
America has a truck driver shortage - danso
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/28/america-has-a-massive-truck-driver-shortage-heres-why-few-want-an-80000-job/
======
corodra
At a rough point in my life, I was a truck driver for CR England and Knight
Transportation for a few days short of 7 months.

You don’t start at 80,000 a year. That’s such a lie. You make about 600 a week
to start, roughly, depending if you get enough miles. You don’t get the good
routes, staying in well populated areas like the i5 corridor, at first. You
stay in the middle of no where Arizona, North Dakota, etc.

You spend a lot on food because you can’t buy bulk that easily like you would
for an apartment. Want a hot meal? You have to eat at fast food restaurants or
truck stops.

How’s your back? 7 months I went from never understanding back pain to 6 years
later I still suffer from the back pain.

Family life? HA! How does that work when you VISIT home for 3 days out of a
month and you get calls CONSTANTLY that you have to get back to the truck.
It’s not likely the military where you are doing something decently important.
You are wasting your life to ship clothes for the Gap or frozen pizzas.

You are constantly sleep deprived. Constantly sitting. The companies hound you
constantly about speeding up and trying to break the law to get loads faster
to their destination because they screwed up the logistics and didn’t do some
simple math. Yes, they publicly say they don’t tell drivers to break the law.
Bullshit. CR England is the worst about this. Knight wasn’t so bad.

Fuck driving jersey in a truck.

The industry needs MASSIVE reformation. Then, some of the arguements here by
folks who never did it can be remotely valid. You ruin your personal life and
your body for realistic 300 a week after you figure all the costs for not ever
being home.

~~~
MisterTea
The guys I meet who are pulling in good money are all union vocational
workers. We're talking dump trucks, cement mixers, sometimes roll off
(dumpsters/skips), and the holy Grail: heavy haul. I know a guy in New Jersey
who works for a well known hauling and rigging company. Makes 130k/yr. Small
shop of a dozen guys, no one makes under a 100k, and home just about every
night. But good luck getting into those shops. Cronyism and nepotism abound.

~~~
anoncoward111
This is one of the main reasons I am so heavily in favor of UBI, even though I
am quite the anarchist if we are talking about idealism and not pragmatism.

There IS money being made out there by large firms and small firms alike, but
it is absolutely NOT based on merit or skill at all.

Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships
and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers and executives will
forge the deal FIRST, and then go get the expertise and skilled laborers
after.

Startups are an exception to this rule, since the technology is all so new.
But rapidly, we all see the "money guys" and the "business guys" coming in to
the profession day by day, buying up tech, creating bogus certifications and
so on that just add the cruft and bureaucracy that monopolies need to survive.

For every trucker making $130,000 a year, there's 100 truckers making $35,000
a year.

For every trucker making $30,000 a year, there's probably 10,000 unemployed or
underemployed people begging for the chance to make middle class money rather
than $10 an hour at Burger King

~~~
refurb
Isn't the ability to develop business relations and close deals a skill in and
of itself? That pretty much describes sales skills perfectly.

I know this is NH, so skills are viewed as technical with all other skills
regarded as "unnecessary fluff", but at the end of the day business is built
on human relationships, so I'd argue the ability to make and maintain
relationships with the right people is one of the most important skills one
could have.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not about HN's technical focus. It's that for many of us here - myself
strongly included - sales and marketing can be seen as a large-scale defection
in the game of free market.

In the ideal world, when you want to buy a product or a service, you would
consider the value it brings to you based on hard facts, consider other
circumstances impacting the costs - like e.g. product A is a bit better, but
product B has support people in your country, speaking your language, etc.

Suddenly, comes product C. It's very much inferior compared to A and B, but
the producers of C spent most of their budget on sales and marketing. Your
boss knows all about C from on-line ads. A C salesman comes to you, promising
you features they know they won't deliver, but also know they'll be able to
weasel their way out of along the way. Oh, and he brings some nice "off-the
books" benefits for you personally, as part of "building customer loyalty".

Sales and marketing _as applied in practice_ distort the market. What a
salesman says can be - and often is - completely disconnected from reality, so
in presence of salesmen, products are no longer chosen based on objective
value they provide. The incentive structure this creates makes everyone else
have to lie too, or go out of business.

That's why many people don't like those skills and practices.

~~~
b1daly
I don’t mean to be glib, but nothing is perfect. What some of the other
posters are alluring to is that the ability to organize deals and market a
product is an essential skill in running a business. If product A is
technically superior, but there is not sufficient business talent to sustain a
business on it, then the quality is moot.

What you’re describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then
failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to
business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products
that defy “apples to apples” comparison.

