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Trucker Shortage
Sam06
Member Posts: 21,254 ✭✭✭✭
I didn't realize there was a shortage in the industry. I see so many Trucks on the roads now I cannot imagine 100K more.
Good article on it:
http://www.savannahnow.com/news/20180628/americas-trucker-shortage-could-undermine-economy
I am sure some of our resident Truckers will have something to say[;)]
C&P
At TDDS Technical Institute, an independent trucker school in central Ohio where Blocksom has considered enrolling, veteran teachers say they have never seen it this bad. They think there are closer to 100,000 truck driver openings.
?As long as you can get in and out of a truck and pass a physical, a trucking company will take a look at you now,? said Trish Sammons, the job placement coordinator at TDDS, whose desk is full of toy trucks and fliers from the companies who call her daily begging for drivers. ?I recently placed someone who served time for manslaughter.?
There?s only one option right now for most trucking companies: Give substantial raises. Recruiters that show up daily at TDDS are offering jobs that pay $60,000 to $70,000, with full benefits and a $4,000 signing bonus.
In interviews with more than 60 trainees, recruiters and people who explored trucking but decided not to take the job, most feel higher pay will help, but the industry?s problems are much deeper than that.
Trucking remains one of the most dangerous professions in America. There were over 1,000 fatalities among motor vehicle operators in 2016, according to the U.S. Labor Department, meaning being a commercial driver is nearly eight times as deadly as being a law enforcement officer.
?It takes a special breed to be a trucker. It?s a tough job,? said Rick Rathburn Jr., the owner of TDDS, a school his late father started in the early 1970s. A trucking company recently tried to buy the entire school.
Good article on it:
http://www.savannahnow.com/news/20180628/americas-trucker-shortage-could-undermine-economy
I am sure some of our resident Truckers will have something to say[;)]
C&P
At TDDS Technical Institute, an independent trucker school in central Ohio where Blocksom has considered enrolling, veteran teachers say they have never seen it this bad. They think there are closer to 100,000 truck driver openings.
?As long as you can get in and out of a truck and pass a physical, a trucking company will take a look at you now,? said Trish Sammons, the job placement coordinator at TDDS, whose desk is full of toy trucks and fliers from the companies who call her daily begging for drivers. ?I recently placed someone who served time for manslaughter.?
There?s only one option right now for most trucking companies: Give substantial raises. Recruiters that show up daily at TDDS are offering jobs that pay $60,000 to $70,000, with full benefits and a $4,000 signing bonus.
In interviews with more than 60 trainees, recruiters and people who explored trucking but decided not to take the job, most feel higher pay will help, but the industry?s problems are much deeper than that.
Trucking remains one of the most dangerous professions in America. There were over 1,000 fatalities among motor vehicle operators in 2016, according to the U.S. Labor Department, meaning being a commercial driver is nearly eight times as deadly as being a law enforcement officer.
?It takes a special breed to be a trucker. It?s a tough job,? said Rick Rathburn Jr., the owner of TDDS, a school his late father started in the early 1970s. A trucking company recently tried to buy the entire school.
RLTW
Comments
Sam I think you would make an excellent truck driver. I thought one time about hauling cigarettes from N.C. to N.Y. City and then hauling live lobster from Main back to N.C. Pull up to a corner in Brooklyn open the door and sell cartons for $100.00. You can buy them here for $50.00. Sounds like a winner to me. Since that guy died selling cigs on the corner I think the cops look the other way. Wanna go into business with me??[:)]
We don't need a big truck for that just a 3/4 ton van or one of these new fangled Mercedes Benz work vans.
I watched a guy buy a carton of smokes in a store the other day he paid $41 for a carton of Pall Malls.
I am a retiree so I can get smokes even cheaper[;)] I think there is a limit but we could hit all the military bases between NC and NY they are all kind of in a line along 95.
Fill the van then sell them up north.
I am old school so I would like either a M60 or a MG3[;)]
I think that must be the reason you see a change in the quality of the drivers now days. Used to be drivers were the best of the best and you could alway trust their driving and actions.
I agree 100%
They used to pros and had to be to drive those older trucks.
Now they are trained fast and put on the road without much experience.
The pencil pushing dorks in the government have killed the geese
laying the golden eggs with their stupid rules and regulations but,
the large trucking companies have had a hand in biting the hands that feed them also.
