The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-industry-needs-more-drivers-it-should-try-paying-more.html?ref=business&_r=0

by cadlin • 12 years ago

123 172 12 years ago

nytimes.com

hughes• 12 years ago

Maybe transport & trucking needs to be automated. If there's a lack of labourers, why not fill in the gaps with self-driving semis?

idlewords4• 12 years ago

Long-distance trucking seems like a huge and obvious market for autonomous vehicles. Trucks mostly travel along Interstate highways and drivers have mandatory rest periods. Usually that means the truck sits somewhere, sometimes with the engine on.

kazagistar• 12 years ago

As far as I understand, many places use trains for these purposes. It means that less drivers are needed and the cargo spends more time in transit.

Alas, the united states has a fairly poor cargo rail system, which in fairness is due to its spread out geography in many places.

the_ancient11• 12 years ago

Most trucking companies are prohibiting idle running, they program their trucks to shut down after a given time if the truck is not moving.

Most rest stops have also started installing "IdleAir service" which supplies Heat, AC, 120V electric and in some cases Cable TV, at the drivers expense of course.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Not surprisingly this is the first step in that process. Automating the driving of trucks is expensive, there was at one time an ample supply of truck drivers keeping wages low, so no automation. As the cost of human drivers goes up, it changes the math with respect to automation, once it hits the tipping point the change over is inevitable.

We saw an exact corollary of this with automation in Chinese factories. As long as the cost of labor was lower than the cost of automation factories remained manual only shops, but the cost of labor has gone up, and with it have come robots. What I find particularly fascinating is that in the labor case the manufacturing went off shore first (it was cheaper to hire Chinese workers) and now it is being automated, in China. Since you cannot easily off shore truck driving that option doesn't exist.

I do however keep my eye out for 'teleoperated' trucks. Something which is a mix of robotic driving with supervision and command and control with a human. This is also possible today and would allow a trucking company to operate more trucks with fewer drivers, but it also requires some automation on refueling. The system has resisted this form for a while.

So what I took away from the NYT article was that the economics of trucking are entering the point where the system can support more dramatic changes than it has in the past. That means there are opportunities there.

nickthemagicman• 12 years ago

Theoretically seems easy but I think practically it's incredibly difficult due to the unpredictable nature of Over the road trucking.

There's no automated cross country trains and those move on a predictable path.

Although I would love to see it happen because of how incredibly efficient it would make the transportation industry.

greenyoda• 12 years ago

I think we're quite a bit farther away from self-driving semis than from self-driving cars. Big trucks are much more dangerous vehicles than cars: their braking distances are much longer, their weight makes it possible for them to destroy any cars in their path, they can require multiple lanes to make a turn, many car drivers don't know how to drive safely near trucks, etc.

pjbrunet2• 12 years ago

No kidding. I'll get downvoted for this but the Hacker News demographic hasn't spent much time on the road. Try driving down 710 toward Long Beach. Last time I lived down there, tons of trucks, tiny lanes, uneven pavement, completely insane. I want to see a self-driving car navigate Manhattan or Brooklyn during the day, normal driving rules do not apply there, New York drivers mean business ;-)

qq66• 12 years ago

The promise of self-driving cars is that they will be better and safer drivers than humans. Wouldn't that imply that they would be even now suitable for high-skill, dangerous driving?

polarix• 12 years ago

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say “There is a shortage of skilled workers” than “We aren’t paying our workers enough,” even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.

rayiner• 12 years ago

The "worker shortage" concept is seriously one of the dumbest memes of corporate America. There's a ton of people out of work, and it doesn't take much in the way of skill to be a truck driver. Companies simply aren't paying enough for what can be a very demanding job.

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

"it doesn't take much in the way of skill to be a truck driver"

It's harder than you'd think to do a perfect 90 degree backup of a full-size semi into a loading dock without jackknifing, or to develop the temperament to pay attention to a boring stretch of highway for 8 hours at a time. You're being trusted with a lot of valuable equipment and cargo, to say nothing of the insurance risk should you flatten someone's Mercedes.

ewams• 12 years ago

They pay $1.10 per mile in my area plus gas.

winestock• 12 years ago

As far as I know, that equivalence betwixt "shortage of workers" and "not paying workers enough" holds for economists as far apart as Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes. That makes management's policy especially inexcusable.

Havvy2• 12 years ago

Even as far apart as Mises and Keynes.

icelancer• 12 years ago

Right. It's not an economics problem, even! Just math!

afafsd2• 12 years ago

Well, there can't be all that big a shortage anyway.

