driving all day,
| then sitting at a warehouse for 3 hours while you get
| unloaded. You're not getting paid while sitting there but
| you also can't leave. You have to stay with the truck at
| all times. Then it's 11pm when you're finally unloaded and
| you have to find a truck stop to park and sleep at. The
| closest truck stop is 10 miles away but it's 11pm, it might
| be full. You only have 20 minutes of legal driving time
| left on your log book. Do you risk going to the truck stop
| even though it might be full and you run out of driving
| hours or do you try to find a street to park on? Most
| cities don't allow trucks to park on the street so that's a
| gamble too.
|
| If you run out of hours looking for a spot to park you risk
| getting a fine if you are inspected. State troopers and
| police can pull truck drivers over at any time for an
| inspection. If you are fined it's out of your own pocket,
| not the company.
|
| So even if you were doing your job perfectly legally, you
| ran out of time because the warehouse took too long to
| unload. Now you might get fined and completely wipe out any
| income you made today. It also goes on your driving record
| and future companies won't hire you if you have too many
| incidents.
|
| Now it's 6am and you're not feeling well and need to use
| the bathroom. The truck stop bathroom has a 15 minute wait
| but your next pickup is in 30 minutes and it's a 20 minute
| drive way.
|
| Also your kids birthday is tomorrow but you might not make
| it back in time.
|
| Now do this every day for less than $25/hour. All while
| every car on the road rages at you because your truck is
| limited to 65mph.
| syshum wrote:
| I dont know how reliable these indeed salaries are, I also
| know many many many drivers that are making less than 50K a
| year putting in 50-60 hours a week (or more) and are away
| from their familes for 5-7 days at a time
| Guest42 wrote:
| Agreed, indeed says that Pepsi pays 65k and that's one of
| the top employers in the industry.
| opencl wrote:
| Seems like it includes owner operator pay without
| deducting the (quite large) expenses.
| deft wrote:
| How much do you make per year? I think 70k is underpaying
| for truck driving.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| I'm not in the US, not anywhere those levels.
|
| So just my 2 cents from looking from the outside
| bkfunk wrote:
| More like a median of 47k, according to BLS, with 90%
| earning less than 70k:
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm
| wbobeirne wrote:
| They said underpaid, not low paid. It's not just a job,
| it's a way of living that completely dominates your life
| and taxes your body with the lifestyle associated with it.
|
| Clearly not enough people are willing to make that tradeoff
| for the salary.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is still low paid. Money per hour, volatility of
| income, and quality of life at work including morbidity
| and mortality risk are just as relevant as money per
| year.
|
| BLS does not incorporate these metrics, but there is an
| easy way to see if a job is low paid relative to quality
| of life at work (and outside of work). And that is to see
| people advise their kids to aspire to be. Doctor, lawyer,
| engineer, but not truck driver.
| self_buddliea wrote:
| > "... but I never left trucking," he said. "I would always
| either drive on the weekends or part-time not because I had to,
| but because I enjoyed it."
|
| The impression I get being in the UK is that driving HGVs is a
| cruel and soul destroying activity.
| Stevvo wrote:
| In the UK it definitely would be, however in the USA there is
| an appeal to the 'open roads' that might make up for some of
| the career's shortcomings.
| njharman wrote:
| > When thinking about the trucking industry, the first thing that
| comes to mind about its drivers is that they tend to be older
|
| No, the first thing that comes to mind is another shit job that
| has limited future and should be automated so humans don't have
| to do it.
| nimbius wrote:
| Ouch.
|
| I work on diesel trucks for a living and ive also been a
| professional driver. I never had a problem driving, but like
| all jobs, you gotta find something that fits.
|
| the highschool things nothing new really, as ive personally
| seen some young drivers in my time. trucking companies have
| paid for school for about 2 decades now so thats not really
| anything new. they pay you while you learn and in return you
| have offers like buying your own truck, setting your own hours,
| competitive pay rates and bonuses. you can even ditch your rent
| payments if you want, its not that hard to just live on the
| road.
|
| you have typically 3 job types. local (the beer truck for
| example), regional (milk, eggs, poultry), and
| intermodal/interstate (IPhones and engine blocks.) wanna stay
| home more? pick local. wanna see literally the entire country?
