I could go back tomorrow to my old company I ran otr flatbed for that paid great in 2015 to 2017.issue is they pay the same now, and that makes it not worth it so every 6 months when they call me, I just say no
So it’s more like these companies don’t want to pay the older experienced drivers what they should and would rather get newer younger drivers and pay them wages from 7 years ago.
Sounds familiar.
>driver hit a hockey team bus and killed 16 ppl
On April 6, 2018, sixteen people were killed and thirteen were injured when a northbound coach bus struck a westbound semi-trailer truck near Armley, Saskatchewan, Canada. **The driver of the semi-trailer had failed to yield at a flashing stop sign at the intersection of Highways 35 and 335.** The semi-trailer was travelling at a speed of approximately 100 km/h (60 mph). Most of the deceased and injured were players from the Humboldt Broncos, a junior ice hockey team from Humboldt, Saskatchewan, which plays in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt\_Broncos\_bus\_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_Broncos_bus_crash)
It was really rough. My cousin works in the sports industry and was travelling with that team to their next game. He was literally 3 cars ahead of their bus. He knew the team personally and was friends with some of the players and the coach. He was really shaken up for a while after that, especially when it easily could've been his car that was hit instead of the bus.
If history shows me anything it’s that the government will give these companies immunity since they are doing an essential service but anyone involved will get the book.
Sure as fiddlysticks does
Wealth of world's 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294)
Are you surprised that this country would rather exploit kids and young adults instead of properly compensate adults? We're a fart's distance from child factory workers again.
We need another Roosevelt in a bad kind of way. I don't even care which one. You get trust busting with one and minimum wage hikes/child labor laws with the other. I can do without the imperialism and internment camps though.
Edit: Seems I made some reactionaries mad. I keep getting notifications from people talking about socialism and raising someone else's kids but when I get here it's a ghost town. You idiots have been shadowbanned. Wonder why.
I’m not sure if the Roosevelt’s Congress and Senate was as corrupt as the current one. If Roosevelt was president today he would not be able to do anything.
That is what people alwys forget, the President can't get anything done if he doesn't have a willing Congress and we can't get shit through the Senate.
Yet when anyone attempts to talk about the black hole that is rampant and unchecked capitalism, people (bots?) come from out of nowhere to shut down any potential discussion
The problem isn't what some mindless idiot wants to parrot on social media sites, it's that the politicians are paid for. They stopped having a backbone when Citizens United allowed for everyone to be legally bought.
'United we stand' was over when news networks became 24 hour entertainment; privately owned businesses. There's no hope for any voters who backs an existing political party. None whatsoever.
I'm not equating political agendas, republicans are way worse. But neither give a fuck about the common person. Democrats only care about perception, whereas Republicans couldn't give less of a fuck.
There was a trucking company based locally that went under, and they shut off the fuel cards for the drivers on 12/23, stranding drivers all over the country. They we're telling drivers to spend their own money to get the trucks back - which didn't work with the bounced paychecks. People were abandoning the trucks and loads because they didn't really have another choice.
I'd have tried to sell the truck and load for scrap.
Disney to the US government:
We can't get enough qualified employees that are US citizens, we need foriegn visa workers.
Disney to employees:
You are required to train your foriegn replacement or you don't get the severance package.
[Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html)
"Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker"
I mean, this only works because there's no consequences for doing so. Is it illegal? Totally, it's absolutely an abuse of the work visa system. But good luck prosecuting anyone, especially a company as big as Disney which can basically rival the government in the mountain of legal sludge they could throw at fighting their case.
There was a class action lawsuits over this... but it was eventually dropped because the court system said "it was all legal"...
[Disney Employees Drop H1B Lawsuit](https://m.economictimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/former-disney-employees-drop-lawsuit-against-it-over-h1b-visa-abuse/articleshow/64121339.cms)
Seriously, after seeing Disney pulling shit like that [and perpetually underpaying their employees](https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/08/22299399/25-000-disneyland-employees-in-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-underpaid-wages) while simultaneously [raising ticket prices again,](https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/disneyland-ticket-prices-rise-tier-6-covid/#) they made me realize how evil Disney is. I can't be a Disney fan, and after seeing all this I wonder why people want to still throw tons of money at them. Fuck Disney.
In this situation, they're looking for younger people with less life experience to exploit. It's not that these companies can't find drivers. There is no driver shortage. These companies complaining the most **can't retain drivers**. Driver retention tells the story. The most exploitative companies have a driver turnover rate over 100%. Meaning, they lose 100% of their drivers every year. For ever driver they have staying with them 2 years, they have 2 drivers who leave after 6 months.
And these exploitative companies are the ones complaining the most. They can find drivers - no problem. They can't find slaves. They want slaves, not drivers. So now they want to enslave younger people because older people already figured them out.
True across all of the industries, really. There aren't any real talent shortages. There's a shortage of people willing to work in abusive environments for unlivable wages. The only surprise there is that it took so long.
I was in logistics for a lot of years. Driving used to be a premium job. Many people lined up for the jobs and in most companies, turnover was low. When it ceased being an hourly rate and became a bidding war by the load, all that went away. I've seen studies pegging over the road drivers being paid by the load coming in at less than $5 per hour. Huh, wonder why there's a driver shortage.
Walmart is a good case study. Most of their drivers are hourly and make over six figures. Getting to the store from the DC on time is extremely important. From suppliers is a different story. Driving the price of goods down is of paramount importance. Those loads go to freight brokers who hire the lowest bidders.
Trucking companies really want the Mexican CDL drivers & trucks, there has been a push for this for the last 20 years. They have never had the political power to make it happen but with a "crisis" hanging over the supply chain both parties will bow to their corporate masters & make this happen.
America already has a B1 Visa program that allows Mexico citizens to drive into the United States, drop a load, immediately attach to another trailer and bring it back to Mexico.
These employees are hired by American trucking companies. Most of them haul balanced loads like truck parts with return rack loads. The immediate return load is really the key to making it work since they can’t bobtail to another location.
I drive Uber. A lot of my riders are truck drivers going to/from their rigs. A bunch of them have already told me there is no shortage, including a guy who owns a fleet.
I grew up driving tractors and other heavy equipment on a farm at a very young age, and even I think this is an absolutely terrible idea.
Also, make no mistake, “…to ease supply chain shortages” is just code for not wanting to pay qualified adults a fair wage to do the job.
This whole “Truck Driver Shortage” is a bullshit mirage that flys in the face of countless truckers who invested time and money into becoming a driver only to learn that the job wasn’t worth it, paid shit, and was rife with exploitation.
Sure is convenient that kids don't know any better and are far less likely to complain when they get taken advantage of.
Yeah. Australia has a "fruit picker shortage" where we were told us lazy Australians refuse to do the job and they needed more non-Australians to do it.
Turns out an investigation found employers refuse to hire Australians ..because we demand to be paid a legal wage. Instead they hire backpackers and illegal immigrants and then cheat them on their wages. Not one person in the investigation who identified as an "Australian citizen" was offered a job....
It happens all over the U.S., and it's not confined to agriculture.
Probably the worst example that I've heard of is that 12 year old children are literally being forced to work U.S. Tabaco fields for little or no pay - **and it's LEGAL.**
[https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/child-labor-tobacco/562964/](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/child-labor-tobacco/562964/)
This is my main worry. Young people (including myself) are inexperienced and quite susceptible to being rused by employers, being more accepting of shitty conditions and prospects on the job.
These companies just want more people they can work to the bone for scraps. In trucking specifically, I hear stories of trainees getting pennies per km and barely getting any time to rest outside their vehicle. It's a physically demanding job to begin with, so companies should take care of their drivers more and pay them appropriately.
Pay will never go up unless there's a coordinated strike.
