BOB2 Wrote:
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> Trucking is facing the nations dirty little
> secret, there is a demographic shift, resulting in
> older "semi" retired "baby boomer" workers,
> reaching retirement age, and leaving the
> workforce, faster than they're being replaced....
>
>
> This is not only true in trucking....there is a
> shortage of farm workers, there is a shortage of
> all types of engineers, there is even a shortage
> of school teachers (after 15 years on no hiring
> and budget cuts), and it is also the case in a
> dozen or so other fields, right now. The "baby
> bust" in combination with many years of hiring
> freezes, and limited career growth potential due
> to the "baby boomer" bulge in the way, has even
> been blamed for a lack of well qualified and
> "experienced" mid level management in industries
> from retail to RR's.
>
> Even with a growing income "gap" between those in
> the top 10%, with higher education and more
> complex job skills, and those without, there has
> been a shortage, for the last ten years, even
> during the recession, of truck drivers. These
> trucking jobs work long hours, at all hours, often
> unrested, away from home, with added expenses, for
> what really turns out to be a fairly lousy overall
> "hourly" rate, and for all that, and aren't that
> desirable, despite the "higher" supposed hourly or
> mileage rates.
>
> In addition, we eliminate about a quarter of those
> less educated in the "bottom 50%" of the
> income/education scale of workers, since about 1
> in 4 can't pass a background check, and another
> quarter of those are so poorly educated they can't
> even pass the minimal tests required, even for the
> most basic requirements. So we have created a
> market "demand" for many of these "better
> qualified" (and easier to exploit?) immigrant
> workers, haven't we?
>
> Higher pay, to attract more workers, enforcing
> rest requirements, so tired truck drivers don't
> needlessly murder several hundred innocent
> Americans every year, and fluctuating fuel prices
> (more likely up again in the future, from where we
> are now), will shift some traffic to rails.
> Better rail velocity, due to the reduction in
> slow, costly, and maintenance intensive coal
> traffic, may allow rails to compete better with
> some truck markets (especially in reliability) and
> attract some of that traffic, as well......
>
> Vast conspiracy theories are not really required
> to explain any of that, are they?
>
> But hey, fret not, we are actually testing the
> fully automated "driverless" truck in Nevada, as I
> write this........
Too bad we can't
run you for president--- unfortunately you just have this bad habit of making too much sense and telling it like it is---- sigh.
C