Last time I went to the US I found that supermarkets were stocked with food, gas stations with fuel, and lumber yards with lumber, so it seems that stuff is still getting from where it is to where it needs to be quite effectively.

scarmig2• 12 years ago

They are slightly different, though I agree that most of the time it's a matter of greedy or shortsighted executives being cheap or expecting workers to bear the cost of training.

How they're different: you may well have a situation where the short term supply of workers is highly inelastic. In that situation, paying more won't help any shortage. And some jobs that you would think are elastic in the long term aren't as much as you might think: the majority of people may simply be unable to perform the job, or uncertainties about the job's existence in four years might mean the expected return of training is very low or negative.

If people are not sanguine about the existence of trucking jobs 10 years from now, it's no surprise that the actual supply of labor is very low and not looking to expand soon. If you're an employer, you're probably best off using your monopsonist position to drive down wages of the current supply instead of paying handsome sums to coax people into taking big risks in preparing and dedicating themselves to your jobs. Especially if you're an executive rewarded on the timescales of a year or two, and not on timescales of a decade.

thrownaway24245• 12 years ago

For any individual trucking firm in a liquid market served by several such firms, the driver market is in fact highly elastic. If this Swift Transportation company which is featured in the article wanted to avoid a 20% decline in their share price, they merely had to walk into the break room at the competing trucking company and offer $10,000 spot bonuses to switch companies. Boom. Elastic.

Anyway, Swift's annual report says that driver wages as a fraction of revenue have fallen in each of the last two years, so it's their own fault if they came up short on drivers.

x0x0• 12 years ago

And it's not like trucking is a good job. For that princely (!!!) $41k / year, you are often away from home. I'd bet you don't get comped for all the meals you eat on the road either, so there goes a bunch of money spent eating out, even if it is just at truck stop diners. If you have a family, and and your partner has a job -- as he or she must, given that shit salary -- knock $4-$10k/year off for daycare as well. I mean, I'm just stunned people aren't begging for these jobs. Not to mention that from some reading, and I unfortunately forgot the link, it appears that truckers have to choose between keeping their jobs or obeying safety regulations. But never you worry, if they get caught violating sleep requirements only they get in trouble, not the companies.

It's funny; this story is a perfect analogy [1] for [2] something [3] but [4] I [5] just [6] can't [7] think [8] of [9] what [10]. Meanwhile, true story: a former employer not only completely lied to me about what I'd be doing, but then threw a fit when I quit two months in. And sent potential engineering recruits a python puzzle with a naked woman in it. It's a shock why employers have trouble hiring is all I'm saying...

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB113210508287498432

[2] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/11/1201127/-Facebook-C...

[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ayoomojola/2013/07/15/the-shorta...

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/11/technology/zuckerberg-tech-p...

[5] http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/240163468/nice-work...

[6] http://www.infoworld.com/t/h-1b/silicon-valley-leaders-unite...

[7] http://thehill.com/policy/technology/258985-microsoft-lack-o...

[8] http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Real-estate-...

[9] http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/08/07/gasp_sfs_housing_ma...

[10] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

It used to be considered a pretty good job, from what my father tells me. I believe what it boiled down to was, the pay was good, given that the qualifications are low.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

But then again it is rather interdependent. Why would they want to pay more if they get enough people knocking on their door.

In other words for everyone saying "hell no" there is another that say "ok, i have no choice, i'll take it" well the business moves on.

I have also heard some East Europeans (Polish for ex) drivers come here (not sure on what kind of visa) and they are willing to work for much less, then send money home. Same patterns as farm workers from Latin America working here.

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

Keep in mind that people like us are pretty spoiled by having marketable degrees. $41k is pretty nice compared to the other options available to Americans with high school educations.

Which isn't to say that truckers don't need and deserve more pay; just that they're not presently getting screwed quite as hard as most of the working class. It's more of an indication of how fucked up things have gotten that a trucker's salary can look pretty good.

VLM4• 12 years ago

"given that shit salary"

This feeds painfully into the "HN is an echo chamber of rich yuppie coastal urban programmers out of touch with reality". Its roughly a median income for Americans. About half of all jobs are worse and about half of all jobs are better.