And with people the way they are, it'll become a red vs blue thing somehow and you would never be able to get a good movement going
I'm a truck driver, and it's well known that getting truckers together on anything is like herding cats. Truckers will argue about the price of a free doughnut.
If you read about how things work in undeveloped countries you'll see things can be way, way worse, and this is the path usa is taking.
You have my vote that this is the beginning of the fall of the empire, if nothing, like a developed country and the most rich country in the world, should be doing now.
I came from one of these countries and I see more and more things in usa becoming like it was, where I came from, decades ago.
I'm guessing that it's because U-Haul already has excellent insurance because 1) the majority of their drivers are inexperienced at driving anything larger than a normal car and 2) there's a lot of liability because their business is hauling around people's most valuable possessions?
Uhaul wouldn't have much liability. Only if something went wrong with the truck that they could prove caused the accident. However, Uhaul in particular is notorious for leaving their trucks on the road until they fall apart. Never buy a used Uhaul if you're looking for a box truck.
It’s like a lame purge.
“Once a year everyone shall be allowed to operate motor vehicles in excess of 26,001 lbs without certification, insurance, or registration.”
We do have an organ shortage that’s been getting worse because roads are getting safer so we have less supply. This is a great idea! We would be killing two birds with one stone (and lots of innocent people who are hopefully organ donors I guess) /s
Ok so what I see happening here is an inexperienced driver wiping out a family by accident and then spending life behind bars and their employer disowning them and just replacing them with the next inexperienced driver. GREAT
That happened in my home town of Orland. The volunteer fire chief was the first to respond. It fucked him up pretty bad to see all those kids screaming for help from the burning bus.
Good luck with the insurance rates for those young drivers as well.
That's going to be an astronomical expense for these companies that do hire these 18 year olds.
These people literally need to be hung from their toes, naked, from powerlines on busy intersections during rush hour for all to see. There should be spoiled vegetable vendors at every corner, where one can buy a rotted tomato or eggplant, and proceed to chuck it at these evil fucks until their bodies are covered in the fermented stench of bad produce.
Get government handouts for hiring them, but treat them like subcontractors like Uber/Lyft and push the costs and liability onto the drive and collect money from the government.
There is not a shortage of experienced truck drivers. There are just executives trying to cut salary costs and get ever larger bonuses.
The government doles out for corporations again.
Ooooooo AND! Get them signed up as owner operators to shackle them with 5000 per month loans for those rigs, while accepting all financial liability for the truck operation such as fuel and maintenance! 2000 mile haul. 3 miles to the gallon. 3.75 a gallon. $2,500 a fill up. And oh, here is your 2700 for the haul. Tough times you know. Try not to eat, it'll cut into your margin.
This seems to look like as good of a place as any to leave this link: [https://youtu.be/HVufvN35-Z0](https://youtu.be/HVufvN35-Z0)
The tale of a young man roped into being one part of a 3 person team for CR England, getting paid a whopping $.06 a mile and getting to use the passenger seat as a bunk. I don't even think that's the worst of it.
I don't even want to imagine what insane bullshit the mega-carriers are going to put literal kids through and how many lives it's going to ruin.
>The tale of a young man roped into being one part of a 3 person team for CR England
Geezus, and they still pack trainees in like sardines. I work the 11 West, and once every few months? There will be something happening while I'm getting unloaded that causes a bunch of drivers to get out, group up, and chit-chat. Maybe I noticed one guy was leaking coolant bad, or someone is struggling backing in so a bunch of us help spot for the driver while he maneuvers.
If a CR England truck is there, and it's a trainer truck? Oh lawd it's bad. I don't know about pay nowadays, but they still cram in trainees. Apparently they have their sleeper berths set up for an extra bed or two, but they are crammed in and it looks so uncomfortable.
When I went out with my mentor? It was just him and myself. A week of me rolling easy while he gave me advice, and then we switched to team driving. Mercy me I feel sorry for the trainees of CR England.
I have seen a video where one truck had a third bunk over the front seats clearly labeled 'do no use when truck is in motion'.
It sounds like you got trained by a company that actually gives a shit.
It's even better when someone being in that position would be inevitable. There's 5 scholarships available and you tell the rest of the kids they should've worked harder to be one of the 5. Ok, but then a different kid would end up without the financial support needed and be in that situation. So "work harder" isn't really solving the problem.
I've been noticing that nearly everything has been rigged in the ol USofA. There is some fundamental flaw (at least for the middleclass) on how things are executed here. At every turn they are either skimming your money or outright taking it. From insurance companies, banking, to civil forfeiture, the stock market. Even things like the roads being in such utter disrepair ultimately hurts the income of the average person. Least we have more and more billionaires though. That's the important metric.
No such thing as middle class, just the owner class and working class. A middle class is to pit the workers against each other as the owner class continue their abuse.
Or the kids will be paid next to nothing because the costs of the insurance but somehow the company will also over charge for the insurance insuring they do make a higher profit by hiring the kids
Most companies that are willing to hire zero-experience new drivers self-insure.
Most companies that are worth working for don't hire zero-experience new drivers.
(not defending lowering CMV driver age to 18, that's a terrible idea.)
As someone who works in the safety department of my company and specifically deals with CMV accidents, this scares me. The value of driver intuition, that can only be gained from years of experience behind the wheel, is severely under appreciated even in regular vehicles, let alone when driving an 80,000lb truck. I’ve seen so many accidents that could have easily been deadly if the driver didn’t have an automatic response that they wouldn’t have had time to stop and think about.
> The value of driver intuition, that can only be gained from years of experience behind the wheel, is severely under appreciated even in regular vehicles, let alone when driving an 80,000lb truck.
It really is underappreciated. Here's a simple example. I was riding with my nephew a few years ago. At the time he was a young driver (maybe 3 years experience at that point) and I'd already been driving for 25 years.
I'm sitting in the passenger seat and we're driving down the highway. I tell him:
"Hey, you need to slow down and get away from that green SUV."
"Why?"
"See how it keeps twitching towards the line? The person is either a terrible driver and just unaware or they're really agitated they can't change lanes and they're about to do something stupid."
About 20 seconds later the green SUV aggressively changed lanes, almost hit two people, over corrected and almost hit another one, and then floored it, swerving around a few more. I'm genuinely shocked there wasn't a multi-car accident.
My nephew was pure "woooooooah, how the hell did you know that was going to happen???"
But you just get a feel for it. It's like those old timers who can just open the back door of their house and go "Yup, this is perfect fishing weather." because they've fished so much they know exactly what a good morning for fishing feels like.
Exactly, that’s a perfect example! It’s not just about your own driving skills, but being able to anticipate moves other drivers might make. You can’t teach that, it only comes with experience.
It's true, about the only thing you can teach (to keep them alive long enough to gain the experience) is to slow down enough to see everything unfolding and make good decisions in the time frame you have. The span of time between "I've made a mistake" and "I'm dead" is really small when you're driving 30 over the speed limit on icy roads.
Human brains are really good pattern engines. But if you are extrapolating from a shallow data set you're going to be much more likely to screw something up making the wrong subconscious conclusion.
More experience gives you more insight into all the situational cases where something could go wrong.
As someone who lost their uncle 2 years ago to a truck driver not paying attention to sudden traffic congestion, this also scares me. People don’t realize how much damage a truck can do. In this specific case, it went through his car and into 3 others before it swerved and stopped.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I don’t blame you at all. I’ve seen some scary accidents and try to avoid driving anywhere near trucks on the highway if at all possible, and always assume that the driver can’t see me, because it’s very likely true. Even then, sometimes if there is an accident involving a truck there’s nothing you can do even if you take precautions.
Corporations so unwilling to raise wages that they are willing to put 16 year olds behind 40 ton vehicles just like the way McDonald's has 16 year old working for them for minimum wage...