Again, the sales and marketing are integral to the product. I don’t believe
companies will survive if they practice outright fraud on their customers.
This is not an easy problem. For the example, simpleminded approaches like
forcing government to accept the lowest cost bid on complicated products has
tremendous downside.

FWIW, managing people, organizations, setting up deals, marketing...these are
“hard” skills. What makes them hard is that the parameters of the “problem
space” are almost infinitely complex, the work product is ambiguous, and often
the involves the focused cooperation of people, who are notoriously
unpredictable.

Managed systems comprises of “soft components” is a very hard challenge.

~~~
narag
_What you’re describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then
failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to
business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products
that defy “apples to apples” comparison_

No. It does happen, not "maybe", every day and for every kind of decision,
complex and simple. If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to
mud the waters.

~~~
reitanqild
> If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to mud the waters.

... obviously unless you happen to work for the company with the good (or
least bad) apples, in which case your jib is to spread the word that good
apples exist.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The problem is, the market isn't static, but dynamic. You play an iterative
game. It turns out that spending more money on spreading the word about your
apples has better ROI than spending that money on ensuring you actually have
the best apples... And even if you achieve best apples and best marketing,
think of just how much money you had to spend on the marketing part. How much
better still would your apples be if you didn't have to play the zero-sum game
of advertising? How much better everyone's products would be?

~~~
anoncoward111
Everything you are saying in this thread is exactly right, in my opinion. And
I'm a sales guy! Haha.

Inventing something is a value-added game. If I make us a knife that lets us
cut a cactus in the desert for water, and we both survive the day because of
that knife, I've added value.

If another guy makes the same knife, and now we have to compete for your
attention, distort deal terms and product features to "seem" better than the
other knife, etc, then this is not adding value. This is destroying time and
money.

Sales is a zero sum game. One company wins, the other company loses. That's
ok, but the winner should succeed thanks to price + features (e.g. who makes
the better knife), not who "promises" you their knife is "better".

In an ideal world, we all just have a spreadsheet of all the knives available
out there, their price, what they're actually built to do, and you just hit
buy.

~~~
b1daly
I know this thread is probably dead, but just feel like responding: the factor
you’re leaving out is that having multiple people competing to develop the
best knife leads to better knifes.

This is old school Econ 101, but I think it’s relevant. Know we have multiple
options for knifes. How do we decide the best one? We let people decide for
themselves, and price is the signaling mechanism as to where resources should
be focused.

So we have a “market mechanism” for discovering quality, thereby making
“market” an integral part of the system.

It could be done otherways, and markets have known weaknesses, especially for
certain categories of goods.

But for many categories of goods it’s a very powerful system to spur and
support innovation and entrepreneurial endeavors. So to call an essential part
of a market bases system valueless does not make sense.

------
rgbrenner
If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually
always to increase total compensation. Theres no reason $80k is the top end of
the pay range for any job.

The economy does not price jobs based on prestige, education level, or some
other signal... that's a judgement made by certain people about what they
think a job is worth.. not the market. The opinions of people about the worth
of a job are irrelevant.

~~~
FooHentai
>If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually
always to increase total compensation.

Most cases I would guess this is true until you hit the point that the pay is
enough to live comfortably. Then it changes.

My partner was recently approached for a position offering compensation more
than 200% of their current for the same work. However,the hiring process is
exposing red flags hinting at a toxic working environment: On-fighting, lack
of planning, unreasonable expectations. I'm guessing this is the reason the
pay they offer is so much higher than it 'should' be.

That position may remain unfilled for quite some time. Working conditions are
such a major aspect of any job, and while folks will put up with a bad working
environment if the pay is right, that only works up to the point of being
comfortably paid. Once you reach that level most folks start to care more
about what their work day feels like. Toxic work cultures are very hard to
fix, too.

~~~
phyzome
There's always a price. I wouldn't work that job for $100k/yr; I would work it
for 1000 times the amount. Somewhere in the middle is, technically, the right
price.

This all gets silly when looked at in isolation, though. :-) I'd agree that
there's not always an amount of compensation that the company _could_ pay that
would also attract enough workers.

~~~
bobbytherobot
When asked, "what will make you stop looking at other jobs and join us today,"
my response is always, "a $500k salary." We laugh, but I'm not kidding.

------
HarryHirsch
From the article: _A few drivers told The Washington Post that they earn
$100,000, but many said their annual pay is less than $50,000 (government
statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000). As for the bonuses,
driver Daniel Gollnick said they are a “complete joke” because of all the
strings attached._

Yet the headline talks about 80 kUSD/year.

~~~
StudentStuff
This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k/yr job
without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work
very hard & cheat the books get close to that.