| then interstate professional is your calling. Literally
| everything you own came on a truck, so i dont think "limited
| future" is a fair assessment. cities like NY would grind to a
| halt in a few hours if they didnt have trucks and drivers.
|
| people have been calling out the death of trucking for 20 years
| now but its not technology thats killing it, its greedy
| profiteering logistics companies. the "shortage" has always
| been caused by this and few other things.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Every single economic and worker issue can be explained with a
| single graph.
|
| https://files.epi.org/2013/ib388-figurea.jpg
|
| Or if you really like charts
|
| https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
| andymockli wrote:
| Spoiler: US Government spent more money than they had in gold
| reserves culminating in the breaking of the Bretton Woods
| agreement with European nations. The USD from 1973 became a
| fully fiat currency. So yes, if it deals with the US economy
| after 1970's, as the graphs indicate, it's inseparable from USD
| inflation most likely caused by government spending.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| So according to you, the 2008 recession was caused by... gap
| between productivity and hourly compensation?
|
| also, comparing productivity to hourly compensation is a bad
| comparison because it entirely omits other forms of
| compensation (stocks, healthcare). if i try to compare total
| compensation to productivty using FRED, I get:
| https://i.imgur.com/ohabUFu.png, which seems to say the
| opposite? Total compensation seems to have outpaced
| productivity growth, at least starting from 2000.
| omreaderhn wrote:
| You should actually read through that website. The gap
| between productivity and wages is only one of the charts on
| there. The thesis posits that both the 2008 recession and the
| productivity-wage gap is a consequence of the monetary regime
| that began in the early 1970s.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What do economists think about this explanation?
| gruez wrote:
| >The thesis posits ...
|
| what thesis? The first link is a chart, and the second link
| is a collection of charts with a bunch of arrows, and a
| quote at the end. Neither be plausibly called a thesis,
| unless you're already to primed to believe it.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Yes. People getting paid fairly don't need ridiculously
| unreasonable loan conditions to buy a house.
|
| The fact that you are bringing up stocks as compensation says
| a great deal.
|
| Cool so I can have healthcare while I starve naked on the
| street cause I can't pay for food,clothing or housing with my
| insurance card.
|
| FRED... oh man. You mean the private business that was
| created specificity to rob every person in the united states
| says nothing is wrong. In fact it is great? Cool....
|
| Read https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-
| Reserv... If you really want to know what is going on.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What did it look like before 1950?
| ouid wrote:
| the "bitcoin will save us" at the bottom...
| lm28469 wrote:
| While valid for a lot of industries, I'm not sure the
| productivity of driving a truck from A to B doubled since the
| 70s
| joebob42 wrote:
| Probably at least a little: logistics has improved
| substantially since then. Also the value of the stuff in the
| truck is up, I'm not sure how that plays in.
| ouid wrote:
| the opportunity cost still would.
| soniman wrote:
| These stories are all planted by the trucking companies. These
| stories have shown up a million times over the last twenty years,
| and maybe earlier. The WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, WaPo and now NPR run
| this same article about every two weeks. It always amazes me when
| people tweet this article or it shows up on HN because it is so
| predictable. Haven't you seen this same article at least a
| hundred times? Where are all the truckers' yachts?
| gadders wrote:
| It's amusing to see this, as in the UK people think shortage of
| truck drivers is purely a Brexit phenomenon.
|
| That may be a factor, but there are others in place as well such
| as the tax regime changing for self-employed drivers (IR35) etc.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Yep. If you tag 'because of brexit' onto literally any headline
| it's instant click fodder at the moment.
| veltas wrote:
| Maybe Brexit caused the shortage of truck drivers in the US
| too!
| Chris2048 wrote:
| There is a large cohort of anti-brexit media that spins
| everything economically bad as a result of Brexit. It's hard to
| know what to thing when economist are so politically spiked.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Even before Brexit, the UK was suffering from a massive
| shortage of truckers. Covid and the resulting upset of the
| transport industry definitely had an impact as well.
|
| However, many UK truck drivers were foreign nationals that all
| got sent home or didn't believe in their job security after
| Brexit. Nothing in economics is ever the result of just one
| thing, but Brexit has made an existing problem much worse.
