Posted on 02/11/2008 5:33:39 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Sounds like a “pay shortage.”
How come when there is a material shortage and prices rise, it’s expected, but when there is a labor shortage and higher wages are needed to pull in labor it’s a “quandary”?
Lets see, driving 11 hrs a day and working 14 hrs/day and maybe somedays making less than minimum wage....gone for weeks on end, bathing in public showers, and eating garbgage for weeks............ gee... I wonder why???????
Let them do what they did in the 90’s: empty the prisons.
What a load.
Pay shortage? At 50 cents per mile and 55 mph, Heartland is paying their experienced drivers $27.50 an hour. How much do you reckon they’ll have to pay to attract enough drivers?
.And what do they pay while the truck is not moving waiting on a load?
Its a manufactured shortage if it exists at all. If not it’s an attempt to manufacture a shortage.
Over the past two years my mother’s pay has been cut by almost $20,000 due to being short routed. Kept in service but off the road for hours every day. In other words she gets paid by the mile but is being sent 100 miles to sit for a day before being sent another 50 miles to sit some more.
The truck drivers coming in to the business in recent years are a scary bunch.
They can’t do logs (DOT requirements), they can’t follow directions (i.e. read a map), they cannot back up a semi w/trailer into a marked bay, and they won't touch the freight once they finally do get a trailer into a dock. Let some teenager working minimum wage get it, and break his young back.
The truck driver shortage has been forecast for a long time now.
I guess that we’ll all be needing a good supply of Mexicans, and a lot of road signs for Spanish speakers.
Good luck posterity.
Oh, and when did they start paying by the hour?
Ah, more jobs American’s won’t do.
Something the article doesn’t state is that any driver hauling hazmat has to undergo FBI background checks and are barred from driveing due to certain criminal background. Homeland Security doesn’t want criminals and nuts hauling hazmat, but this depleats the driver pool even more.
In my local circualrs and weekly advertisers there is at least 1-2 dozen listings for people with CDL licenses.
See post 5,,, when they start paying drivers by the hour instead of by the mile, you will get drivers. The truck diving business is a racket!
50 cents a mile is nothing. Mohammed the taxi driver does better than that, and he gets tips on top of it.
They don’t pay by the hour. They’ve always pay by the mile. So if you’re working for Heartland Express and stuck in one of those notorious Iowa traffic jams, you’re not getting paid anything.
OTH, few trucks in Iowa are doing only 55 mph.
Does the company pay for gas, or is the 50 cents a mile supposed to cover the gas?
Yep, all starting at $8.50/hr or 19 cents /mile
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