Are you willing to drive while sleepy, break regs when the customer is
demanding you drive longer to deliver their products (due to traffic delaying
you or similar)? Its a really screwed up industry.

~~~
joe_the_user
_This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k /yr job
without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work
very hard & cheat the books get close to that._

No, trucking was a decent living 'till deregulation in the 90s.

"How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst"
[http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst-
job/](http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst-job/)

~~~
lazyasciiart
"No" is an incorrect response. The 90s is two decades ago. Your comment
doesn't contradict the previous one at all.

~~~
michaelt
Presumably he was contradicting "This is the nature of truck driving" \-
saying, in other words, that the problem isn't inherent to truck driving but
rather came about due to deregulation.

------
badrabbit
They track your every move with a gps and you never have time to take it easy
between runs. Traveling,the one upside to the job aside from money is ruined
by their control-freak managent.

You want people to be truck drivers? Get the trucks good internet
access,provide laptops and tablets where possible and give the drivers time to
take it easy between and during runs. Internet access wherever you are means
you can maintain some social life and video call with the family.

On the flip side,trucking isn't just a job,it's a lifestyle. You never leave
work since your truck with the hidden Mics and location tracking is also your
home. The compensation just isn't worth the job for most people. Better pay
helps but so does hiring convicts and relaxing the driving history
restrictions (like running a stop sign 4 years ago shouldn't make you
unhirable)

------
ehnto
Industry races itself to the bottom with cheap labour and terrible conditions,
surprises itself that no one is interested anymore.

Unfortunately it's the good companies and drivers that find out their industry
was swiped from underneath them first. It happens in farm labour markets too.

Bigger companies start undercutting with cheaper labour and worse conditions,
the smart people leave the industry all together because the writing is on the
wall, and those companies willing to pay for good people with reasonable work
conditions have no one to hire anymore.

------
Someone1234
So the headline ("$80K job") and actual content of the article are at complete
odds. All of the people they interviewed were making $45K-50K ish, with this
one company offering $80K and claiming there is a "shortage."

If there is a real shortage why do truckers get paid less than some fast food
employees? The article seems to answer its own question: Very low pay, very
high hours, and little time spent at home/with family.

------
alistproducer2
They are terrible jobs. Years ago I had a class B and drove dial-a-ride buses.
All-in-all it wasn't a terrible job because I got frequent breaks between
passengers and could get out of the truck on those breaks and hang out at a
mall or get something to eat. My counterparts that drove the city buses _had_
to stay in their seat for 8 hours driving in circles around town.

The other thing that people don't realize about those kind of jobs is, for men
at least, they are very hard on your prostate. Sitting for such long periods
can cause it to swell leading to prosatitus along with a whole host of other
bad health effects. All that being said, our jobs were cake compared to long
haulers. You would need to pay people $120-150k before you could get a
consistent hiring pool.

~~~
tim333
I guess maybe self driving trucks won't be a bad thing then.

~~~
stephengillie
The issue of self-driving trucks taking the jobs of truckers seems to be a
unique occurrence where 2 problems solve each other.

------
somberi
A related read (1):

Things I found interesting from the article:

a. Approximately 150,000 Sikhs (my edit: Sikhs are a subset of Indians and to
a smaller extent Pakistanis) in trucking, 90% of whom are drivers.

b. Those numbers are growing rapidly, with 18,000 Sikhs entering the industry
in 2017 alone.

c. Sikhs control about 40% of trucking in California.

d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading along
the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh highway
food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this
transported to the Rockies)

e. Earnings of $42,000, or about $20 an hour, a sum that may dwindle after
expenses. Annual turnover rates within firms hover around 90%.

f. The American Trucking Associations warned of a shortage of 50,000 drivers
by the end of 2017, rising to 174,000 by 2026.

d. The median age of the private-fleet driver is 52;

(1) - [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all-
am...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all-american-
industry-changes-the-all-american-way)

~~~
ocschwar
> d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading
> along the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh
> highway food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this
> transported to the Rockies)

Now THAT would get me to conisder trucking for a living.

Indians know how to do truck stops right.