|
| The difference can be seen all around the UK. Every European
| country has some kind of shortage in the logistics industry,
| but only in the UK are the problems bad enough that the army
| needs to step in.
| Factorium wrote:
| I am Polish. Poland reverted back to COVID-normal a lot
| earlier, and was later to implement lockdowns, than the UK.
|
| For people on the fence about going back home, lockdowns were
| a major driver. Additionally, Poland has rejected vaccine
| mandates, whilst the UK seems on the cusp of implementing
| them, and requires them for re-entry to the UK.
|
| For people who have experience living under totalitarianism,
| being forced by the Government to take a medical treatment
| (often for no purpose since many working-class people already
| survived COVID) is unacceptable.
|
| The other big factor is that a lot of people who have worked
| in the UK for the last 5-10 years have now saved up enough
| money to buy a nice house in Poland. By contrast UK real
| estate remains continuously unaffordable due to the
| restrictions on development and continued population
| expansion from immigration (legal and otherwise).
|
| These trends of de-migration would have played out slowly
| over the next 5 years but COVID rapidly accelerated them.
|
| More opinions here: https://emerging-europe.com/news/the-
| poles-disappointed-by-b...
| veltas wrote:
| What you're saying is not backed up by the numbers. One of
| the reasons the army stepped in is because our demand
| exceeded what we could supply with our number of tankers. So
| we had enough tanker drivers, but not enough tankers. The
| tankers did not emigrate.
| makomk wrote:
| The biggest, most publicly-visible problem that caused the
| army to have to step in - the fuel crisis - wasn't really
| caused by the trucker shortage itself though. It was a media-
| created phenomenon; breathless front-page headlines about
| petrol stations running out of fuel caused everyone to go out
| panic buying, and the infrastructure just doesn't have the
| capacity to handle everyone filling their tank at once. The
| actual underlying problems were so tiny that no-one would've
| noticed them without the media pushing it - a handful of
| stations out of fuel in the whole country - and as far as I
| can tell that's what happened in the USA. According to
| financial publications like Bloomberg and FT they've been
| having ongoing problems with petrol stations running out of
| fuel due to a shortage of tanker drivers too, but the
| mainstream media hasn't covered it so there's been no panic
| buying, no crisis, people don't even know it's an issue.
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| *amid logistic companies refusal to pay a living wage with
| reasonable hours.
| protomyth wrote:
| Our little community college has a commercial license program.
| We, with some outside help, even bought a simulator. The program
| goes well with the other vocational programs. The students have
| had no problem finding jobs. The sequence of book, simulator,
| then roadwork in an actual semi has been quite successful.
| whalesalad wrote:
| A family friend manages a trucking company here in Michigan. He
| tells me that it's not a shortage - but rather an attrition
| problem. Companies are having a hard time keeping drivers.
|
| He doesn't even have employees. He coaches all of his drivers
| through the process of setting up their own LLC and becoming
| independent. They love it.
| muzz wrote:
| Quite a contrast from the automation-driven jobs loss that was
| being forecast back in 2016, even by those who should have known
| better. For example a quote from a piece by Ryan Petersen, the
| CEO of Flexport:
|
| "driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary
| remaining barriers are regulatory."
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/25/the-driverless-truck-is-co...
| jleyank wrote:
| In the states, the lawyers tend to win. So whomever does the
| design, whomever writes the code and whomever has the deepest
| pockets better worry when that 18-wheeler barrels over grandma.
| And this work damn well better be done more to space shuttle
| standards than those of every web and software package I've
| used...
|
| Edit: or just lay roads rather than tracks and call them trains.
| Keep the humans away like they do now.
| jleyank wrote:
| Why are these sentiments always downvoted? Do people honestly
| think that this generation of software folks are significantly
| better than the last 3-4? Given programmers ego, I assume "damn
| straight". But then, that's what the previous bunch said also.
|
| Good, safe, stable coding is HARD which it's not often done cuz
| hard = expensive. And weregild costs lots and lots of money.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Do people honestly think that this generation of software
| folks are significantly better than the last 3-4?