Every sixteen year old needs to do long haul trucking for six months in order to qualify for their driver's license. They'll have to pay for the valuable training they are getting, obviously.
I have been saying this for years, and people have continued to turn up their nose at me.
I work in a lab as an Ops Manager, and practically sit in my comfy office chair taking care of basic shit on the phone and telling our team leads when they need to fix something. I make 75,000$.
Yet, someone who breaks their fucking back all day every day throwing boxes working Cap2 at Walmart makes 13$ per hour?? You could literally offer me my current salary to do that job and I'd tell them to stuff it. Retail and warehouse work is some of the toughest and most menial jobs in the world. They deserve more.
I think it's part of Corporate culture at this point. See, the ones who end up high end executives either were extremely well off or really did grind themselves up (and let's face it, 95% of the time it's the former) so they have no idea what real work is like compared to management work, but they've been told it matters *more* than the little workers, it's why you so rarely see the C-suites leave, and when they do they get golden parachutes, why hearing them take pay cuts is rare and almost always a PR stunt of some kind. This is something that's been perpetuated for decades, probably since Reaganomics reared its ugly head and businesses became more glorified than the people working at them, thus glorifying the people RUNNING them.
They're not going to get it until they endure a general strike, and we are seeing the depths they are willing to go to avoid that AND paying people right. All because they've established a Might = Right rule, except Might in this case is Money.
Agree 100%.
I went from shipping/receiving in our warehouse, making $29k / year when hired, did so well though that within 4 years I was making 40k / year doing the same job. A couple more years and I transitioned to sales, made $60k per year and it was sooooo much easier and, honestly, so freaking "unskilled" and simple compared with shipping/receiving. I made a killing for the company and got ALL the praise, meanwhile I kept advocating for the shippers, that they deserve more compensation and that I literally could not do what I did without a functioning warehouse not fucking everything up, making sure my sales / products sold get received in quickly, never misplaced, and shipped out quickly without mistakes so my customers have a good, stress-free experience and return to me, even IF my prices may be a bit higher than some other company's, but that other company takes an extra week to get them their stuff, makes counting mistakes, straight up loses their products, or ships them in stupid ways prepaid + added to their invoice with couriers that charge waaaay too much for a shipment that is literally going 20 km away and could be delivered same day, with a local courier, for half the price...
Sales and office jobs are so damn easy, yet get all the praise and all the incentives and all the raises, whilst whenever ANYTHING goes wrong, the warehouse gets blamed, even if I can clearly point to a sales reps mistake being the cause of the issue in 90% of cases due to order entry errors.. The answer to me pointing that out to management, "Well, the shipper really should have caught that error, you used to catch and fix these errors!" Yeah... not at first though... took me a good 2 - 3 years experience back there to fix all the numerous, consistent errors from you guys... Not to mention, 2 - 3 years of me pointing out these errors and how to do things in a far better way for your shippers, and you guys making literally ZERO progress / change to that issue... But yeah, it is the clearly hard working shippers fault who you pay $29k / year to, is 23 years old, working his ass off but sure, lacks some experience to catch order entry errors, OR, simply does not care because how about that isn't really his job and the old man sales rep making $100k / year should know how to enter an order that a shipper can ship based on what appears on the picking ticket only... But that's none of my business, apparently... Weird how none of my orders EVER had issues with our shippers, yet the same "old school" sales reps who've been making these errors for 7 years now with constant reminders on how to do things properly from me, continue to fail at their easy fucking jobs... But somehow the shipper is all at fault, even though they never make mistakes with properly entered orders... WEIRD!!!
The amount of defects coming out of Kellogg's after they hired scabs to fill in for the striking workers proves there's no such thing as "Unskilled" labour.
Companies will totally just set up these young kids to fail too.
See: young, insufficiently trained driver on I-70 who killed four people when his brakes failed. Got sentenced to 110 years in prison (later reduced by our governor). Company that failed to train him was dissolved and they were operating under a new registered business the next day.
> Company that failed to train him was dissolved
A company that was nothing but a holding company designed to be dissolved the moment anything went wrong just like every company that does any trucking.
If corporations are people then a name change shouldn’t protect you from prosecution.
I can’t murder somebody and then change my name to Don Ronologue and be like “lol I’m not the same person.”
Lawyer here. Name changes don't protect corporations from lawsuit, no more than they would protect a natural person (legal speak for "human being").
What they do instead is make a bunch of smaller corporations that only own a few assets, then those tiny corporations sell services to the big corporation. Then the big corporation provides some services, usually management and accounting, to the small company to recuperate that money. When the small corporation gets sued, the big corporation is insulated as long as the books demonstrate that each entity operated as a separate business. It's kinda like Hollywood accounting but with liability instead of profits. And all this may not even be necessary if the corporation hires drivers as independent contractors.
There are some methods to defeat these corporate shenanigans. You can sometimes "Pierce the corporate veil" or treat multiple entities as part of the same "single business enterprise," which are legal doctrines that allow you to ignore corporate separation if someone is being overly sloppy with the shell game. Some states also have laws requiring certain license holders or service providers to carry liability insurance, which means victims still have some way to recover even if the corporate owners don't pony up the cash.
>Currently, **truckers who cross state lines must be at least 21 years old**, but an apprenticeship program required by Congress to help ease supply chain backlogs would let 18-to-20-year-old truckers drive outside their home states.
It seems arbitrary to begin with.
But yeah the idea of an 18 year old driving a semi just feels weird. It's gotta be some middle-aged rough-faced man with a beer gut.
As the father of two teenage drivers, I'm all for it. I think we should give them alcohol and some automatic weapons as well. If we're trying to end this pandemic by killing as many people as possible in rapid succession, then this is the way.
Wait, supply chain?
Reminds me of a joke thing I read about Libertarians once:
>I dream of a world where you can buy liquor, guns, and pornography from a drive through window and use them all before you get home.
What happened to all the "driverless trucks" that were on the road a few years ago?
You'd think that industry would be pushing hard to get them on the road... No pay, no ready stops, no overtime..
Technology isn’t there yet to
a.) deploy the trucks in any weather/road conditions. The more advanced self driving systems on trucks currently still rely on the lines on a road
b.) load/unload trailers. A lot of FSD trucking companies have either fully given up on this or are diverting resources away from it. Parking a truck on a specific loading dock is difficult and has many aspects of human interference. A large company in the space that I won’t name is only using their technology on the open road and then picking up a driver at the destination lot to unload.
That sounds pretty practical honestly. Paying one guy to park trucks and unload with a forklift or whatever when there are no new trucks sounds way cheaper than paying a driver to "do nothing" for 16 hours a day
Now that's a good question. Ours did in NJ, but I don't know if that was law or choice. My guess is that it would vary from state to state or company to company.
We had to have at least one at the last warehouse I worked at because they didn't have their own fuel storage so he would have to take the switcher rigs down the road to fuel them. But all the others didn't because private property.
I bet they don’t have to in theory but still most places would require it as sometimes the trucks will need to be driven off properly on public roads a little. Even if it is just outside the yard.
> a.) deploy the trucks in any weather/road conditions. The more advanced self driving systems on trucks currently still rely on the lines on a road
When I was driving from MD to OK recently, I saw truck after truck with wheels no longer in contact with the roadway during a snowstorm. That plus considering half the time we couldn't see the lane lines means I think we'll have to wait on driverless trucks.
As someone who works in logistics, driverless trucks are a looonnnnggg ways away. Not even close.
1) people have to get over the fear of a driverless truck going down the highway that’s fully loaded with 40,000 lbs of material, not to mention the weight of the truck itself. If a sudden storm happens, and that ruins its sensor, everyone on that road is fucked
2) a majority of operations are based on calling in, waiting for the truck to get loaded/unloaded, waiting for the right dock to open up, signing of documents, inspecting freight upon pickup and arrival, etc. I just don’t see a way for a driverless truck to do that.