------
personlurking
Brazil's current trucker strike brought to light how things could go if there
were a similar strike in the States. The BBC article below doesn't say much
about the lack of products available for the average person living in a major
city, but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life
have been large.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
america-44275782](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44275782)

~~~
cesarb
> but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life have
> been large.

Yes, they have. First, the fuel situation: trucks carrying fuel to gas
stations were blocked by strikers, so they quickly ran out of fuel. Buses need
diesel fuel to run, so people can't get to work. Cars also need fuel (gasoline
or ethanol) to run, so even people who have cars can't get to work. Those with
gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to the gas
station through pipes), but even these need a small amount of gasoline to
start the motor.

Then, the food situation: almost all the fresh food is gone from the markets,
and what little there is got really expensive (like 4 or 5 times more
expensive). Longer-lived but basic food (like rice and beans) flew from the
shelves, since people still have memories from the hyperinflation days last
century. Huge amounts of food had to be thrown away in the farms.

Hospitals had to cancel all non-emergency surgery, since stocks are running
really low. Industries have stopped, since they can't get their inputs or
don't have space to store their outputs. There was a risk of water rationing
in some places, since stocks of water treatment chemicals ran low.

We're lucky that our country's power supply is mostly hydro, and most of the
thermal generators either get their fuel through pipes, or had enough fuel
stored locally. Only a few distant cities (probably without interconnection to
the national system) lost power.

Things are getting better. Many of the blockades have now been cleared, and
fuel trucks escorted by the police or the army are getting fuel to essential
services and to the gas stations. Hopefully trucks will soon be able to get
food from the farms to the markets.

~~~
jacquesm
> Those with gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to
> the gas station through pipes

That's interesting. So the gas stations have compressors?

~~~
wavefunction
I think they mean compressed natural-gas rather than petrol. Many fleet
vehicles run off of CNG in the Americas and elsewhere.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, I understood that. But those stations are pretty rare and typically need
a (quite expensive) compressor to turn the gas in the pipes into CNG if it
isn't delivered by truck. (Former gas station owner here...)

The other option would be LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas), that too is usually
delivered by truck.

~~~
cesarb
> But those stations are pretty rare

In my experience, not all stations have natural gas, but it's not exactly
rare. I found a list which matched my intuition:
[http://www.gasnet.com.br/postos_gnv_lista.asp?nomestado=Rio%...](http://www.gasnet.com.br/postos_gnv_lista.asp?nomestado=Rio%20de%20Janeiro)
shows 531 stations on my state, several cities have 10 or more, the state
capital has over 200.

------
maxxxxx
Funny that the manager's pay is the only one that's not listed.

It seems to me that truck driving is at the same boring, unhealthy and
dangerous. I can't imagine not making serious mistakes if I had to drive on a
freeway for 8 hours a day or more.

------
mistrial9
omg this is a massive con job - there are lines of trucks with non-english
speaking drivers, waiting for twenty or thirty hours without accomodations,
every week at the second busiest port in the western United States, right now.
A glance shows signs for "contractors" and abundant evidence of labor abuse
left and right. Who is being fooled by this story ?

------
markvdb
Have a look at the trucking jobs in the European Union. Loads of truck drivers
from low wage EU member states. Some working for under 500€ a month, or 6000€
a year.

A friend from the Baltics is teaching new drivers... from the Phillipines,
because the local ones are getting "expensive". To speak of a race to the
bottom...

------
arkh
I'm sure you could almost double the number of drivers by getting some "girls
can drive big trucks too" program.

------
tlb
When you're planning to replace a profession with technology, it's a winning
strategy to start spreading long-term career doom over the profession a few
years ahead of when you're ready to launch, so that there'll be a labor
shortage and higher wages when you're ready to enter the market.

(Not dealing with ethics here, just strategy for winning.)

We've had a few years now of news stories about how truck drivers will all be
replaced with self-driving. I'd wondered about whether that was good strategy
on the part of companies working on self-driving, because it might cause truck
drivers to organize and lobby for regulation to keep it out. But it seems to
be working for them.

~~~
jessriedel
Or the people making predictions are basically right, and young people are
rationally not opting as frequently to join the profession?

~~~
Nasrudith
Yeah that has already been a problem with petroleum engineers. Even if they
don't have any ethical objection to working in it the writing is on the wall
that it may not be a 40+ year career. The same with COBOL. Although the old
software is zombie-ing along there isn't much new being written.

------
skookumchuck
More intercity traffic should be shipped by rail anyway. Heavy trucks cause
enormous damage to the freeways, far exceeding the weight taxes charged.

~~~
candiodari
But ... that would require the freight customers to actually have something
resembling decent logistics planning ... And these people clearly are idiots.

------
CapacitorSet
I hope that the "shortage" of drivers will lead companies to prefer shipping
by rail, which is much less polluting, easier on the workers, and more
efficient.

~~~
MisterTea
I miss the days when the train delivered things to my door step.

~~~
ocschwar
The last time someone used an 18 wheeler to make a long haul delivery to my
door step was 18 years ago.

It's been small utility trucks ever since, driven on short hauls, by people
who might well live walking distance to my house.

A train would never deliver to my house, but to this day there are still
unused train slips leading to factories around my urban area, and in Europe
there are plenty of shopping malls that have a train slip as well as a truck
loading bay.