|
| Yes, because as Issac Newton said, we are standing on the
| shoulders of giants. In 1950 the first programmers didn't
| know a lot of the tricks to write good code that I do. (they
| also didn't have computers that could handle the multi-
| million line programs that I work on) Over years a lot of
| things have had to be discovered, and a lot of seemingly-good
| bad ideas had to be rejected the hard way.
|
| Of course today there are a lot more "programmers" writing
| simple web apps that depend on complex back ends, but demand
| even less skill than the programmers of old (who had to worry
| about where on the drum their next instruction was - concepts
| that are lost on us today). Still, we have a lot more
| programmers who are better than the best of the old, than the
| sum total of all the old programmers.
|
| Though I do have to be careful. I'm soon entering the
| category of a previous generation. I expect anyone still
| programming today - regardless of age - is of this
| generation. There is a lot of overlap of people who started
| out in older generations not knowing as much as todays, but
| have learned and now are todays generation.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > Do people honestly think that this generation of software
| folks are significantly better than the last 3-4?
|
| I don't think they're worse, just that the damage they can
| cause is far wider, both because of the ease of spread and
| the increase in reliance on technology
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Someone needs to invent a standing desk like driving rig (wearing
| harnesses or what not). It wouldn't be a bad job if you could
| stay fit and listen to audio books.
| TedShiller wrote:
| What could go wrong
| inanutshellus wrote:
| This would've been a perfect time to switch over to unmanned
| vehicles. A large number of senior drivers stay on the job, but
| we start moving to self-driving tech for the boring all-
| interstate stuff.
|
| But tech (and laws) aren't quite there yet.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or we can just put one driver in the front of a truck with a
| bunch of trucks behind it, and put it on a "self driving road"
| made of iron rails and call the front truck a locomotive ...
| heartbreak wrote:
| We do that too. Have you seen the rail lines in and out of
| Long Beach or port of LA recently?
| francisofascii wrote:
| In trucking, they call that "platooning"
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts as well. We've had test sandboxes for EV
| trucks with overhead wiring, have been talking about autonomous
| driving for over ten years now - yet nothing tangible and
| usable has come out of it except maybe autonomous lot parking
| and assists.
| pbernasconi wrote:
| I co-founded https://trucksmarter.com to enable more drivers and
| owner-ops to get insurance, find loads and drive on the road
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I blame Brexit.
| 0xebc wrote:
| We need more electricians as well. Got a quote to add a car
| charger last week and it was a hilarious four figure sum, with a
| month and a half lead time.
| Unklejoe wrote:
| You could always do it yourself if you feel it's overpriced.
|
| It's no different than software engineers charging $300/hour
| consulting fees. Sure, they're just typing on a keyboard (or
| running some wires in this case), but you're paying for more
| than just the marginal cost of that particular job. You're
| paying for the investment that the specialist had to make to
| gain the experience required to be able to do the job.
| 0xebc wrote:
| Installing an EV charger (which are supposed to be installed
| in every new house built in California) versus consulting
| fees for an enterprise software build out are not apples and
| oranges, it's apples and horses.
| sigstoat wrote:
| what did you think it's supposed to cost? i can't imagine it
| would cost less than $1000, even just running conduit inside
| the walls, instead of doing drywall.
| 0xebc wrote:
| >what did you think it's supposed to cost?
|
| Not $3600.
|
| >i can't imagine it would cost less than $1000, even just
| running conduit inside the walls, instead of doing drywall.
|
| No conduit required, no drywall required.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Just had a 220 V outlet installed for this reason, which
| negated all the gas savings of the vehicle :\
| cudgy wrote:
| Low 4 figures seems about right for a 6-10 hour job plus
| transportation costs and a helper.
| 0xebc wrote:
| >Low 4 figures
|
| I did not say low. It was a middling number which is madness.
|
| >seems about right for a 6-10 hour job plus transportation
| costs and a helper.
|
| 6-10 hours to install a dryer circuit, with a helper? The job
| was going to take two hours max, with wire, box, outlet only
| costing about $75.