When I tell people I'm retired and they ask what I did for a living,
I find I get greater respect if I tell them I played a piano in a whore house than if I tell them I'm a retired trucker with over two million miles without a chargeable accident & forty years on the road trucking.
Top tier companies like UPS and Walmart pay around $90K, lots of benefits and lots of time at home.
For example, Walmart drivers stay out 5 days and are home for 2 days.
If the Walmart driver wants to stay out for 3 weeks, he cannot.
They do all their 34 hour breaks at home.
I am making $70K but I stay out 2 weeks and am home for 2 days!
So, a Walmart guy, when he has been out for total 15 days gets 6 days off, I stay out 15 days and get 2 days off.
Walmart driver does a lot less work than I do, for a lot more pay.
Walmart and UPS have all the drivers they want, but the second tier companies like mine need a big pay raise and more time off and they would get more drivers.
Americans don't want the job and like someone said, every month I see more foreigners, Hadjis and Uzbekenstani guys who don't even speak English. Obviously there is a big drive to recruit foreign drivers.
You need to follow that last decade or so to see wht has happened, first a major revamp to the HOS, then the EPA raising the costs of trucks, then the ELD mandate, all the buyouts like the most recent where Knight bought controlling shares of Swift. Therr is only going to be 1/2 dozen ?shot callers? out here in the next ten years and all the changes in the last decade and th coming changes are all grared to turn the megas into extreme giants.
Trucking is full of dirty crooked deals, the ATA represents company owners, not drivers, the ATA uses the FMCSA to make tough rules that only those with 1000+ trucks can overcome and survive. Puts small carriers and independants out of business. They use the law to do what they cannot do with normal business practices!!
No, there is no driver shortage, this is nothing but the megas trying to keep unskilled cheap labor flowing through thier sponsored CDL Mills and weed out the real truckers. Why do you think electronics run these trucks now?? They are making this so that anybody who can breathe can steer one of these lizards down the road!!!
God I hate this industry but I love trucks and I?m stuck [:(!]
There is no driver shortage!! This is the mother effin ATA and Mega Carriers trying to keep thier gravy train of government paid CDL Mills amd cheap labor force moving!
You need to follow that last decade or so to see wht has happened, first a major revamp to the HOS, then the EPA raising the costs of trucks, then the ELD mandate, all the buyouts like the most recent where Knight bought controlling shares of Swift. Therr is only going to be 1/2 dozen ?shot callers? out here in the next ten years and all the changes in the last decade and th coming changes are all grared to turn the megas into extreme giants.
Trucking is full of dirty crooked deals, the ATA represents company owners, not drivers, the ATA uses the FMCSA to make tough rules that only those with 1000+ trucks can overcome and survive. Puts small carriers and independants out of business. They use the law to do what they cannot do with normal business practices!!
No, there is no driver shortage, this is nothing but the megas trying to keep unskilled cheap labor flowing through thier sponsored CDL Mills and weed out the real truckers. Why do you think electronics run these trucks now?? They are making this so that anybody who can breathe can steer one of these lizards down the road!!!
God I hate this industry but I love trucks and I?m stuck [:(!]
My BIL runs an older rig. No E-logs. He explained how he was able to get some jobs done that others couldn't. He typically likes hauling heavy machinery and equipment.
Some of the stories are just phenomenal and he's a good story teller.
And drive for an hour to Lake Charles La. And get live unloaded which they are doing now. And then, get live loaded. And then back to Beaumont.
My wonderful company, with a straight face, is paying me $60.
I am raising hell with them and demanding more money and will probably get a little more but they are outright screwing me.
We have some day cab drivers in Beaumont but one called in sick today, so they dump these local loads on their good over the road drivers.
Being in a union would protect you from being screwed over like I am getting screwed today.
See, I make $28 an hour while driving down the open interstate.
I did tell the boss, one more local delivery like this and I will quit the company I think I got the point across. But he is a dumb * he probably wasn't listening too good. I may be out of a job in a few weeks but I am not putting up with this crap.
You have got to be kidding me when I was loading truck the only company that was worse than swift was knight.
Knight treats its drivers worse than any company I've dealt with.
They've had one application in 3 months, and that was some kid fresh out of driving school. Starting pay is $21.75phr with a $1500 sign on bonus.