~~~
burger_moon
LTL trucking is how just about everything you buy in a store is delivered, and
it you ever buy anything online that is large or heavy it is also shipped this
way to your house. The UPS truck isn't delivering pallets of bananas to the
grocery store.

~~~
ocschwar
Nope. But note you said pallet. Nothing stopping those pallets from making the
long haul on tracks, and the last mile on a truck.

(Except politics, that is)

~~~
MisterTea
How does the pallet make it from train to truck in a cost effective way?
Adding labor into the equation is grade A bean counter kryptonite.

~~~
ocschwar
There is no way for it to be more cost effective to truck a load long haul
than it is to pay for a forklift operator to unload your truck onto a rail car
at one end of the haul and another forklift operator to do the reverse
operation at the other end.

The reason it isn't done this way is certainly not the amount of labor.

------
valarauca1
Trucking pays great on paper when you are an owner-operator. This means you
own (and insure) the truck, pay for gas, and insure the load. You cover
maintaince, and you cover finding yourself new loads to haul. You personally
carry the fiscal risk. Your take home pay is AMAZING, but it doesn’t factor in
your expenses.

Most truckers work as members of a fleet. Where a larger company handles the
contracting, insurance, fuel, and maintenance while the drivers are paid to
drive. This job can pay ~40-60k/yr.

This article tries to paint a world where truckers are fabulously paid. Why
would nobody want to work this job?

But in reality it’s a very stressful job underpaid job. And a small subset of
truckers manage to become well paid contractors but the VAST MAJORITY aren’t.
This swings the average/high end pay into idiotic territory.

------
cm2012
Median truck driving wage is $42,000 according to the article, so...

------
PhasmaFelis
Headline: "Here’s why few want an $80,000 job."

Paragraph 5: "government statistics say median pay for the industry is
$42,000."

Well. There's your problem.

~~~
opencl
Short haul trucking has miserable pay and long haul trucking is a miserable
job.

It's also not clear if the $80k jobs referred to here are employee or owner-
operator jobs. If they're employee it's a massive outlier and if they're
owner-operator the expenses are high and $80k results in rather pathetic take
home pay.

------
teyc
There's an Indian start up addressing some of the issues with long haul
driving by turning them into short haul ones. This way people work closer to
home. I thought that was innovative.

~~~
MisterTea
Do you have a name or link?

For some reason I can see this company operating like an uber with tractors
waiting at way points to swap trailers. Problem is the swaps will be conducted
at the drivers discretion which opens the flood gates to all sorts of abusive
shenanigans and race to the bottom economics. I can picture all the complaints
of drivers meeting in private parking lots causing damage and trespass. Or
meeting in residential neighborhoods off highways causing all sorts of noise
and possible damage. Excessive idling causing noise and air pollution, drivers
taking up parking or partly blocking roads while waiting for other truck which
is trapped in two hours of back up.

These are heavy vehicles that make a lot of noise and beat on the pavement.
Best keep them rolling along the highways where they belong. That or keep the
heavy duty noise to terminals located in industrial or commercial centers
where people wont be bothered by the racket.

~~~
fjsolwmv
I don't know India, but in many countries highways have truck stops every 100
miles or so.

------
mlinksva
Make them pay their weight, demand will go down
[http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-
have-1...](http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs-
have-18-wheels/)

------
jacobkg
I hired the same company to move my car across the country then back four
years apart. The same man drove the truck. He told me he expects the company
will shut down in another decade or two as it’s too hard to find good reliable
drivers who want a long term trucking job. It’s a family run company with a
stellar reputation and they aren’t interested in short timers

~~~
Implicated
I'll be shipping a car soon - have any contact details you can pass along?

~~~
rootsudo
Be careful, this is the worst of all shipping. The car is never shipped until
it's fully loaded.

Make sure to pay extra for a top slot, and go on youtube. Everyone who owns a
luxury car despises car shipping companies.

uShip used to have a decent program where people will do it for about $400-700
with no wheels touching the ground. You need proper registration and title
work though.

------
e40
My step sister's husband drives a truck. It pays well, but it's a terrible
job. They have two kids, and he is gone a lot. It's a hard life, that I
wouldn't wish on anyone.

------
gitgacutils
I guess that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is America has
a truck driver wage/compensation shortage.

I'm sure if the companies increased wages that shortage would magically
disappear.

------
major505
So do Brazil.... at least today.