| mikestew wrote:
| 6-10 hours?! One is basically adding a 220V outlet, and
| usually in a place that's very close to the box full of
| circuit breakers (the garage). In our case, the charger is
| about three feet from the breaker box. I would have done it
| myself if it wasn't installed for free (because $REASONS). As
| it was, took the pro about 30 minutes.
|
| Now, that's not to say there aren't more difficult
| installations. But I imagine in a lot of cases in the U. S.,
| where a lot of breaker boxes live in the garage, it shouldn't
| be anywhere near a four figure installation sum. My guess is
| a lot of contractors of any kind can pretty much name their
| price right now. Or they do I used to do when I didn't want
| anymore consulting work: jack up the quoted price enough that
| I would drop other clients to do the job at _that_ rate
| should the potential client be desperate enough to pay it.
| jchanimal wrote:
| It's taking a month and a half just to get a quote here
| indymike wrote:
| I own a recruiting tech company, and we have more than a few
| trucking companies that use our P2P chat system. In general (yes,
| there are exceptions):
|
| 1. Insurance rates dictate the minimum age... which is often
| around 26.
|
| 2. Average age of a truck driver is 56. So 4 years from
| retirement.
|
| 3. Federal laws are now much stricter on disclosure, so drivers
| who would have just moved from company to company after an
| accident... are now not able to get jobs nearly as easily. This
| is for the best, but the short term effect is there are many
| drivers who will have to find a new profession.
|
| 4. Wages are going up quickly and many drivers are changing jobs
| once per year (sometimes more)
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > 2. Average age of a truck driver is 56. So 4 years from
| retirement.
|
| things that will never happen in our lifetime.
| syshum wrote:
| >>Insurance rates dictate the minimum age... which is often
| around 26.
|
| Many of the larger trucking companies are self insured, so this
| really does not apply to them
|
| >>Average age of a truck driver is 56. So 4 years from
| retirement.
|
| Where do you get that drivers will retire @ 60? For most of
| them their Social Security will not kick in until 67, and I do
| not know many drivers that have a fully funded individual
| retirement account.
|
| >>Federal laws are now much stricter on disclosure, so drivers
| who would have just moved from company to company after an
| accident..
|
| This is really not due to Federal laws, there is a company the
| name escapes me right now that is similar to Consumer Credit
| Agency that tracks all driver activity, companies self report
| accident, and other adverse load events to this reporting
| agency
|
| Edit: DAX/DAC System I believe, or something like that
|
| >>Wages are going up quickly and many drivers are changing jobs
| once per year (sometimes more)
|
| They are still using the flawed Per Mile pay scheme which means
| drivers will still end up being screwed in the end. Further
| more companies are adopting the "Owner Operator" model where by
| the driver is leasing the truck from the company at an obscene
| rate far more than the truck is actually worth, and the driver
| then bares all the costs and if they do not get enough work the
| company takes back the truck, leases to a new sucker, and send
| the original driver into collections bankrupting him/her
| indymike wrote:
| > Many of the larger trucking companies are self insured, so
| this really does not apply to them
|
| Yes, and those in-house insurance policies dictate hiring
| practices, not the other way around.
|
| > This is really not due to Federal laws, there is a company
| the name escapes me right now that is similar to Consumer
| Credit Agency that tracks all driver activity, companies self
| report accident, and other adverse load events to this
| reporting agency
|
| Yes, and last year the DOT (federal agency) rolled out
| required background checks. Was a really big deal from
| January to March, as companies large and small had to say no
| to a lot of applicants. Most of the data came from state BMV
| records that were "linked" and surfaced a lot of surprises
| when companies background checked their existing employees.
|
| > They are still using the flawed Per Mile pay scheme which
| means drivers will still end up being screwed in the end.
| Further more companies are adopting the "Owner Operator"
| model where by the driver is leasing the truck from the
| company
|
| This practice has always been a bad thing.
| walleeee wrote:
| > there is a company the name escapes me right now that is
| similar to Consumer Credit Agency that tracks all driver
| activity, companies self report accident, and other adverse
| load events to this reporting agency
|
| You may be thinking of AAMVA?
| pc86 wrote:
| I would be shocked if the average truck driver is retiring at
| 60.