"choose between keeping their jobs or obeying safety regulations"

Isn't this like every blue collar job, ever? In my limited student years experience working thru school its a blue collar mgmt technique. So in programming if there's a woman or a black guy we tell lies about "not a cultural fit" or whatever other BS. But in blue collar orgs if your boss wants to fire you, you'll get fired either for not using safety gear or taking too long aka fired for using safety gear. In both cases it doesn't really matter, if you're not the same gender / orientation / religion / race as your boss you're going to end up equally unemployed, although with different lies told if you're white collar or blue collar. It doesn't really mean anything at all on the surface.

mcguire5• 12 years ago

"...truckers have to choose between keeping their jobs or obeying safety regulations..."

One of the most important tips I found in an older driver training manual I saw once was to buy a device that plugs into your radio and to record every conversation with dispatchers. When the company gives the driver grief about not breaking the rules, playing those recordings for the company driver safety officer was an important tactic.

crassus22• 12 years ago

If a business owner raises wages, he solves his labor problem but spends more money and reduces profit.

If instead he complains about a labor shortage, then maybe politicians will pass a law allowing more immigration and he will be able to lower his wages and increase his profit.

It's beneficial for business owners for there to be a general belief in a labor shortage but it is not beneficial for people to believe they are stingy.

eru4• 12 years ago

We wouldn't have this conversation, if immigration was sane in the first place. Ie let anyone in. It's such a waste of human labour.

erichocean4• 12 years ago

It's beneficial for business owners for there to be a general belief in a labor shortage but it is not beneficial for people to believe they are stingy.

It's even better for the business owner for citizens to believe that their government plays a key role in "providing" jobs; it's what allows businesses to lobby government to change the rules to "help job creators" instead of just paying more.

Government or market, it's our choice. Lately, we're more and more choosing government to solve market "problems" that exist only because we are willing to let the government act on those problems. If we didn't, the market wouldn't have said problem.

Havvy2• 12 years ago

I've got family in the auto transport brokerage industry. Can confirm that there is a shortage of drivers.

dehmlow2• 12 years ago

I have some familiarity with the trucking industry in the midwest. I can also confirm that there's a shortage of drivers in the region.

The funny thing is that at some companies, working some overtime (although under the safety limit), drivers can make ~$80k including benefits, which is pretty good considering the cost of living there.

thrownaway24245• 12 years ago

I have a feeling that the energy boom is cutting into the supply of truckers. If you have any skills at all (welding, driving) you can top $100k in oil or gas fields, but even if you're a high school drop out with no skills of any kind you can pull down $60k just humping pipe from one side of rig to the other.

the_ancient11• 12 years ago

The only people I know that can make that level of money is Owner Operators, and while gross my be 80K most of that ends up back in the truck.

If you know of a company driver making 80K a year let me know the name of that company

lgleason• 12 years ago

Sounds like the same argument being used for more H1B visas. We cant find enough (cheap) resources locally so we need to import some from elsewhere willing to work for a pittance.

hibikir• 12 years ago

The strength of the argument changes with market elasticity.

If a single company has trouble hiring, they can raise salaries. However, if the pool of workers remains finite, all you are really doing is switching which company has the hiring problem. If two people need an all day plumbing job done today, and there's only one plumber in time, one of them is not going to get it done, regardless of how much they pay.

So when we look industry-wide, what the salary increases do is make people change professions. If it takes the same effort to become a truck driver than a cab driver, but the truck driver makes 4 times as much, everything else being equal, we'll have more trouble finding people to be cabbies, as long as there's an opportunity trucking. People then decide which training they get to choose. But the real demand problem is not solved until the workers are trained.

We don't even need workers for this. Imagine that we suddenly need 60 million gallons of 25 year old scotch every day. It doesn't matter how much we want to pay: There isn't enough scotch to meet demand today. If we paid a million dollars a bottle, it'd not make a difference: We'd only get an increase in supply as time goes by, and people just put more scotch on casks, and don't open the casks at 15 years, because 25 makes more money: But nothing is going to make this demand shock get fixed earlier, no matter how much you pay.

So the harder it is to actually perform the job, and the longer it takes to train, the stronger the immigration argument gets.

tomjen3• 12 years ago

if the pool of workers remains finite

You take an alternative. There may only be one plumber, but if he is bid up to a million I am going to spend a day doing it myself, buy an entirely new WHATEVER_WE_ARE_REPLACING or do without. If the price of scotchs go to 50 usd per centilitier I am going to buy rum. If programmers start charging 10000 usd/day I am going to continue doing my spreadsheets by hand.

Your analysis fails to take into account substitute goods. If a taxi gets too expensive I can rent a car (no driver cost), take public transportation (lot less driver cost) or stay the night and go home when I am sober.

crdoconnor6• 12 years ago

If a single company has trouble hiring, they can raise salaries. However, if the pool of workers remains finite

You mean fixed, not finite.