Anyway, I don't think is a wise move t o invest in truck drive carrer, when we
are so close of autonomous trucks.

~~~
test6554
I think this is a big factor as well.

------
mud_dauber
Low wages, terrible working conditions, drivers as commodities: autonomous
long-haul trucking looks like a no-brainer.

I had two uncles who retired from a F500 train company (many years ago). It
sounds like this industry is going to end up with one person riding in the
equivalent of a caboose to handle the unexpected stuff, or to oversee
intermodal activities.

------
paulie_a
Truck driver's are basically consultants. They generally have to cover the
costs. So 100k has a lot of expenses attached to it. Plus long hours and time
away from friends and family. And long boring drives in the middle of
Nebraska. I don't think I would want to do that for 45-65k take home pay.

~~~
PedroBatista
Only if you're a owner-operator. If you're a company driver you'll only pay
for living expenses.

Either way, most are paid by the ( loaded ) mile which makes them some weird
bizarro version of Uber drivers.

------
adrianN
Becoming a truck driver currently doesn't seem a wise choice when self-driving
trucks are on the horizon.

~~~
inglor
This, not a single word about automation and self-driving trucks in the
article but every person I talked to that considered this career path* has
mentioned automation as a reason staying out of a field. A lot of people value
job security really high.

I agree with the comments saying that if the pay was higher then there
wouldn't be such a shortage and the fact that is generally true. That doesn't
mean the market always adapts fast enough and balances itself though.

* only 3 people, so purely anecdotal.

~~~
ams6110
TFA did touch on this, the comment was that self-driving trucks are a long way
off. And I happen to agree that they are a lot farther off than people think.
That last 10% of functionality needed to be safe on the road in non-normal
situations such as construction zones, traffic accidents, ice, heavy rain or
wind, is going to take a long time to achieve

~~~
adrianN
If a lot of people think that they're not so far off that's a lot of people
who'd rather not become a truck driver only to be displaced by a robot in ten
years.

------
5DFractalTetris
I think I would enjoy trucking, but as a person born in the 1990s, I grew up
in an area supplied entirely by trucks with no substantial agricultural land.
One of the retail airstrips with the movie theater and a mall and a
supermarket. Our community was connected by automobile transit, internet, and
telephone.

I wouldn't want anyone still living like this to go hungry--we don't make the
choice to enter the world we find ourselves in, as far as I know--but I can't
stomach that lifestyle for myself or my children, or the kin of anyone I've
known or met. When I was young it was thrilling, with engines and freeways and
drive-thrus. My friends bought cheap sports cars and motorbikes, and there was
100 years of movies to watch.

Now I am older, and I find it inhumane.

------
RickJWagner
As a 28 year coding veteran, I sometimes dream about the life of a truck
driver. Hours on the road, seeing the country go by, seems like a nice change.

But an article like this one brings me back to reality. I guess I'll stick to
coding for a while longer.

~~~
cdolan
You should code from an RV. Not kidding

~~~
macintux
Been my goal since I got my first remote programming job. Have a ball and
chain of a house to deal with first but hopefully soon.

------
yason
Is it the trucking companies or the customers that bound the pay? What does it
cost to move a container a distance of five days?

What would be the annual billable revenue if you decided to buy a truck and
start hauling cargo around yourself, cutting the middlemen? There are people
who do this.

Obviously your income is limited by regulations regarding how long you can
drive and how long you must rest in between. These physically clamp the amount
of time you can do billable work (unless you're driving with a partner and
take turns).

I would guess some hundreds of thousands of gross revenue per truck annually,
EBITDA is probably a lot less. Would be interesting to know what the books
might look like.

------
Bromskloss
What does "shortage" really mean? Isn't it just a matter of price?

~~~
twothamendment
Not if all the experienced drivers retire and there isn't enough young ones to
fill their seats. Raising wages would help, but it still takes time to get
people up to speed. Do you want the new guy in a hazmat tanker next to you on
the freeway?

~~~
Bromskloss
If that's the case, it must be a very temporary problem.

------
test6554
This is heartening as automation is sure to ravage the trucking labor market.

------
chiefalchemist
> "The ATA predicts that it's likely to get worse in the coming years"

Not really. These vehicles are at the top of the list to go autonomous sooner
rather than later. In fact, aren't they being tested in Europe? Germany?

Editorial (and slighly off topic): Perhaps it's time for the USA to revisit
its consumption based economy? Less good consumed means less goods to ship.
Perhaps the driver supply is fine. It's the excessive demand that's gone mad.

------
perl4ever
Apart from not having a CDL at this time, there is a simple reason why no
amount of money is going to make me get a truck driving job. Driving jobs I
see advertised require an accident free record, and I had a fender bender a
couple years ago (even though it was the other driver at fault). I have no
tickets, suspensions, or anything else, but the accident automatically
disqualifies you.

