Posted on 06/29/2018 11:27:49 AM PDT by Titus-Maximus
LAKE MILTON, Ohio - Bob Blocksom, an 87-year-old former insurance salesman, needs a job. He hasn’t saved enough money for his retirement. And trucking companies, desperate for workers, are willing to give him one.
Age didn’t matter, they said. If Blocksom could get his “CDL” - commercial driver’s license - they would hire him for a $50,000 job. One even offered to pay his tuition for driver training school, but there was a catch: Blocksom had to commit to driving an 18-wheel truck all over America for a year.
So far, that has been too big of an ask for Blocksom, who doesn’t want to spend long stretches of time away from his wife of 60 years. “The more I think about it, it would be tough to be on the road Monday through Friday,” he said.
As the nation grapples with a historically low level of unemployment, trucking companies are doing what economists have said firms need to do to attract and retain workers: They’re hiking pay significantly, offering bonuses and even recruiting people they previously wouldn’t have considered.
But it’s not working. The industry reports a growing labor shortage - 63,000 open positions this year, a number expected to more than double in coming years - that could have wide-ranging impacts on the American economy.
Nearly every item sold in America touches a truck at some point, which explains why the challenges facing the industry, including trucking companies rapidly raising prices as they raise wages, have special power to affect the entire economy. Already, delivery delays are common, and businesses such as Amazon, General Mills and Tyson Foods are raising prices as they pass higher transportation costs along to consumers. A Walmart executive called rising transportation costs the company’s primary “head wind” on a recent call with investors.
(Excerpt) Read more at savannahnow.com ...
Then insurance companies will jack up the rates for covering companies for potential liabilities if they knowingly hire users.
No such thing as a labor shortage. Pay more.
>> Trucks and drivers are now monitored 24/7 when on the road by the DOT <<
I wonder if that’s why I see less tailgating and speeding by big rigs on the Interstates these days?
(For example, I-81 in Virginia sometimes used to scare the daylights out of me. But now, it’s mostly a no-sweat run.)
My son for one. He didn’t want to do college. The local community college charged $4,000 for a Class A CDL course. When he registered, they told him of a $3,000 grant that he qualified for.
He turns 19 next week. After a summer long volunteer commitment, he has a driving job already lined up. At least $40K.
If kids don’t have a solid plan for a serious career, skip college. All four of mine have gotten or are starting new jobs this summer. Only one is a college required position as an aerospace engineer. (the money is incredible. I wish I was good at math.
>> three decades of outforcing America’s Middle Class jobs <<
Huh??? How do you outsource trucking jobs? Send ‘em to call centers in India?
As if American ingenuity ended at the truck stop?
I had a CDL for a once a year volunteer bus driving job. A few years ago, I went for my DOT physical and was given four questions to answer such as: If you lie down in the afternoon, do you fall asleep?
Well, yea, the 4-5 times a year I lie down in the afternoon, the point is to take a nap. so YES.
Suddenly, I’m at severe risk for sleep apnea, so I dutifully trot over to a sleep specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, arguably the best hospital in the nation. The doctor was department chief, so arguably the best sleep specialist in the country. AFTER DROPPED $3-400 for a sleep study, I was told my case is so minor, no treatment was needed, yet, because DOT was involved, I needed a CPAP machine and further studies. Since it made no sense to drop $1000 or more a year for a volunteer job, I gave up my CDL. Can you sense the ongoing bitterness?
I wrote my stupid waste of skin congressrat. He sent me a letter thanking him for writing because he liked hearing from constituents. My response was not nearly so nice.
recently I was visiting the shipping warehouse of a major US corporation when a very tall Asian man came to the window. Some how, he had bypassed the gate security. The clerk had an extremely difficult time explainng the driver had to leave and pass through security at the gate. When I say extremelydifficult, It is something of a maricle that the message/instructions were actually understood.
The Driver was Japanese. He could speak no english. His mode of operating was to wave his papers around and jabber unintelligaby. He had driven east from Los Angeles and was picking up a load for the return trip.
The question rises...... how in the world could a man speaking and presumably reading no English drive an 18 wheel truck from LA to east Tennessee?
Also has to pass a DOT physical. These are tightening up.
“Huh??? How do you outsource trucking jobs? Send ‘em to call centers in India”
Read the previous post this is a reply to.
Rail is fine if you do not mind paying 10 times more for products.
100 trucks can drive independently in 100 different directions cheaply.
100 train cars carrying truck trailers all travel to the same place, while re-routing is rigid and clumsy.
Trains only work for bulk product like coal, grain etc.
The pay is too low for short runs.
The modern computer simplified splitting up loads among trucks. Now teams and double trailers suck up the long mileage profit for long hauls. But the driver is too lazy to load and unload at the endpoints, because he already sucked off the money.
So there is a glut of short haul loads that are unprofitable.
Three times as many accidents are the car’s fault.
Older truck drivers are the safest drivers on the road.
Cars are dangerous, of all ages.
A car is reckless.
A truck is wreck less.
No shortage.
There is a glut of truck drivers.
Labor “shortage” is code word for cheap labor by the CoC Chamber of Commerce.
I drive about 90 miles on the interstaates an back on a fairly regular basis.
In the stretch going and coming there are always two or three reecent scars where trucks have run off the road. Is a sleepy
run off the road a wreck?
Her boyfriend’s overweight load ticket of $3500 is trivial compared to the $millions of dollars in damages to a highway that everyone must use.
A scientific education might help.
I am on the road a lot —in a car—and I believe what you’re saying. I just don’t know that upper eighties is a good age for most people to begin, or even continue, a career behind the wheel of a truck. My father drove a car until he was 87. It was an adventure to ride with him those last couple of years. He was active and in pretty good condition, but nowhere close to the driver he had been. He didn’t drive in a hazardous way; he just wasn’t as good anymore as he should have been.
No not sleepy, the black tread scars happen when a car cuts in front of a heavy truck and slams on the brakes or slows way down. A truck responds slowly.
I call it the reverse tailgate. Cut closely in front of another vehicle. There are TWO lanes. Use up the left lane that is why it is there. 2 vehicles in 2 lanes instead of packing the right lane.
Cars cause 3 times the accidents.
Cars drive in close packs instead of offsetting. And yes some ignorant truck drivers do tailgate also.
yes
Who will do those jobs?
........................
A trucker friend of mine says he encounters more and more migrants from the Middle East and Africa driving trucks on the road and they are hell on wheels.
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