Which it wouldn't, if you raised salaries. The pool of workers would increase in size because people like money.

We're not talking about a job that only a fixed number of people could do. Half the working population could probably be a trucker if they tried, and they would if you raised wages enough.

the_ancient11• 12 years ago

It is not a matter of paying "more" but changing how they pay

Most Truckers are paid by the mile... So if your sitting in traffic no pay (next time your stopped in traffic look around, how many semi's are sitting with you, most of those drivers are doing it for free)

Then there is load and unload time, which for some companies is non-paid, other is a nominal flat rate of like $35 that could take up hours of your day.

Then there is the "hours of service" which many companies require their drivers go "off duty" when they arrive at warehouse, but the warehouse required them to monitor the CB Radio to be called to pull into a dock, so their "sleep" time is taken up waiting to be unloaded, and they do this waiting for free.

Trucking companies need to end the practice of per mile pay, and start paying drivers Per Hour or a Salary (non-exempt) like every other company.

twothamendment3• 12 years ago

You started down the right road. Much of their pay has to do with how they are paid. There are trucking companies that don't pay drivers to fuel the truck. Do you know how long that takes? It isn't like it is an optional task - that truck won't move without fuel.

I know a driver who spends 2-6 hours waiting to be unloaded. He doesn't get paid for that time but isn't free to leave the truck because when the loading dock is ready for him he needs to be there to move the truck. How is that not being "on call"? If he wasn't working he could go catch a movie or dinner, sleep or whatever, but for some reason the law says it is OK to make him sit without pay to do his job.

tombrossman2• 12 years ago

The issue is that most drivers incorrectly assume they are in the weakest position for any given scenario. They absorb delays as if it were their own fault and falsify logs to compensate. Many drivers even absorbed the reimbursable toll costs on a route because they couldn't match the ticket times to their falsified logs.

They are afraid to log as 'on duty not driving', which is how they legally should be doing it. Sure, they make less that one day but the sheer number of hours wasted at the shipper or consignee will have a knock-on effect which will make on-time delivery less likely. I drove tractor-trailers in the US for eight years and I would tell other drivers 'this system is broken, allow it to fail and cover your ass by documenting everything'.

I refused to falsify my logs and would rigidly log everything 100% accurately, even logging Hours of Service violations (e.g. difficulty finding parking & going 30-45 min over on drive time) which could have cost me a ticket. Once in a while I'd get hauled into a weigh station for an inspection and they'd notice the hours violation. I explained about refusing to falsify and they'd see this was true. I'd get a funny look but never a ticket.

The outcome here was that I was very predictable to the 'trip planners', who were one grade above the lowly dispatchers. The trip planners always knew exactly where I stood from the truck's telemetry data, plus I would always communicate delays. They were better able to predict how to use my time and their company truck. I was never out of pocket for reimbursable expenses because time/date stamps on receipts always matched. I was making more than most of our company-employed drivers and even some of the owner-operators who struggled with fuel costs, etc.

The dispatchers hated me because they constantly had to explain to management why my loads were late and how I could not be blamed for the delays as I had documented everything and communicated the delays well in advance. Every other driver would have gone over their hours illegally to compensate, but I always stopped when I ran out of driving hours and therefore missed appointments.

They all caught on after a while and learned to use my time more wisely. I reliably made $50-55K/year which was exceptional for trucking and enjoyed the very low tax rate Hours of Service workers get (9%, taking the standard deduction x days worked, typically). It was an interesting job overall because of all the sights you see, but I can't recommend it to anyone looking for a career change. Stick with the tech sector as it is much safer and you can go home every night.

EpicEng• 12 years ago

If I take a contract job which pays $X / deliverable then I may end up doing some "free" work as well if something comes up that I hadn't accounted for. Same goes for my day job when I work past 6 (exempt, of course).

Not all jobs are hourly. Why should this change for truckers and no one else? Are you proposing that all jobs should pay for every minute of work? I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily, but I'm interested in your reasoning.

6d0debc0712• 12 years ago

In contracting the company or person hiring you generally knows very little about programming and even less about yourself. You have the information advantage, you usually price the job, and you know how hard you're going to work and how long these sorts of jobs usually take you. It makes sense in that context for you to carry the risk if you choose to be paid by deliverable.