| shrubble wrote:
| It's entirely self-inflicted by the greed and avarice of the
| trucking companies. Such as paying $3/hour for the first 40k
| miles driven, which is 4-6 months of employment depending on
| whether driving in city areas or doing longer haul highway
| driving.
|
| You can read the summmary of the Supreme Court case called New
| Prime Inc. v. Oliveira to see some of the scummy tactics that
| large trucking firms pull on people:
|
| "In the present case, Dominic Oliveira sought employment with New
| Prime Inc., an American trucking company. When he was hired, he
| first had to drive 10,000 miles as an unpaid "trainee", followed
| by 30,000 miles as an "apprentice" working at US$4 an hour.
| Oliveira was then brought into the company proper, he was given
| the option to be hired as an employee, or as an independent
| contractor, which the company asserted would be more economical
| for Oliveira. Oliveira opted to be hired as a contractor.
| However, because he was an independent contractor, this allowed
| New Prime to charge Oliveira and other drivers through leasing of
| the New Prime vehicles and to pay for their own fuel and
| equipment through deductions from their paychecks, items that the
| company would normally pay for if the person was an employee.
| Oliveira frequently found these costs exceeded his base rate,
| effectively paying New Prime for his employment. While the terms
| of his independent contract allow him to drive for other
| companies, Oliveira found that his schedule was heavily dictated
| by New Prime. Oliveira eventually dropped the independent
| contractor and was rehired as an employee of New Prime, where his
| work duties and commitment were essentially identical to what he
| had done as an independent contractor, but taking home much more
| from his paycheck."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Prime_Inc._v._Oliveira
| lindwhi wrote:
| There's a lot of minors driving 10 and 18 wheeler trucks. It's
| quite amazing, but each country has its driving laws.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Bad career choice. I do believe that within 10 years, trucks will
| be computer driven.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Reminds me this headline from Aug: "Jet pilot, 37, who lost his
| job in lockdown when Flybe collapsed now earns MORE as a lorry
| driver in Britain's HGV crisis" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9932619/Jet-
| pilot-3...
| lordnacho wrote:
| Is this something that you can do part-time? I could imagine
| making some extra money on the weekends or holidays. You can
| listen to lectures while driving or sit in the cab and read while
| resting. Question is whether it's feasible to get jobs that fit
| that schedule.
| djrogers wrote:
| In California, where the largest shortages are, largely not. AB
| 5 has made it very hard for any driver to operate other than as
| a full time employee.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Basically anything that has you in your own bed at night and
| not breaking your back is going to be low pay or require a lot
| of experience. If you have a driver on staff the incentive is
| to use them for every hour you legally can because your
| business insurance costs reflect the number of drivers more
| than the hours your fleet spends on the road.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I would imagine not really. Logistics jobs are all about
| reliable throughput. There may be spikes that need extra
| demand, but you're better off with 5 full time employees who
| will always show up, than having 4 then scaling up to 6 when
| you need, since that introduces logistical hurdles.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Currently, truckers must be at least 21 to haul goods across
| state lines.
|
| Why is that what determines the age limit? The USA has very
| consistent signs and roads between states.
|
| It's 21 in the EU [1], but it doesn't matter if you're crossing a
| border or not.
|
| [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/driving-
| licen...
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Interstate commerce. Within a state, state laws apply. It
| probably varies from state to state (I am not an expert).
| Crossing state borders, federal laws apply.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Commercial trucking and transportation is really complex, with
| Federal, State and local authorities for various exerting
| various and sometimes overlapping jurisdictions. It's a feature
| of federalism.
|
| The federal government runs a pretty impressive safety program
| by enforcing rules and targeting enforcement based on
| statistical analysis and national standards. Shady operators
| basically cannot operate interstate business for long.
|
| At the state or local level, it varies. States usually have
| more lax standards. There's a cat and mouse game around the
| regs which evolve over time - Chinatown busses being the most
| notorious example recently.
|
| The regulations shape business. Usually something like a hotel
| minibus or senior services bus operates with state or local
| authority. Large limos often operate in a legal grey zone. As a
| consumer it sucks, as the less regulated carriers are often a
| nightmare -- that hotel minibus may not have operating brakes
| or a qualified driver.