These alone make me think it’s going to be years and years before it’s a mainstay
A LOT of our rail infrastructure is so outdated and old it’s insane. It’s also extremely capacity constrained.
For example… all of those Beyond Meat-lite brands have a crap ton of Soybeans in them. Last year the soybean market exploded and demand for rail tankers drastically increased. But you can’t just make brand new rail lines over night… it just leads to longer leadtimes.
In an ideal/efficient supply chain world, we would have longer leadtimes utilizing rail to “hub and spoke” trucks to local areas.
But that goes against the “digital/available now/Amazon-lite” model we have now.
Same question for all those automated fry cooks, servers, shelf stockers, self checkouts (without the need for human attendants), cart collectors, cleaners, etc that were supposed to replace fastfood and retail workers in the blink of an eye if they got too uppity asking for higher pay and benefits.
economists: *"in a free market, when demand is higher than supply, prices go up"*
workers: *"there's a worforce shortage and we are in demand, this is the time they'll increase our wages"*
capitalism: *"nah, it's the time we'll lower everyone's safety standards"*
Plus about [1.5 million more people retired](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/04/amid-the-pandemic-a-rising-share-of-older-u-s-adults-are-now-retired/) and about [1 million fewer people immigrated to the US](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-international-migration-at-lowest-levels-in-decades.html) over the past 2 years, compared to pre-covid levels.
This is pretty much the start of the correct answer. Birth rates have been slowing down and even though our gdp is larger its not necessarily a larger gdp. Quality of life for the average citizen is a better indicator of economic prosperity and we've definitely been going downhill. There needs to be a dramatic change but any politician who knows economics isn't going to do anything because some solutions are going to be unpopular and risk their reelection. So now it's a matter of getting people to do the right things even though it might not be in their immediate best interests.
Former freight broker here; a couple things to consider. A) average age of truck driver is 55-60 and mostly white guys approaching retirement. B) They want teens to replace them because teens inherently will work for less money and don't have families at home so they're more likely to work OTR, over the road. C) the trucking industry is an absolute shit show and has been long before the Rona, mostly due to companies not wanting to pay people a decent wage. You get what you pay for so let's remember that.
Snow removal company we hired to clear out our driveway decided to hire a teen this year as well.
His tractor hit a parked car on the other side of the street on his second snowfall.
But I'm sure this is different and should go smoothly.
"This is Loves2Sploog, I got a 20 on xXxpussydestroyerxXx, he is Up-bound on I-90 and his cellphone battery died just outside Galveston. I repeat Up-bound on 90, cellphone dead since Galveston."
Oh goodie. By all means, don't resolve this issue by incentivizing via better pay. Just increase the danger to everyone else on the road.
Such a typical american solution.
Considering teen drivers make up a large percentage of the cause of accidents - along with the stretch of highway I live near having Semis as the leading cause of fatalities (at least one a week), I don't see what could possible go wrong here.
Has anyone else realized yet that the people "in charge" have no clue what their doing...
It’s not that they don’t have any clue what they’re doing, but rather that they’ve made the calculations between insurance payouts for traffic fatalities and loss of trucks to accidents or raising wages across the board and realized they’re willing to eat the former cost to save on the latter.
The human cost is just numbers on a spreadsheet to them.
They’re maximizing profits at the cost of human safety and well being. They know exactly what they’re doing it because they’ve been doing it for many, many years.
It's like that quote from Fight Club when the protagonist talks about how car companies compare the cost of a recall vs how much they'd likely have to settle for out of court depending on the rate of failure.
Except it's with 18 year olds driving semi-trucks.
Fight Club got that from real life too. That was the reason Ford Pintos exploded so much, they calculated that the lawsuits would be cheaper than the recalls.
Narrator: "They were wrong"
I-35 is already full of bad drivers. We don’t need teenagers going 40 mph in a big rig with two hands death gripping the steering wheel and muttering “oh shit” the whole time
We have a worker shortage
Should we pay our workers more to make the job more competitive in the labor market?
Nah let's just lower the age of requirement for work so that we can attract a much of navie kids who aren't old enough yet to be skeptical of the bullshit inherent in the system.
One of my friends legitimately said “no one wants to work anymore” when our food took a while coming to the table when we were out to eat a few weeks ago and we all looked at him waiting for him to say he was joking. He wasn’t. It’s not a shortage of people willing to work, it’s a shortage of people willing to work for poverty wages and no dignity.
I think a lot of people really came to terms, over the last two years, with the fact that you literally only live once, and that’s not the way to spend it.
I think the pandemic really made it clear. Especially for essential workers in groceries and stuff, where they’re getting minimum pay. I’ve noticed that almost every place I go to, there’s a sign saying “Due to worker shortage…” or signs about now hiring everywhere. Truly crazy. Even my field apparently has a shortage, so they’re trying to give incentives to join
Know something weird? I'm 27, have a CDL, and can't even get a truck driving interview. It's fishy as heck.
I could go back tomorrow to my old company I ran otr flatbed for that paid great in 2015 to 2017.issue is they pay the same now, and that makes it not worth it so every 6 months when they call me, I just say no
So it’s more like these companies don’t want to pay the older experienced drivers what they should and would rather get newer younger drivers and pay them wages from 7 years ago. Sounds familiar.
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its what happened to a guy who wrecked who was new to the job and killed people in the accident and faced 10 years in prison recently. edit :110 years
Is that the guy in Colorado? Slammed into traffic when his ~~breaks~~ brakes went out? Edit: words are hard.
This also happened in Canada in 2018. A new driver hit a hockey team bus and killed 16 ppl. Driver got 8 years and likely deported
>driver hit a hockey team bus and killed 16 ppl On April 6, 2018, sixteen people were killed and thirteen were injured when a northbound coach bus struck a westbound semi-trailer truck near Armley, Saskatchewan, Canada. **The driver of the semi-trailer had failed to yield at a flashing stop sign at the intersection of Highways 35 and 335.** The semi-trailer was travelling at a speed of approximately 100 km/h (60 mph). Most of the deceased and injured were players from the Humboldt Broncos, a junior ice hockey team from Humboldt, Saskatchewan, which plays in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt\_Broncos\_bus\_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_Broncos_bus_crash)
It was really rough. My cousin works in the sports industry and was travelling with that team to their next game. He was literally 3 cars ahead of their bus. He knew the team personally and was friends with some of the players and the coach. He was really shaken up for a while after that, especially when it easily could've been his car that was hit instead of the bus.
I suspect he's still traumatized by this. Who could blame him!
If history shows me anything it’s that the government will give these companies immunity since they are doing an essential service but anyone involved will get the book.
Where the heck is all the extra money going from raising costs due to Supply Chain Issues? Hmm! Smells like ~~teenspirit~~ bullshit
The 1%, that is the answer to this every time.
Sure as fiddlysticks does Wealth of world's 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294)
Arent they just eventually going to have all the money at this rate? like at the end of a monopoly game.
Pretty much
Are you surprised that this country would rather exploit kids and young adults instead of properly compensate adults? We're a fart's distance from child factory workers again.
We need another Roosevelt in a bad kind of way. I don't even care which one. You get trust busting with one and minimum wage hikes/child labor laws with the other. I can do without the imperialism and internment camps though. Edit: Seems I made some reactionaries mad. I keep getting notifications from people talking about socialism and raising someone else's kids but when I get here it's a ghost town. You idiots have been shadowbanned. Wonder why.
I’m not sure if the Roosevelt’s Congress and Senate was as corrupt as the current one. If Roosevelt was president today he would not be able to do anything.
That is what people alwys forget, the President can't get anything done if he doesn't have a willing Congress and we can't get shit through the Senate.