Whereas, if you're a trucker, you don't know any more than the company does about whether the gods of traffic are going to take a dump on you that day - and there's not a whole bunch you can do about it. In that context it doesn't seem to me to make much sense to pay on that sort of basis.

The point of paying with a target is - at least when you're not trying to screw people out of money - to tie reward to the risks that they can control. If they can't control the risk, it becomes little more than a way of concealing from people what the take-home is going to be.

the_ancient11• 12 years ago

First and fore most I am not talking about "contract jobs" these are not 1099 contractors, these are W2 employees, and they should not be classified as exempt for over time, or be allowed to paid per mile IMO. These are Blue Collar jobs and should be treated like a Fork Truck Driver, or a Factory worker, not as a Laywer or even in SysAdmin or Developer.

True Contract Jobs, i.e owner operators, should be paid based on however they draw up their contracts, that is one business employing another business and it outside the conversation of employment law

anifow• 12 years ago

I disagree.

An hourly wage is a very special payment system which requires some kind of foreman to be sustainable. Otherwise, the labour industry tends to drift towards inefficiencies that allow them to claim money for less work. This is classic agency risk, where the incentives are not aligned, and heading down this path often entails major bureaucracies to try and keep everyone honest (like time clocks and punch cards, a "boss" looking over you, etc).

Simply paying more within the existing structure makes perfect sense. It will actually have a disproportionate effect on recruitment when some of the most efficient drivers start bragging about making $160,000 a year driving trucks (this is one of the big drivers of immigration by the way. Compared to poorer nations, the streets are paved in gold in the USA, and some lucky immigrants find shovels to dig it up. Unfortunately, most people who come never get a shovel so it remains but a dream...).

Paying more by the mile absorbs the costs of refuelling and traffic, without giving any driver an incentive to waste time when, for example refuelling the truck. So rational truckers will go to gas stations that are more efficient and will get out of there as soon as they can.

Where the trucker has no agency, however, it could make sense to pay by the hour. For example, since loading is in the hands of another group as soon as the truck docks in, and since it can vary quite a bit based on warehouse, better that the driver is paid for time sitting around. You could argue that the driver's incentive is to rush the loaders, but I doubt they have any coercion in that process. So better that the shipping company have an incentive to make loadings as fast possible through influence over choice of warehouse, penalties to warehouses for slow loadings, etc.

I've never really thought about this industry before, but thinking about it now makes it sound very interesting!

crdoconnor6• 12 years ago

This is classic agency risk, where the incentives are not aligned

Paying by the mile is even worse. How much incentive does the company have to make unloading and loading more efficient when they get it for free?

the_ancient11• 12 years ago

there are alot of factors here

1. Most companies use what is called "Book Miles" for payment and these books I believe were published in the 1940's or something, because most companies "Book Miles" are vastly different than the actual miles driven

2. "Foreman" problem can be solved with Technology, the DOT is planning on requiring all electronic logs in the near future, like 2015 I believe, most trucking outfits already have realtime GPS monitoring of their trucks, you can monitor these employees in a far more accurate manner than one can monitor factory workers.

3. Most company truckers do not have a choice of where they fuel, this is planned as part of the trip, and they are provided a fleet card that is only accepted at a chain the company has a contract with.

this is just a start but I think you believe truckers have more freedom then they do in reality. The technology and logistics that goes in to trucking does not allow for any independent thought, they are given a route, with preplanned fuel and rest stops, if they deviate from this route they must explain why (i.e mechanical failure, stopped by police, etc)

While they may not have a human foreman monitoring their time clock, they have electronic foreman's and government regulators acting as foreman's

mcguire5• 12 years ago

"Paying more by the mile absorbs the costs of refuelling and traffic, without giving any driver an incentive to waste time..."

It also gives the driver incentives to drive too long, too fast, to reduce maintenance, and to take other shortcuts that cause longer-term and safety problems. (Fortunately, the industry has done pretty well at pushing liability onto the drivers.)

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

How you pay for work performed is a complex matter. It's one that Adam Smith covers (as he does most topics) at length in Wealth of Nations. In particular he warns of the tendency to pitch compensation terms such that workers are overincentivized to work, reducing their overall productivity and burning out faster.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm

(I'm adding some paragraph breaks to Smith's text, this is a single paragraph in the original. Emphasis added as well.)

"The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low; in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote country places.