~~~
personlurking
As in totally accident-free? The accidents I was involved in in my late
teens/early 20s made me a way better driver.

~~~
perl4ever
Within a certain number of years, i.e. anything currently showing on your
driving record. But the point is, they don't care if you were at fault, just
that there was a police report.

------
booleandilemma
I’d imagine that a part of it is that being a truck driver is not a sexy job.
It’s hard enough trying to find a girlfriend when you’re in IT, the stigma
with being a truck driver is probably on a whole other level.

Remove the stigma, make it “cool”, and they’ll see more people applying.

------
ocschwar
Not finding enough applicants for your shit job. Do you...

a. Raise pay? b. Improve benefits? c. Improve working conditions? or

d. Bitch and moan to the press?

------
yasp
I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't
find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But
yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15%
this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will
clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is
too low. Keep trying.

~~~
maxxxxx
Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost
infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to
pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the
market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It does make sense, you don’t need “infinite” amount of money. Pay a driver
$200k a year. Or give them an 8 hour workday, and week off week on schedules
so they can see their family.

There’s many solutions, all of them involve incentivizing people to become
drivers. If people want their Amazon orders so bad, they’ll end up paying. And
if they don’t, then they have to re-prioritize what they want.

~~~
chrisseaton
I wouldn't re-train as a truck driver for $200k a year? Would you?

And you can't just say 'there's lots of people for whom $200k would be a lot
of money' because there's a lot of people who whom $50k is a lot of money and
those jobs aren't filled either.

Short of literally offering a million dollars a year, it's got to be more
complicated than how much you offer.

~~~
vkou
I wouldn't re-train as a truck driver, but my partner, who makes $35,000/year
moving heavy things around in a Seattle theater would. She'd step over a lot
of bodies to do so.

The $50,000/year jobs that aren't being filled have one of:

1\. Require years of non-transferable training.

2\. Have insane working hours, that make your real pay closer to minimum wage.

3\. In especially shitty working conditions.

4\. Are in locations where $50,000/year isn't enough to live on.

5\. Destroy your body after a few years on the job.

6\. Have better-paying, better-work-condition alternatives that use similar
skill-sets.

7\. Or, more typically, two or more of the above.

~~~
cimmanom
Truck driving ticks boxes 2, 5, and arguably 3.

That said, if it paid $200k/yr (median or even 75th percentile), the shortage
would disappear post haste. The vast majorly of other jobs that pay that much
tick boxes 1, 4, or both and are thus logistically out of reach of at least
half the population.

------
socratewasright
The shortage, if there is one, won't last long once the autopilot-enabled
truck convoys get going.

~~~
peatmoss
Someone in the industry suggested to me that the number of long-haul truckers
needed is relatively small. And that’s where autonomous trucks are going to be
viable for quite a while. It’s one thing to autopilot a truck down a long
straight freeway. It’s another to pilot a truck through city streets.

------
ebbv
Serious conflict of interest with this story given that the Post is owned by
Bezos and Amazon is highly reliant on the trucking industry and trying to grow
their own logistics.

------
UglyYou
Some states do not let Deafies want to be driver. Hearing people(not deaf
people) who barrier them. that is the problem.

------
kmonsen
Everyone of the x has at shortage articles are silly. We live in a capitalist
society so pay more. Truck drivers or software engineers it applies risky. Or
teachers and nurses. If you pay enough (and maybe have decent benefits) you
will get qualified people. That's not part of the business model? Please go to
a socialist country.

------
a3n
I couldn't read the article. I read most of the comments.

I'm a new truck driver, since March 1st of this year. I drive for one of the
biggest trucking companies in the country.

When weather is bad, they call or message us to shut down. I've never felt any
pressure 2 exceed the legally allowed number of driving hours. If you're going
to be late for some legitimate reason, you let the company know, and you're
then not considered late. They reschedule the appointment.

It's definitely a lifestyle that a lot of people would not want to do. I am
unusual in that I enjoy my alone time. Yeah this is Extreme alone time, but I
like it. There probably are not a lot of people like me, but probably more
than you would think.

Edit:

I've lost 20 pounds since I started driving. Driving doesn't cause you to lose
weight, but I knew weight gain is a problem, so I really focus on eating
carefully. My truck has a refrigerator. I think it used to have a microwave,
but I think the former driver gave it to himself as a going-away present.

Most problems are solvable. I plan on very slowly incorporating a few
solutions to a few problems. My truck has a good inverter, so I have a coffee
pot and I make my own coffee in the morning, it's cheaper than truck stop
coffee and I like it better. I'll get a small microwave eventually, and
possibly bring a Crock-Pot or similar.