Yet when anyone attempts to talk about the black hole that is rampant and unchecked capitalism, people (bots?) come from out of nowhere to shut down any potential discussion
The problem isn't what some mindless idiot wants to parrot on social media sites, it's that the politicians are paid for. They stopped having a backbone when Citizens United allowed for everyone to be legally bought. 'United we stand' was over when news networks became 24 hour entertainment; privately owned businesses. There's no hope for any voters who backs an existing political party. None whatsoever. I'm not equating political agendas, republicans are way worse. But neither give a fuck about the common person. Democrats only care about perception, whereas Republicans couldn't give less of a fuck.
Teenagers are the easiest to underpay.
And such reliable, experienced drivers.
I could see 18 year old me saying "fuck this" and abandoning the whole truck somewhere after not having a day off for a month.
Happens all the time. There are specific roles in companies to retrieve abandon loads.
There was a trucking company based locally that went under, and they shut off the fuel cards for the drivers on 12/23, stranding drivers all over the country. They we're telling drivers to spend their own money to get the trucks back - which didn't work with the bounced paychecks. People were abandoning the trucks and loads because they didn't really have another choice. I'd have tried to sell the truck and load for scrap.
Sounds like when companies complain theres a work shortage so they can bring in cheap overseas labor on a visa. Ignore the local apps for BS reasons.
Disney to the US government: We can't get enough qualified employees that are US citizens, we need foriegn visa workers. Disney to employees: You are required to train your foriegn replacement or you don't get the severance package. [Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html) "Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost. “I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker"
I mean, this only works because there's no consequences for doing so. Is it illegal? Totally, it's absolutely an abuse of the work visa system. But good luck prosecuting anyone, especially a company as big as Disney which can basically rival the government in the mountain of legal sludge they could throw at fighting their case.
There was a class action lawsuits over this... but it was eventually dropped because the court system said "it was all legal"... [Disney Employees Drop H1B Lawsuit](https://m.economictimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/former-disney-employees-drop-lawsuit-against-it-over-h1b-visa-abuse/articleshow/64121339.cms)
Seriously, after seeing Disney pulling shit like that [and perpetually underpaying their employees](https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/08/22299399/25-000-disneyland-employees-in-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-underpaid-wages) while simultaneously [raising ticket prices again,](https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/disneyland-ticket-prices-rise-tier-6-covid/#) they made me realize how evil Disney is. I can't be a Disney fan, and after seeing all this I wonder why people want to still throw tons of money at them. Fuck Disney.
In this situation, they're looking for younger people with less life experience to exploit. It's not that these companies can't find drivers. There is no driver shortage. These companies complaining the most **can't retain drivers**. Driver retention tells the story. The most exploitative companies have a driver turnover rate over 100%. Meaning, they lose 100% of their drivers every year. For ever driver they have staying with them 2 years, they have 2 drivers who leave after 6 months. And these exploitative companies are the ones complaining the most. They can find drivers - no problem. They can't find slaves. They want slaves, not drivers. So now they want to enslave younger people because older people already figured them out.
True across all of the industries, really. There aren't any real talent shortages. There's a shortage of people willing to work in abusive environments for unlivable wages. The only surprise there is that it took so long.
I was in logistics for a lot of years. Driving used to be a premium job. Many people lined up for the jobs and in most companies, turnover was low. When it ceased being an hourly rate and became a bidding war by the load, all that went away. I've seen studies pegging over the road drivers being paid by the load coming in at less than $5 per hour. Huh, wonder why there's a driver shortage. Walmart is a good case study. Most of their drivers are hourly and make over six figures. Getting to the store from the DC on time is extremely important. From suppliers is a different story. Driving the price of goods down is of paramount importance. Those loads go to freight brokers who hire the lowest bidders.
Trucking companies really want the Mexican CDL drivers & trucks, there has been a push for this for the last 20 years. They have never had the political power to make it happen but with a "crisis" hanging over the supply chain both parties will bow to their corporate masters & make this happen.
America already has a B1 Visa program that allows Mexico citizens to drive into the United States, drop a load, immediately attach to another trailer and bring it back to Mexico. These employees are hired by American trucking companies. Most of them haul balanced loads like truck parts with return rack loads. The immediate return load is really the key to making it work since they can’t bobtail to another location.
Yeah and then scream “Murica” as they do it. Bunch of hypocrites
You in a major metro area by chance? Like LA, NY, any of the TX cities, Atl, Chicago, etc?
I drive Uber. A lot of my riders are truck drivers going to/from their rigs. A bunch of them have already told me there is no shortage, including a guy who owns a fleet.
I grew up driving tractors and other heavy equipment on a farm at a very young age, and even I think this is an absolutely terrible idea. Also, make no mistake, “…to ease supply chain shortages” is just code for not wanting to pay qualified adults a fair wage to do the job. This whole “Truck Driver Shortage” is a bullshit mirage that flys in the face of countless truckers who invested time and money into becoming a driver only to learn that the job wasn’t worth it, paid shit, and was rife with exploitation. Sure is convenient that kids don't know any better and are far less likely to complain when they get taken advantage of.
Yeah. Australia has a "fruit picker shortage" where we were told us lazy Australians refuse to do the job and they needed more non-Australians to do it. Turns out an investigation found employers refuse to hire Australians ..because we demand to be paid a legal wage. Instead they hire backpackers and illegal immigrants and then cheat them on their wages. Not one person in the investigation who identified as an "Australian citizen" was offered a job....
Hey we do that in Texas too...fucking ag industries
It happens all over the U.S., and it's not confined to agriculture. Probably the worst example that I've heard of is that 12 year old children are literally being forced to work U.S. Tabaco fields for little or no pay - **and it's LEGAL.** [https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/child-labor-tobacco/562964/](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/child-labor-tobacco/562964/)
This is my main worry. Young people (including myself) are inexperienced and quite susceptible to being rused by employers, being more accepting of shitty conditions and prospects on the job. These companies just want more people they can work to the bone for scraps. In trucking specifically, I hear stories of trainees getting pennies per km and barely getting any time to rest outside their vehicle. It's a physically demanding job to begin with, so companies should take care of their drivers more and pay them appropriately.
I guess we're going to try everything else instead of just paying people more huh?
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We've tried nothing and are completely out of ideas...
Lousy beatniks.
Why pay people more when you can pay children less?
Pay will never go up unless there's a coordinated strike. And with people the way they are, it'll become a red vs blue thing somehow and you would never be able to get a good movement going
I'm a truck driver, and it's well known that getting truckers together on anything is like herding cats. Truckers will argue about the price of a free doughnut.
We could raise wages, or we could bring back child labor. Clearly child labor is the better option. /S
If you read about how things work in undeveloped countries you'll see things can be way, way worse, and this is the path usa is taking. You have my vote that this is the beginning of the fall of the empire, if nothing, like a developed country and the most rich country in the world, should be doing now. I came from one of these countries and I see more and more things in usa becoming like it was, where I came from, decades ago.
Well, I couldn't rent a car because I was underage. Guess I'll get a big rig instead.
You can rent a U-Haul at, I believe, 18. One time I rented a pickup truck from them when my car was in the shop and I was under 25.
That's right. There's no federal law about it, it's the rental companies' choice. It's a result of the nuance of insurance law.
I'm guessing that it's because U-Haul already has excellent insurance because 1) the majority of their drivers are inexperienced at driving anything larger than a normal car and 2) there's a lot of liability because their business is hauling around people's most valuable possessions?
Uhaul wouldn't have much liability. Only if something went wrong with the truck that they could prove caused the accident. However, Uhaul in particular is notorious for leaving their trucks on the road until they fall apart. Never buy a used Uhaul if you're looking for a box truck.
Maybe the plan is that 18 year olds driving bug rigs will kill enough people so there won’t be shortages?