"Some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by no means the case with the greater part. Workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves, and to ruin their health and constitution in a few years. A carpenter in London, and in some other places, is not supposed to last in his utmost vigour above eight years. Something of the same kind happens in many other trades, in which the workmen are paid by the piece; as they generally are in manufactures, and even in country labour, wherever wages are higher than ordinary. Almost every class of artificers is subject to some peculiar infirmity occasioned by excessive application to their peculiar species of work. Ramuzzini, an eminent Italian physician, has written a particular book concerning such diseases.

"We do not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us; yet when soldiers have been employed in some particular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their officers have frequently been obliged to stipulate with the undertaker, that they should not be allowed to earn above a certain sum every day, according to the rate at which they were paid. Till this stipulation was made, mutual emulation, and the desire of greater gain, frequently prompted them to overwork themselves, and to hurt their health by excessive labour.

"Excessive application, during four days of the week, is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade.

"If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work."

rmason2• 12 years ago

I've got a good friend with his Masters degree who quit teaching school to drive a truck because it paid so much more. He makes a great deal more than $41 K a year. It must depend on the particular company and the alternatives where you live.

tapp• 12 years ago

I researched this a bunch at one point. Some of the primary variables are:

* Licensure (e.g. if you have a Hazmat endorsement) * Route type (Long haul pays a lot more) * Driver's safety record * Employment status - Independent contractors who own their own rig vs captive employees Etc.

rmason2• 12 years ago

My friend picks up high end foreign cars at the port and takes them to the different dealerships. They're very high priced vehicles and the company is extremely fussy about every step of the process. Most of his fellow drivers are college graduates by the way.

fred_durst• 12 years ago

Sorry, Swift's stock price is more about the horror show that is Swift's corporate governance. Especially CEO Jerry Moyes. The very fact that he'll keep his job after this dismal lack of forecasting is an example of how much corruption there is there. Honestly, I would not be surprised if it was intentional.

He had to step down 10 years ago due to insider trading with Swift shares. Now he's back after a they brought it private and then to a second IPO.

The stock tanked, in my opinion, because investors know they can't trust Jerry Moyes and Swift's board.

More fun stuff.

http://teamster.org/content/teamsters-warn-swift-transportat... http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/9796076/nhl-lawsuit-jerry-...

l33tbro2• 12 years ago

Hmmm, why are we still talking about truck drivers exactly?

The trucking industry is about to tank hard. Mercedes demo'd its first driverless truck a couple of weeks ago (!). Yes, there will be specialists drivers sure and niche companies. But the day of the interstate road train will be done shortly.

The biggest new niche in my mind will be vehicle security. These trucks will be flying solo across the nation - unmanned. How will these trucks be fitted out against good ol' fashioned highway robbers in remote areas that are barely on the grid?

Fun times ahead.

(!). http://www.caradvice.com.au/295713/self-driving-mercedes-ben...

sanswork5• 12 years ago

How will these trucks be fitted out against good ol' fashioned highway robbers in remote areas that are barely on the grid?

They would handle it the exact same way the ones with drivers do. They would do nothing while it is happening but contact the police and claim insurance. The only difference is no one is at risk of dying and they will likely have video evidence.

twothamendment3• 12 years ago

Can the driver-less truck put chains on its tires in the winter? I didn't think so.

I'm sure that we'll make use of the tech we have but there is so much more to driving a truck than driving. Maybe the "drivers" will be able to climb in the back and sleep while the truck does they driving and they can take care of everything else.

l33tbro2• 12 years ago

This is why I think the "driver" will shift more to a "captain" type archetype. Ie, driverless road-trains will travel in fleets and there will be a mechanic somewhere in that convoy to deal with breaking down in dead of nowhere. Also hard not to imagine this guy being armed.

icebraining• 12 years ago

Can the driver-less truck put chains on its tires in the winter?

http://www.onspot.com/

Houshalter• 12 years ago

That's not good news for the truck drivers. I can even see automation getting banned in many states. In the same way some places require an attendant at gas stations.

lotsofmangos2• 12 years ago

Presumably the states that have full serve gas stations, which is required for automated trucks, will also be the ones that ban automated trucks.

stretchwithme• 12 years ago

Cameras, GPS, an inability to force a driver to pull over, no drivers helping on an inside job. It might be harder to steal from these trucks.

Plus Robocop will be hiding in the back and killing him with carbon monoxide will not be an option.