| sk2020 wrote:
| Most rental agencies won't let anyone under 25 rent a vehicle.
| I can't imagine trying to insure an 18 year old for a $100,000+
| truck and it's cargo.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Most of the truck rental places DGAF how old you are as long
| as you have a valid license. All the B2B ones basically
| expect that the person doing the rental won't be the one
| doing the driving and they're gonna slap a min-wage 18yo in
| the seat regardless.
| gtk40 wrote:
| That's not true. Most just charge a surcharge for under 25.
| When I was under 25 I bought a AAA membership which waved
| that surcharge as several major car rental companies.
| dvh wrote:
| In EU you can (generally) start driving when you are 18. I
| assume the intention of the 21 years limit was so that the
| truck drivers has at least some practice before driving 20t
| vehicles on public road.
| csunbird wrote:
| Some places you can get a learners license as early as in 16,
| I think
| consp wrote:
| Learner licenses (in the EU afaik) will not allow you to
| cross borders or operate commercially. Crossing borders is
| like driving without a license. They generally are
| completely valid as soon as you turn 18 though.
| foxhop wrote:
| Driving big rigs is dangerous for all involved. I think
| maturity matters but that can be tested for at any age. Driving
| underload without skill and practice can be very dangerous and
| loads are variable weight. Pay truckers double or triple pay
| since our roads in be states are deteriorating.
|
| Same with be road crews, give them a bump too.
| poo-yie wrote:
| Completely agree. Big rigs with full load can weigh something
| like 80,000 pounds (40 tons)! They're much more dangerous to
| begin with due to the size and weight. Add to that dangerous
| road conditions (fog, rain, ice, snow) and it's much worse.
| Now put someone who's only had their driver's license a few
| years. Lack of maturity (generally speaking) and experience
| really makes it dicey. Heaven help us if the driver is glued
| to their phone texting their pals.
| lostapathy wrote:
| An M1 Abrams tank weighs on the order of 60 tons, and we're
| happy to send kids off driving those.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Hitting something with truck damages the truck and the
| thing. With tank it only damages the other thing... And
| when has army cared about collateral damage?
| lostapathy wrote:
| I'm gonna guess there's a lot of stuff (expensive enough
| to make passenger cars seem cheap - including other
| tanks) to crash a tank into between when you get in on-
| base and when you arrive in enemy territory where you're
| supposed to break stuff.
| poo-yie wrote:
| How often do you see them cruising at 75 MPH on the
| interstate?
| dahfizz wrote:
| Cool, but this has nothing to do with OP's question (why does
| the age limit only apply when crossing state borders?). The
| answer is interstate commerce allows the Federal government
| to regulate it.
| nradov wrote:
| How do you test for maturity?
| phreeza wrote:
| I wonder if this age limit also applies to military vehicles,
| since there the age limit is 18?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It does not.
| bombcar wrote:
| It is entirely possible and legal to enlist at 17, and the
| first day on base be given the keys to some huge ten ton
| truck and told to drive it across the country.
| Ekaros wrote:
| No mandatory training? In Finland before they allow
| conscripts to do anything they have to spend at least
| week or two if not month or two on training.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Basic training" would happen - but that may or may not
| cover driving the trucks. The above scenario happened to
| a person I know when they enlisted (though they were 18
| at the time).
| mrg2k8 wrote:
| This reminds me of an impromptu interview I saw with a teenage
| kid driving trucks in Africa in order to support his family.
|
| Found the link:
| https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1104630323217300...
| [deleted]
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Growing up in the 80s, probably around a third of the adults in
| my neighborhood were truck drivers, and I can confidently say
| that truck driving is not the same profession as it was back
| then. The unions were strong back then, and when they threatened
| to strike, companies had to pay attention.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Looks it's been known to be an issue for a while:
|
| https://www.freightwaves.com/news/driver-shortage-ata-estima...
|
| https://www.reutersevents.com/supplychain/3pl/12-key-facts-a...
|
| https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/drivers/article/216917...
|
| Even as early as 2005:
| http://www.iitr.edu/pdf/ATADriverShortageStudy05.pdf
| carabiner wrote:
| How is this possible? 18 year olds can't even rent a car, you
| usually need to be 25.
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