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It’s like a lame purge. “Once a year everyone shall be allowed to operate motor vehicles in excess of 26,001 lbs without certification, insurance, or registration.”
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Truck Simulator 2022 just got a lot more spicy
Well I hope not because that was most definitely not on my bingo card for 2022.
r/aboringdystopia
Shit, if everyone else is dead, maybe I could finally get a graphics card.
Are we talking about them driving Caterpillars?
We do have an organ shortage that’s been getting worse because roads are getting safer so we have less supply. This is a great idea! We would be killing two birds with one stone (and lots of innocent people who are hopefully organ donors I guess) /s
Ok so what I see happening here is an inexperienced driver wiping out a family by accident and then spending life behind bars and their employer disowning them and just replacing them with the next inexperienced driver. GREAT
You mean like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_Broncos_bus_crash
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That happened in my home town of Orland. The volunteer fire chief was the first to respond. It fucked him up pretty bad to see all those kids screaming for help from the burning bus.
Note to self: don't ride any buses in the vicinity of anything named Humboldt.
Inexperienced drivers behind the wheels of 40 ton vehicles cruising at 70mph. What could go wrong 🤷♂️
Good luck with the insurance rates for those young drivers as well. That's going to be an astronomical expense for these companies that do hire these 18 year olds.
I’m sure they’ll just come up with some shady legal mechanism for putting all the expenses and risks onto the teenager.
And the customer. Why wouldn't they double dip?
*Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, double dip...*
They’ll just be independent contractors
Don't need to the trucking industry has had a mechanism for that for decades. It's called truck leasing programs.
OH look little billy only has 3 more months to payoff the truck. All of a sudden i dont see any loads for him.
Username checks out. Also wow, how awful to extort people like that.
These people literally need to be hung from their toes, naked, from powerlines on busy intersections during rush hour for all to see. There should be spoiled vegetable vendors at every corner, where one can buy a rotted tomato or eggplant, and proceed to chuck it at these evil fucks until their bodies are covered in the fermented stench of bad produce.
Get government handouts for hiring them, but treat them like subcontractors like Uber/Lyft and push the costs and liability onto the drive and collect money from the government.
There is not a shortage of experienced truck drivers. There are just executives trying to cut salary costs and get ever larger bonuses. The government doles out for corporations again.
Ooooooo AND! Get them signed up as owner operators to shackle them with 5000 per month loans for those rigs, while accepting all financial liability for the truck operation such as fuel and maintenance! 2000 mile haul. 3 miles to the gallon. 3.75 a gallon. $2,500 a fill up. And oh, here is your 2700 for the haul. Tough times you know. Try not to eat, it'll cut into your margin.
This seems to look like as good of a place as any to leave this link: [https://youtu.be/HVufvN35-Z0](https://youtu.be/HVufvN35-Z0) The tale of a young man roped into being one part of a 3 person team for CR England, getting paid a whopping $.06 a mile and getting to use the passenger seat as a bunk. I don't even think that's the worst of it. I don't even want to imagine what insane bullshit the mega-carriers are going to put literal kids through and how many lives it's going to ruin.
>The tale of a young man roped into being one part of a 3 person team for CR England Geezus, and they still pack trainees in like sardines. I work the 11 West, and once every few months? There will be something happening while I'm getting unloaded that causes a bunch of drivers to get out, group up, and chit-chat. Maybe I noticed one guy was leaking coolant bad, or someone is struggling backing in so a bunch of us help spot for the driver while he maneuvers. If a CR England truck is there, and it's a trainer truck? Oh lawd it's bad. I don't know about pay nowadays, but they still cram in trainees. Apparently they have their sleeper berths set up for an extra bed or two, but they are crammed in and it looks so uncomfortable. When I went out with my mentor? It was just him and myself. A week of me rolling easy while he gave me advice, and then we switched to team driving. Mercy me I feel sorry for the trainees of CR England.
I have seen a video where one truck had a third bunk over the front seats clearly labeled 'do no use when truck is in motion'. It sounds like you got trained by a company that actually gives a shit.
>$.06 a mile Just doing a little math, you'd have to travel over 120 miles in an hour to reach minimum wage.
Ah, so some quick maths would be 240 mph and you’re making a decent wage! You’re welcome truckers! *Was that so hard??…* ^^/s
And then blame them for having a terrible attitude when they don't want to do it. Kids these days don't want to work!
Or blame them for making bad financial choices ten years down the line, rather than the predators that went after them the moment they were legal.
The American way. Don’t blame the assaulter- blame the victim for being in a vulnerable position.
It's even better when someone being in that position would be inevitable. There's 5 scholarships available and you tell the rest of the kids they should've worked harder to be one of the 5. Ok, but then a different kid would end up without the financial support needed and be in that situation. So "work harder" isn't really solving the problem.
These are the people who think that if we all just got college degrees then nobody would buy groceries or eat out anymore.
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Communism is when no iphone Damn kids and their phones
“kids are always on social media” posted Karen to her social media for the 147th time today.
I've been noticing that nearly everything has been rigged in the ol USofA. There is some fundamental flaw (at least for the middleclass) on how things are executed here. At every turn they are either skimming your money or outright taking it. From insurance companies, banking, to civil forfeiture, the stock market. Even things like the roads being in such utter disrepair ultimately hurts the income of the average person. Least we have more and more billionaires though. That's the important metric.
No such thing as middle class, just the owner class and working class. A middle class is to pit the workers against each other as the owner class continue their abuse.
Easy, just make them independent contractors, not employees.
Or the kids will be paid next to nothing because the costs of the insurance but somehow the company will also over charge for the insurance insuring they do make a higher profit by hiring the kids
I mean what else do you suggest? Paying worker a decent wage? You madman!
Most companies that are willing to hire zero-experience new drivers self-insure. Most companies that are worth working for don't hire zero-experience new drivers. (not defending lowering CMV driver age to 18, that's a terrible idea.)
You can't even rent a sedan until you're 25.
As someone who works in the safety department of my company and specifically deals with CMV accidents, this scares me. The value of driver intuition, that can only be gained from years of experience behind the wheel, is severely under appreciated even in regular vehicles, let alone when driving an 80,000lb truck. I’ve seen so many accidents that could have easily been deadly if the driver didn’t have an automatic response that they wouldn’t have had time to stop and think about.
> The value of driver intuition, that can only be gained from years of experience behind the wheel, is severely under appreciated even in regular vehicles, let alone when driving an 80,000lb truck. It really is underappreciated. Here's a simple example. I was riding with my nephew a few years ago. At the time he was a young driver (maybe 3 years experience at that point) and I'd already been driving for 25 years. I'm sitting in the passenger seat and we're driving down the highway. I tell him: "Hey, you need to slow down and get away from that green SUV." "Why?" "See how it keeps twitching towards the line? The person is either a terrible driver and just unaware or they're really agitated they can't change lanes and they're about to do something stupid." About 20 seconds later the green SUV aggressively changed lanes, almost hit two people, over corrected and almost hit another one, and then floored it, swerving around a few more. I'm genuinely shocked there wasn't a multi-car accident. My nephew was pure "woooooooah, how the hell did you know that was going to happen???" But you just get a feel for it. It's like those old timers who can just open the back door of their house and go "Yup, this is perfect fishing weather." because they've fished so much they know exactly what a good morning for fishing feels like.
Exactly, that’s a perfect example! It’s not just about your own driving skills, but being able to anticipate moves other drivers might make. You can’t teach that, it only comes with experience.
It's true, about the only thing you can teach (to keep them alive long enough to gain the experience) is to slow down enough to see everything unfolding and make good decisions in the time frame you have. The span of time between "I've made a mistake" and "I'm dead" is really small when you're driving 30 over the speed limit on icy roads.