Of course, when thieves start using robots to do the stealing, it will get tough.

tdicola2• 12 years ago

I like your optimism, but realistically self driving trucks on American highways are a long way off. How will the trucks refuel? How will they handle loading and unloading? How will they handle inclement weather? What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads? Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

Even Mercedes says in that article, "the Highway Pilot system could be launched into production trucks 'as early as 2025 if conditions permit'." Which is basically corporate speak for, "we have no idea if this will ever launch, but it will get investors excited now."

idlewords4• 12 years ago

Automation doesn't mean having to solve every problem simultaneously. You can still pay a driver to stay with the truck, and handle the fueling and loading. Just being able to keep the truck moving while the driver is required by law to rest will be a huge win.

sanswork5• 12 years ago

How will the trucks refuel?

Full serve gas stations.

How will they handle loading and unloading?

Do long haul drivers typically load/unload themselves these days? I would have thought that would have been the task of the warehouse staff on either end.

How will they handle inclement weather?

Probably better than human driven trucks why would you think they couldn't?

What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads?

Probably less than human driven trucks since you don't have to worry about a lot of things that will cause problems for those such as tired/impared drivers.

Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

The trucks insurance company. Same as it would currently happen.

Terr_2• 12 years ago

I think it's a false-dilemma to assume it needs to be total automation or nothing at all.

What about "trains" of trucks, where the first truck is piloted and the rest follow? That'd be significantly easier to engineer, and there'd be a person on-site for miscellaneous needs like gassing them up.

burkaman• 12 years ago

Even that article puts a minimum of 10 years before automated trucks get on the roads. So, we're talking about truck drivers because it's not acceptable to forget about them for a decade "because they'll be gone someday."

venomsnake• 12 years ago

You just need some human support drone style. Trucking will be 90% automated an 10% rc

A_COMPUTER2• 12 years ago

My semi-retired parents were lured in by the claims of making upwards of 80K a year if you worked hard enough. They did it for about three years and quit with more debt than when they started. You can only make decent money if you own your own rig, which costs as much as a house. Trucking is heavily regulated, but in ways that dump all the problems on the drivers. You are in competition with other drivers, which pretty much guarantees you're going to be cooking the books increasingly regulated-away ways, not to mention how dangerous it is.

There are exceptions to everything though, if you've been on the road long enough you make more money per mile as you build up a reputation, or you can make money money working for fedex or doing hazardous materials shipping, but it takes years of toiling in shit conditions for low pay to get to that point.

They also told me that they met a lot of people who clearly hadn't done the math, and were losing money instead of making it despite working very hard. The cost of the truck alone puts you in massive debt with no guarantee of work to pay it off.

As far as automating it, maybe in 20 years it will be viable. It's not useful to talk about that today.

msane4• 12 years ago

I think automation will happen sooner than we expect. 5-8 years seems likely to me. There is a hurdle with interstate trucking, where some states will lag behind in allowing it and providing the required bureaucratic support. But it is already technologically possible, if not yet a fully developed product. It just takes one company to get it allowed in one state and start doing it, the others will follow. Self driving personal vehicles are 1-3 years away from being on the market, it seems natural that trucking will follow.

I think trained people might still handle the parking though for a while :P

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

Parking shouldn't be a difficult task for a self-driving truck; but I suspect there will be a 'driver' along for the ride well after the task is mostly automated, just to deal with exceptional circumstances (eg. flash flood has made road impassable in some way the automated truck cannot deal with) and also to act as a security guard so nobody robs the robo-truck.

A_COMPUTER2• 12 years ago

My impression from riding along with my parents is that every day is filled with mostly improvisation. From dealing with bad, aggressive drivers who will get you and themselves killed, to rapidly changing road and weather conditions, to widely disparate entrances and loading docks, inaccurate GPS, etc. it just seems like the times that the self-driving would benefit are so infrequent with regular cross-country driving and delivery. This seems so different than a self-driving car that mostly is going to take you to and from work and the grocery store, etc.

There is also the liability issue, I mentioned that things are rigged to dump the hassles on the drivers and this is one of them. You're economically pressured to falsify log data, so when you nod off and accidentally kill some people, your employer is off the hook. A nice working self-driving truck would reduce fatalities caused by gross driver error, but I guess it would put the trucking company back on the hook in the cases where a catastrophe did happen. In the short term self-driving vehicles might be undesirable to some companies because it might eliminate their ability to shove negative externalities onto a third party (the drivers.)

self-driving commercial trucks will happen, I just think 5-8 years is not likely.

thaumasiotes• 12 years ago

For many purposes, you can consider trains to be automated trucks.

briandh• 12 years ago

This is way too far down the fold:

For example, new safety requirements mean that individual truckers drive fewer miles than a decade ago: An average long-haul truck can now cover 8,000 miles a month, down from almost 11,000 in 2007, according to the trade association.