XPO in the SF Bay Area is hiring at $29.50phr, and Old Dominion in W.Sacramento starts at $26.50.
We top out at $27, and they can't figure out why we're losing drivers, and can't find replacements.
quote:Originally posted by Ricci Wright
Sam I think you would make an excellent truck driver. I thought one time about hauling cigarettes from N.C. to N.Y. City and then hauling live lobster from Main back to N.C. Pull up to a corner in Brooklyn open the door and sell cartons for $100.00. You can buy them here for $50.00. Sounds like a winner to me. Since that guy died selling cigs on the corner I think the cops look the other way. Wanna go into business with me??[:)]
We don't need a big truck for that just a 3/4 ton van or one of these new fangled Mercedes Benz work vans.
I watched a guy buy a carton of smokes in a store the other day he paid $41 for a carton of Pall Malls.
I am a retiree so I can get smokes even cheaper[;)] I think there is a limit but we could hit all the military bases between NC and NY they are all kind of in a line along 95.
Fill the van then sell them up north.
Excellent plan you guys will end up with a fully funded retirement for about tens years in the Federal Prison system. [8D]
quote:Knight bought controlling shares of Swift.
You have got to be kidding me when I was loading truck the only company that was worse than swift was knight.
Knight treats its drivers worse than any company I've dealt with.
Here, wanna make yourself ill? This happened last year, this is the goal of the ATA companies, to control North American transportation with just a handfull of super mega carriers. These guys control the laws, rules, wages, freight rates and are getting stronger every year. I won?t last but another year or two out here as an independant, the rules are tough and the competition is rough.
https://www.trucks.com/2017/04/10/knight-transportation-swift-trucking-merger/
quote:Originally posted by Ricci Wright
Sam I think you would make an excellent truck driver. I thought one time about hauling cigarettes from N.C. to N.Y. City and then hauling live lobster from Main back to N.C. Pull up to a corner in Brooklyn open the door and sell cartons for $100.00. You can buy them here for $50.00. Sounds like a winner to me. Since that guy died selling cigs on the corner I think the cops look the other way. Wanna go into business with me??[:)]
We don't need a big truck for that just a 3/4 ton van or one of these new fangled Mercedes Benz work vans.
I watched a guy buy a carton of smokes in a store the other day he paid $41 for a carton of Pall Malls.
I am a retiree so I can get smokes even cheaper[;)] I think there is a limit but we could hit all the military bases between NC and NY they are all kind of in a line along 95.
Fill the van then sell them up north.
LOL that was my Uncle Tony's retirement job. Local bars were a gold mine for him.
quote:Originally posted by grumpygy
quote:Knight bought controlling shares of Swift.
You have got to be kidding me when I was loading truck the only company that was worse than swift was knight.
Knight treats its drivers worse than any company I've dealt with.
Here, wanna make yourself ill? This happened last year, this is the goal of the ATA companies, to control North American transportation with just a handfull of super mega carriers. These guys control the laws, rules, wages, freight rates and are getting stronger every year. I won?t last but another year or two out here as an independant, the rules are tough and the competition is rough.
https://www.trucks.com/2017/04/10/knight-transportation-swift-trucking-merger/
Big corporations = BIG bribes to the corrupt government.
Middle class: [what's left of it] BOHICA
Knight is the only company that we back charged for making me wait for the truck to arrive. No show twice. for the same load.
Breitbart says: Rising wages for blue-collar truckers are a threat to the nation?s economy, says Jeff Bezos? Washington Post.
They didn't say "Jeff Bezos SAID",, Nope but that's what his paper said,, and maybe the Washington Post didn't write the article, just reprinted.
Remember when you only got "spin" from two newspapers in the CITY.?
Ah, the good old days.
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/06/29/washpo-rising-trucker-wages-are-economic-threat/
So, it is OK for that chicken cop in Florida, who stood outside the building while a dozen children died, OK for him to make $100 grand.
And Maxine Waters, this brilliant legislator, she makes what, $200K?
No complaint about that.
But a truck driver might make $100 grand and this is a threat.
Like Michael Savage says, "Liberalism is a mental disorder."
Rob
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
and to think, people complain about military life...........
Wonder if a Military truck driver has a leg to stand on for a raise.