I shop when I'm home, but that's usually not enough for the two or three weeks
that I will be out. So when it's convenient to me I will drive to a Walmart,
where they are Truck friendly, and stock up. Truckers also will sometimes Park
overnight at Walmart, but not all of them allow it.

Pay to start is low, but larger companies recently, including mine, have begun
to increase starting pay, and incorporate bonuses for existing. Pay increases
regularly over quarters, but it will be a few years before you're making what
you might call good money.

Right now I'm shut down for the night at a truck stop about a half hour north
of Las Vegas on I-15, that Corridor that someone here said nee guys never get.
This is not my first time on this route. This is my second Thousand Mile trip
this week.

My only serious complaint is parking. I'm parked on the street across from the
truck stop, because I got a late start and finished late. If the country hired
any significant fraction of the trucker shortage, there would be no where to
park. Drive down a major Interstate some night at 10 or 3 in the morning, and
really look and see how many trucks are wedged into non parking spaces. We
have to do it, because of hours of service regulations.

Everyone has anecdotes, pro and con, including me. Don't think that the
article, or the comments here, give you good and accurate coverage of the
subject. Everything everyone says here is probably true, for that person's
experience. But like in any area, your mileage may vary.

[Apologies for Trump style random capitalization, my phone does that to me
when I speech to text.]

------
zxcvvcxz
A lot of people are putting forth this notion that the market just isn't
offering enough compensation for the jobs, and that's why they're not being
filled.

That may be true. It probably is true.

But here's something else to consider: the alternative of not working,
especially for people who may do these particular jobs, is fairly competitive.
With enough welfare, government assistance, and cheap easy-to-access
entertainment, getting a job looks worse and worse (less necessary), so would-
be employees won't bother as much at current market rates.

Companies will therefore need to offer higher and higher wages for these jobs
to fill them. The same story has been unfolding in China with regards to
manufacturing: these "$2/hour" jobs which seem terrible were actually amazing
prospects for a half billion rural inhabitants, who were able to move to the
city, work and save up money, and provide more for their families than they
ever could.

But once those families have higher standards of living, the next generation
(their kids) don't need to take these jobs. They could, and they would still
make some money, but they don't need to, so they'd rather go to school for the
hopes of something better (an office job with AC), or just not work, because
saving up marginally more money when you already have most of your needs met
on your smartphone and through your parents just doesn't make a whole lot of
sense. This is the psychology: my family has some stability, I don't need to
work like they did. I can aim for something better. This is not a moral
judgement - sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. On the whole it's a good
thing.

So what's going to happen in either case is automation through technological
progress. These jobs will disappear as companies invest in their destruction.
Why not try out this startup's experimental self-driving truck, rather than
raise my total truck driver comp. package to $90K? Obviously a ton of reasons
for most companies. But the economic pros/cons will shift towards the
technology faster and faster.

And then what for the people who need these kind of jobs, what happens when
they disappear? In the West, it seems as if we're moving to some kind of
income redistribution scheme, based on taxing the owners and producers of the
technology. So essentially: increase the welfare. This seems like a relatively
stable short-term solution. But what happens when you're left with a large
underclass of unemployed people, and a small upper-class of producers? It's
not good, and not long-term stable. Look up the Gini Coefficient, one of the
most fundamental social science discoveries, and see for yourself:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-
inequ...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality-
murder-homicide-rates)

All the taxing and redistribution in the world isn't going to help this. We're
a global economy now, so unless you trap the rich in one area, they're going
to move eventually.

In summary - I see big problems ahead the next few decades relating to these
issues, and I don't see a good long-term solution just yet.

------
jacksmith21006
Ultimately we will get self driving trucks and that will solve the problem.
The question is not if but when.

Waymo has cars driving around Arizona as I type this without safety drivers so
maybe not too far off.

------
TheForumTroll
Put ads in magazines targeting serial killers. They like driving trucks in the
US i hear.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
joering2
Why we haven't gotten a feasible working heavy weight capatul that would
slingshot heavy cargo from spot to spot across states like jumping frog, I
don't get where the problem is.

I'm not saying catapult eggs, but majority of goods could withstand 1000Gs.

We need Trevor Milton to stop working on electric truck and get into electric
catapults.

~~~
always_good
I'm sure a bunch of children also wonder the same thing. The same way they
wonder why we can't just cool off Texas with a big fan when it becomes too
hot. After all, look how easy it was to come up with the idea (the hard part).

By the way, the reason is because you'd use a trebuchet, not the inferior
catapult.

~~~
joering2
Trebuchet is a type of a catapult, smartass.