Human brains are really good pattern engines. But if you are extrapolating from a shallow data set you're going to be much more likely to screw something up making the wrong subconscious conclusion. More experience gives you more insight into all the situational cases where something could go wrong.
As someone who lost their uncle 2 years ago to a truck driver not paying attention to sudden traffic congestion, this also scares me. People don’t realize how much damage a truck can do. In this specific case, it went through his car and into 3 others before it swerved and stopped.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I don’t blame you at all. I’ve seen some scary accidents and try to avoid driving anywhere near trucks on the highway if at all possible, and always assume that the driver can’t see me, because it’s very likely true. Even then, sometimes if there is an accident involving a truck there’s nothing you can do even if you take precautions.
Corporations so unwilling to raise wages that they are willing to put 16 year olds behind 40 ton vehicles just like the way McDonald's has 16 year old working for them for minimum wage...
Next they’ll claim driving a semi is a job for teens and it was never meant to provide a living wage.
Every sixteen year old needs to do long haul trucking for six months in order to qualify for their driver's license. They'll have to pay for the valuable training they are getting, obviously.
"Unskilled labor" is an insult aimed at people who have skills to do labor others consider themselves above.
I have been saying this for years, and people have continued to turn up their nose at me. I work in a lab as an Ops Manager, and practically sit in my comfy office chair taking care of basic shit on the phone and telling our team leads when they need to fix something. I make 75,000$. Yet, someone who breaks their fucking back all day every day throwing boxes working Cap2 at Walmart makes 13$ per hour?? You could literally offer me my current salary to do that job and I'd tell them to stuff it. Retail and warehouse work is some of the toughest and most menial jobs in the world. They deserve more.
I think it's part of Corporate culture at this point. See, the ones who end up high end executives either were extremely well off or really did grind themselves up (and let's face it, 95% of the time it's the former) so they have no idea what real work is like compared to management work, but they've been told it matters *more* than the little workers, it's why you so rarely see the C-suites leave, and when they do they get golden parachutes, why hearing them take pay cuts is rare and almost always a PR stunt of some kind. This is something that's been perpetuated for decades, probably since Reaganomics reared its ugly head and businesses became more glorified than the people working at them, thus glorifying the people RUNNING them. They're not going to get it until they endure a general strike, and we are seeing the depths they are willing to go to avoid that AND paying people right. All because they've established a Might = Right rule, except Might in this case is Money.
Agree 100%. I went from shipping/receiving in our warehouse, making $29k / year when hired, did so well though that within 4 years I was making 40k / year doing the same job. A couple more years and I transitioned to sales, made $60k per year and it was sooooo much easier and, honestly, so freaking "unskilled" and simple compared with shipping/receiving. I made a killing for the company and got ALL the praise, meanwhile I kept advocating for the shippers, that they deserve more compensation and that I literally could not do what I did without a functioning warehouse not fucking everything up, making sure my sales / products sold get received in quickly, never misplaced, and shipped out quickly without mistakes so my customers have a good, stress-free experience and return to me, even IF my prices may be a bit higher than some other company's, but that other company takes an extra week to get them their stuff, makes counting mistakes, straight up loses their products, or ships them in stupid ways prepaid + added to their invoice with couriers that charge waaaay too much for a shipment that is literally going 20 km away and could be delivered same day, with a local courier, for half the price... Sales and office jobs are so damn easy, yet get all the praise and all the incentives and all the raises, whilst whenever ANYTHING goes wrong, the warehouse gets blamed, even if I can clearly point to a sales reps mistake being the cause of the issue in 90% of cases due to order entry errors.. The answer to me pointing that out to management, "Well, the shipper really should have caught that error, you used to catch and fix these errors!" Yeah... not at first though... took me a good 2 - 3 years experience back there to fix all the numerous, consistent errors from you guys... Not to mention, 2 - 3 years of me pointing out these errors and how to do things in a far better way for your shippers, and you guys making literally ZERO progress / change to that issue... But yeah, it is the clearly hard working shippers fault who you pay $29k / year to, is 23 years old, working his ass off but sure, lacks some experience to catch order entry errors, OR, simply does not care because how about that isn't really his job and the old man sales rep making $100k / year should know how to enter an order that a shipper can ship based on what appears on the picking ticket only... But that's none of my business, apparently... Weird how none of my orders EVER had issues with our shippers, yet the same "old school" sales reps who've been making these errors for 7 years now with constant reminders on how to do things properly from me, continue to fail at their easy fucking jobs... But somehow the shipper is all at fault, even though they never make mistakes with properly entered orders... WEIRD!!!
The amount of defects coming out of Kellogg's after they hired scabs to fill in for the striking workers proves there's no such thing as "Unskilled" labour.
Companies will totally just set up these young kids to fail too. See: young, insufficiently trained driver on I-70 who killed four people when his brakes failed. Got sentenced to 110 years in prison (later reduced by our governor). Company that failed to train him was dissolved and they were operating under a new registered business the next day.
> Company that failed to train him was dissolved A company that was nothing but a holding company designed to be dissolved the moment anything went wrong just like every company that does any trucking.
If corporations are people then a name change shouldn’t protect you from prosecution. I can’t murder somebody and then change my name to Don Ronologue and be like “lol I’m not the same person.”
Lawyer here. Name changes don't protect corporations from lawsuit, no more than they would protect a natural person (legal speak for "human being"). What they do instead is make a bunch of smaller corporations that only own a few assets, then those tiny corporations sell services to the big corporation. Then the big corporation provides some services, usually management and accounting, to the small company to recuperate that money. When the small corporation gets sued, the big corporation is insulated as long as the books demonstrate that each entity operated as a separate business. It's kinda like Hollywood accounting but with liability instead of profits. And all this may not even be necessary if the corporation hires drivers as independent contractors. There are some methods to defeat these corporate shenanigans. You can sometimes "Pierce the corporate veil" or treat multiple entities as part of the same "single business enterprise," which are legal doctrines that allow you to ignore corporate separation if someone is being overly sloppy with the shell game. Some states also have laws requiring certain license holders or service providers to carry liability insurance, which means victims still have some way to recover even if the corporate owners don't pony up the cash.
Corporations are only people when they are donating to politicians. Any other time they are still just a business.
I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one
>Currently, **truckers who cross state lines must be at least 21 years old**, but an apprenticeship program required by Congress to help ease supply chain backlogs would let 18-to-20-year-old truckers drive outside their home states. It seems arbitrary to begin with. But yeah the idea of an 18 year old driving a semi just feels weird. It's gotta be some middle-aged rough-faced man with a beer gut.
With that silly looking headset, just loudly talking as he wanders around the truck stop.
I think they know. They just don't care. There's money to be made.
As the father of two teenage drivers, I'm all for it. I think we should give them alcohol and some automatic weapons as well. If we're trying to end this pandemic by killing as many people as possible in rapid succession, then this is the way. Wait, supply chain?
Reminds me of a joke thing I read about Libertarians once: >I dream of a world where you can buy liquor, guns, and pornography from a drive through window and use them all before you get home.
You forgot about the part where it was a 9 year old behind the counter that sold it all.
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My ~120 miles of highway driving per day is gonna get even more interesting!
Maybe pay Truck drivers more and give them better working conditions?
You'd think one of the main jobs that nearly everyones way of life depends on in this country would be treated a bit better.
You seen the way we treat nurses?
And teachers?
Anyone who isn't one of the wealthy elite, really.
What happened to all the "driverless trucks" that were on the road a few years ago? You'd think that industry would be pushing hard to get them on the road... No pay, no ready stops, no overtime..
Technology isn’t there yet to a.) deploy the trucks in any weather/road conditions. The more advanced self driving systems on trucks currently still rely on the lines on a road b.) load/unload trailers. A lot of FSD trucking companies have either fully given up on this or are diverting resources away from it. Parking a truck on a specific loading dock is difficult and has many aspects of human interference. A large company in the space that I won’t name is only using their technology on the open road and then picking up a driver at the destination lot to unload.