So the maximum miles driven per month is 73% of what it was in 2007, whereas the inflation-adjusted salary is 97% (based on eyeballing the graph) of what it was.

Now, if despite the higher maximum drivers were going, say 9000 miles a month before 2007, the difference would be less stark. Nevertheless, viewing from that perspective makes the situation seem much different.

Of course, that doesn't account for the 03-07 downward trend.

And while I do agree in theory that they should "just" raise wages if they need more drivers, we should be careful jumping to conclusions as outsiders. After all, it is possible, for instance, that paying new (and probably many existing) drivers more could eat up the revenues gained from the customers they're currently turning away. And moreover, said prospective customers could adapt so that by the time the trucking companies have enough drivers, the orders are no longer there.

frozenport• 12 years ago

Is the real story that the overhead for trucking is too large and we should switch to more cost effective transport like rail?

gremlinsinc• 12 years ago

THis will be moot in a few years when automated cars are in place, truckers will be begging for jobs.

grondilu• 12 years ago

Or maybe they need to invest in self-driving trucks R&D.

yorak• 12 years ago

Automating a fleet of trucks has come up few times in these comments. Many commenters have raised concerns of difficult and special situations.

I have worked with machine vision and currently I'm doing my PhD in computational logistics (mainly working on automating the deployment of Vehicle Routing Systems). With this background in mind have given some tought to this: What would be needed, at least in the transition phase, is technology that would allow remote drive-by-wire of trucks in difficult situations (platforms, urban traffic) and wheater conditions.

Imagine a system not entirely unlike the unmanned UAVs the US is using but for civilian use of remote controlling trucks. One driver could probably handle dowzen or so trucks because they would drive under full automation at least 90% of the time. In addition the truck driver could have a normal 9 to 5 job.

Of course there are technical challenges like communications delay etc., but I'd like to hear your opinion on feasibility of such system.

JoeAltmaier8• 12 years ago

Delay in the control loop is always critical to accurate control. But in the case of a large heavy truck, we already have to live with that (slow acceleration/braking/steering response built in).

Thimothy• 12 years ago

Aaaand just another reason with liberal economics is bullsht. Perfect market my ss.

2close4comfort2• 12 years ago

Margins are VERY tight in transportation. In a solid company most of this should be going to pay drivers, and in decent companies it does they can make a pretty decent paycheck (none of that per mile crap) BUT with licensing points and experience being the biggest roadblocks getting decent drivers. Plus how many kids are growing up to be truck drivers these days... not many

LargeWu• 12 years ago

Then trucking companies can maintain their margins by charging more to haul goods. If there really is excess demand, then the market should be able to absorb price increases.

2close4comfort2• 12 years ago

Safety would be the largest cut into margins. Completely unplanned and everything from bumping into a yellow pole to an accident. Those all cost hundreds of thousands apprx 130k for a yellow pole...the market is not ready or willing for the risk that the companies traditionally absorb.

jtshana92• 12 years ago

More star journalism from the NY Times:

"In this environment, it may be easier to say 'There is a shortage of skilled workers' than 'We aren’t paying our workers enough,' even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing."

No, those aren't necessarily the same thing. Even if there was a surplus of licensed truck drivers to meet the new demand, it does not mean that the sole reason trucking companies don't wish to hire more workers is because it will cost too much in wages. I suspect the reason they don't hire more truckers to fill existing empty truck seats is for the following reasons:

1) Every truck runs with a huge damage liability (life insurance, lost goods, rebates to customers). A string of truck crashes from the increased volume would rapidly eat into the profits of more business.

2) Operating costs: gas, computer systems, dispatchers, parts, labor. It may be cheaper to raise prices on existing routes, and leave a few trucks empty.

Here's another snippit:

"It’s not an ideal job for everyone. There is no question that trucking is hard work, necessitating long hours and longer stretches away from family. But that’s why it is well compensated, at least in comparison to other jobs not requiring college degrees."

Nobody is paid because the job is hard and lonely. Oil workers in North Dakota aren't paid 250k a year because it's "5 times" harder than a desk job of 50k. Companies pay workers based on what the company expects its customers will pay. No matter how hard the job is, if the market doesn't want to pay higher prices to move goods via truck (which is what would happen if you rose trucker's salaries to 50k instead of 40k, for example), then the companies employing the truckers won't want to take on those higher wage costs.

So TLDR, if you feel you can run a more cost-efficient trucking company, then go fucking do it.

The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

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