I've worked in a restaurant and worked in construction, (didn't drive a truck, but I rode along with the truckers to haul equipment).
If I had to choose between working at Applebees or driving a truck, I'd definitely pick the truck.
Zero stress, zero hassle (well, I hope…) and I’ll get paid a ‘measly’ $200 to listen to the radio all night.
To the author, if you're reading, OTR drivers are in very, very high demand. Get that bread.
The article talks about the authors experience with OTR and why it has a 90% attrition rate yearly compared to 12% for local. They already got that bread. The bread was moldy.
Part of it is because a lot of truckers are owner-operators that have a lot of money in their trucks. They are effectively employees, not real contractors, and all the pricing power goes to the company that hires them but if they quit it means bankruptcy.
If you're in a big city, you might be able to demand a bit more than this. Most truck drivers aren't, and don't want to be.
If the pay is so great and the cost of living so low, why aren't more people flocking to work there?
Housing is moderately cheaper, but the $20-25/hr jobs aren't really the types that people are willing to relocate for-- they're physically demanding with super high turnover because they are probably a bad deal relative to the wear put on your body. Mostly there have just been more bus routes to transport people from exurbs to work these jobs. Nobody really chooses to live in Ohio if given other options (besides even worse states like the Dakotas or Mississippi), they're just born there or familial obligations cause them to move there.
1. People flock there
2. Those people need services
3. More jobs needed to provide those services
4. Return to 1.
Aside from this, Ohio is a convenient place for logistics and commerce owing to a centralized location in the US, strong infrastructure, and a business-friendly regulatory climate. Hence, warehouses and factories serving the rest of the US which means the economy isn't self-dependent and this raises the minimum wage floor for everyone.
But, to answer your question directly, I imagine not everyone is eager to uproot their current lives and move to a suburb of an exurb of a suburb in Ohio.
Personally, it would take a 50%-100% raise before I would even consider consider uprooting my family and leaving my current city. But I’d switch jobs locally for half that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30820753
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/20/intergenera...
The above story is not an outlier.
It’s perhaps a big lesson in avoidance. And how cheap it is for society to prevent bad outcomes relative to undoing them.
I could not agree more, and this is where the largest gains at the least cost are to be found imho.
The straightforward stuff we can all agree about: (or perhaps not, and I’ll change my mind gladly with evidence)
- Build dense homes in poor places adjacent to places of economic activity so that private transport is cheap and public transport makes sense for the state
- Provide baseline medical care at cost from the state
But there is so much stuff that is trade-offs. Here’s some stuff I would want which others won’t:
- Baseline medical care should be MD-free and be purely NPs. Rationale: the state can boost NP production as needed / it has no control over MD production
- Leverage access should be limited but it should be possible to lie on the forms and face the music in the downside case. Folks like me should have access, but folks like this guy in the story shouldn’t. He’s going to spiral but I’ve weathered six figure losses with equanimity
- I want to control addictive substances but clearly prohibition doesn’t work and clearly many incapable people use them whereas also many capable use them. Ideally, people like me (smart, easy de-addiction) should have access and the remainder should furnish some sort of bond before they are permitted but that’s impossible
Also, I looked into the homelessness situation a while back when the COVID pandemic was in full swing and it is full of people who are not outcomes-oriented Gish Galloping their way to nonsense interventions.
The GiveWell.org of American poverty interventions would be nice, I think.
Also thanks for the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f78ZVLVdO0A
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/59...
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paychec...
(replied instead of emailing to keep the knowledge graph intact)
I'm curious - what does it mean to "Turo" a car?
I'm assuming it means "parked in the parking lot" but I've never heard the expression before.
We, as a nation, need these drivers. We have an obligation to extend them same wage protections we have. Even if some truck driver can and do make quite good money, that doesn't mean that the industry as a whole isn't rife with abusive labor practices.
Don't truckers have unions?
He clearly laid out a lie. That's your answer. Go from driving box trucks to chemicals to driving your own rig and it can get to 200/year.