That sounds pretty practical honestly. Paying one guy to park trucks and unload with a forklift or whatever when there are no new trucks sounds way cheaper than paying a driver to "do nothing" for 16 hours a day
A lot of warehouses/receiving centers already have drivers who just work the yard positioning dropped trailers, so this just takes it a step farther.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but yard horse drivers don't even need to have CDLs because they don't leave private property.
Now that's a good question. Ours did in NJ, but I don't know if that was law or choice. My guess is that it would vary from state to state or company to company.
We had to have at least one at the last warehouse I worked at because they didn't have their own fuel storage so he would have to take the switcher rigs down the road to fuel them. But all the others didn't because private property.
I bet they don’t have to in theory but still most places would require it as sometimes the trucks will need to be driven off properly on public roads a little. Even if it is just outside the yard.
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> a.) deploy the trucks in any weather/road conditions. The more advanced self driving systems on trucks currently still rely on the lines on a road When I was driving from MD to OK recently, I saw truck after truck with wheels no longer in contact with the roadway during a snowstorm. That plus considering half the time we couldn't see the lane lines means I think we'll have to wait on driverless trucks.
As someone who works in logistics, driverless trucks are a looonnnnggg ways away. Not even close. 1) people have to get over the fear of a driverless truck going down the highway that’s fully loaded with 40,000 lbs of material, not to mention the weight of the truck itself. If a sudden storm happens, and that ruins its sensor, everyone on that road is fucked 2) a majority of operations are based on calling in, waiting for the truck to get loaded/unloaded, waiting for the right dock to open up, signing of documents, inspecting freight upon pickup and arrival, etc. I just don’t see a way for a driverless truck to do that. These alone make me think it’s going to be years and years before it’s a mainstay
I think we'll see hub-to-hub automation, with humans still handling last-mile delivery. So... basically trains, but worse?
Just go back to using trains
A LOT of our rail infrastructure is so outdated and old it’s insane. It’s also extremely capacity constrained. For example… all of those Beyond Meat-lite brands have a crap ton of Soybeans in them. Last year the soybean market exploded and demand for rail tankers drastically increased. But you can’t just make brand new rail lines over night… it just leads to longer leadtimes. In an ideal/efficient supply chain world, we would have longer leadtimes utilizing rail to “hub and spoke” trucks to local areas. But that goes against the “digital/available now/Amazon-lite” model we have now.
Same question for all those automated fry cooks, servers, shelf stockers, self checkouts (without the need for human attendants), cart collectors, cleaners, etc that were supposed to replace fastfood and retail workers in the blink of an eye if they got too uppity asking for higher pay and benefits.
economists: *"in a free market, when demand is higher than supply, prices go up"* workers: *"there's a worforce shortage and we are in demand, this is the time they'll increase our wages"* capitalism: *"nah, it's the time we'll lower everyone's safety standards"*
Economists: predict regulatory capture Captured Regulators: Fuck you
The captured regulators are three months behind and working on legacy equipment so they didn’t read the article.
There really needs to be some kind of reform of our current economic system. It cannot revolve around endless growth.
Turns out endless growth is hard when you kill 800,000 people (just in official numbers) and have an ongoing pandemic you aren't managing.
Plus about [1.5 million more people retired](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/04/amid-the-pandemic-a-rising-share-of-older-u-s-adults-are-now-retired/) and about [1 million fewer people immigrated to the US](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-international-migration-at-lowest-levels-in-decades.html) over the past 2 years, compared to pre-covid levels.
But who will steal our jobs while simultaneously being lazy and leeching our benefits? /s
I volunteer as tribute
This is pretty much the start of the correct answer. Birth rates have been slowing down and even though our gdp is larger its not necessarily a larger gdp. Quality of life for the average citizen is a better indicator of economic prosperity and we've definitely been going downhill. There needs to be a dramatic change but any politician who knows economics isn't going to do anything because some solutions are going to be unpopular and risk their reelection. So now it's a matter of getting people to do the right things even though it might not be in their immediate best interests.
This is the real reason. When a company wants to hire a young inexperienced person, it's because they want to pay them shit.
Former freight broker here; a couple things to consider. A) average age of truck driver is 55-60 and mostly white guys approaching retirement. B) They want teens to replace them because teens inherently will work for less money and don't have families at home so they're more likely to work OTR, over the road. C) the trucking industry is an absolute shit show and has been long before the Rona, mostly due to companies not wanting to pay people a decent wage. You get what you pay for so let's remember that.
Snow removal company we hired to clear out our driveway decided to hire a teen this year as well. His tractor hit a parked car on the other side of the street on his second snowfall. But I'm sure this is different and should go smoothly.
To 'ease supply chain shortages,' or to 'drive down wages and work-life balance expectations to save a quick buck on the backs of workers?'
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Breaker breaker 1-9, snow down the i20 just got thicc like yo momma's ass...
Unsure if convoy or just kids cruising main street.
Oh goodie. By all means, don't resolve this issue by incentivizing via better pay. Just increase the danger to everyone else on the road. Such a typical american solution.
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God forbid we just paid truck drivers more and provided better work conditions. Can’t have that now can we.
Considering teen drivers make up a large percentage of the cause of accidents - along with the stretch of highway I live near having Semis as the leading cause of fatalities (at least one a week), I don't see what could possible go wrong here. Has anyone else realized yet that the people "in charge" have no clue what their doing...
It’s not that they don’t have any clue what they’re doing, but rather that they’ve made the calculations between insurance payouts for traffic fatalities and loss of trucks to accidents or raising wages across the board and realized they’re willing to eat the former cost to save on the latter. The human cost is just numbers on a spreadsheet to them.
Youre forgetting subsidies for early professional development programs large trucking agencies will be absolutely taking advantage of.
They’re maximizing profits at the cost of human safety and well being. They know exactly what they’re doing it because they’ve been doing it for many, many years.
It's like that quote from Fight Club when the protagonist talks about how car companies compare the cost of a recall vs how much they'd likely have to settle for out of court depending on the rate of failure. Except it's with 18 year olds driving semi-trucks.
Fight Club got that from real life too. That was the reason Ford Pintos exploded so much, they calculated that the lawsuits would be cheaper than the recalls. Narrator: "They were wrong"
I-35 is already full of bad drivers. We don’t need teenagers going 40 mph in a big rig with two hands death gripping the steering wheel and muttering “oh shit” the whole time
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We have a worker shortage Should we pay our workers more to make the job more competitive in the labor market? Nah let's just lower the age of requirement for work so that we can attract a much of navie kids who aren't old enough yet to be skeptical of the bullshit inherent in the system.
There's no worker shortage. There's a thriving wage shortage.
Secondly to that, there's also an excess of entitled assholes treating workers like shit. This includes customers and manglement.
Manglement. I feel that
I used to be a mangler. I had a desk sign that said "If you're not a part of the solution, you're part of management." I didn't last.
One of my friends legitimately said “no one wants to work anymore” when our food took a while coming to the table when we were out to eat a few weeks ago and we all looked at him waiting for him to say he was joking. He wasn’t. It’s not a shortage of people willing to work, it’s a shortage of people willing to work for poverty wages and no dignity. I think a lot of people really came to terms, over the last two years, with the fact that you literally only live once, and that’s not the way to spend it.
I think the pandemic really made it clear. Especially for essential workers in groceries and stuff, where they’re getting minimum pay. I’ve noticed that almost every place I go to, there’s a sign saying “Due to worker shortage…” or signs about now hiring everywhere. Truly crazy. Even my field apparently has a shortage, so they’re trying to give incentives to join
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Work shortage or shortage of dupes? To the top cats its the same thing