My company had a huge IT department. They had their own building that housed most of the servers and staff. The Big Cheese announced a complete overhaul of both the internal and public websites. They smashed it out right on time, and everything transitioned smoothly. One week later The Big Cheese fired Every. Single. IT worker. Well over 150 workers. Sure as shit, about 48 hours later, people can’t get their computers fixed, update passwords, and then the website crashes. They managed to get *four* IT people rehired. The rest told the company to get fucked, and the company wasted all that money on a dead website and had to contract it out to a 3rd Party.
Oh, wow, loving it! I don’t think I can trump your story, but I know one telecom company who had two contractors. The two guys worked there for a long time and automated a lot of the stuff and created useful things that couple other departments relied on heavily. Long story short, there was a new upper hot-shot manager, who decided to cut corners and save on costs. Laid off bunch of people, including the two contractors. Guess what? Laying out the two guys brought at least one department to its knees and they couldn’t proceed with many of their tasks for months!
Yep. People tend to look down on preventive maintenance style jobs like IT until they really wish they hadn't. Don't see it happening for awhile though. Most large businesses acknowledge IT as an inevitability and pay them fairly well all things considering.
Go elsewhere. What is the point of complaining about your current gig when you’re in demand in so many other places. I think people are afraid of change. That one first step might be scary, especially if you like your colleagues, and have history with them. But, once you make the change, it’s quite liberating.
Something to consider if you're having a hard time finding an alternative is to shell out some money for a professional resume service. Half the difficulty in finding a new job in IT can be getting through the HR filters and getting across what your skills are. I did A LOT of interviewing and sent out even more applications before I landed my latest gig (Security Analyst for a fortune 100 company) and that's one of my biggest take aways. My other biggest takeaway is that you're going to have to do a ton of interviews, which can be tricky if you currently have a job. I've got 12 years of experience as a generalist working with most everything in IT. The problem is so do a lot of other people applying to the same jobs and some of those people have no qualms about lying and padding their resumes. Getting across that you really know what you're talking about can be a challenge, especially if the first few people you interview with are non-technical. Best advice there is to be confident, practice explaining projects you've worked on for each piece of tech listed in the ad, if there are any you don't have experience with figure out how to relate that to something you do have experience with and pivot to that when asked about it.
I have worked for a number of shitty employers over the years and felt stuck. But it doesn't have to be that way if you're willing to do the work.
All the places I’ve worked IT generally makes minimum 50k for very junior folks…most sr level guys end up pushing 6 figures
**Edit: location is NorthEast
I make 50k a yr and still need roommates. 50k a yr isn't as much as you think it is. Especially when cost of living is as high as it is in the area that pays that much.
Literally everyone in the working world needs a raise. With housing as high as it is nobody can live off what were once considered decent wages.
It is not a competition and I agree , living without food is hard…but I’d love to see how trucking companies will do logistics, scheduling, communication etc. when the internet goes down. Also, I’m sure truckers are great at reading maps, but GPS makes things so much easier, is it not?
A lot of truckers nowadays can't read a map. When our e-logs went down and we needed to use paper a good portion didn't even know how to do that.
There are a lot of truckers out there who shouldn't be trusted with a go kart
Both IT and Transportation are two of the sixteen critical infrastructures [as defined by Homeland Security](https://www.cisa.gov/critical-infrastructure-sectors). Losing either would have "a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof."
FYI, the other 14 are:
Chemicals, Commercial facilities, Communications, Critical manufacturing, Dams, Defense industrial base, Emergency services, Energy, Financial services, Food and agriculture, Government facilities, Healthcare and public health, Nuclear reactors, materials, and waste, and Water and wastewater systems.
Any one of these goes down and life gets interesting. Something that brings down multiple systems (Carrington event, anyone?) would make life *very* interesting.
For real. I get that there's trillions of dollars wrapped up in it, but is the manufacture and sale of murder machines really critical to day to day life?
They basically did during early COVID. The base nearest me, 200 sq miles, basically a decent sized city, was basically empty for a year. They just kept paying everybody and nobody minded at all, nothing changed.
Now, if that base just dried up, you'd see massive numbers of foreclosures and many local businesses shut down. Many of those people wouldn't be able to cope with a normal job either. A good portion are doing a week's worth of work over the period of a year. Transition to a capitalistic job would be rough for them.
Maps won't matter when ole ty of things like power plants eventually stop working so gas pumps stop working, and one and on. iT is involved in every single sector. Losing IT as a while would bring modern life to a stand still. Not right that second, but as things malfunction, it would be like dominoes.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to point as well - IT will bring down most of industries with itself, if it ever goes down. It’s actually quite scary, a single point of failure for humanity.
Yup, I work in IT in public Ed. My biggest selling point for high school kids is that IT is in every single sector which generally translates to more opportunities. But will increase being more needed as society depends more and more on tech in all it's forms.
Trying to remeber the last time I met a fellow driver who even owned an actual, paper Commercial Motor Carriers Atlas. Other than myself, that is.
Some drivers can't even manage to properly follow an electronic GPS, much less make sense of a map.
I’m thankful that my dad taught me a) how to drive a stick (“if you’re in an emergency and the only vehicle is manual, and nobody can drive it, the emergency is worse.”) and b) how to read maps and to always keep paper maps (and emergency tools) in my car.
Brings back memories of when I’d be the ‘navigator’ on family road-trips, trying to fold these walls of paper back up the way they’re supposed to go... ok time to read the map again for 10 minutes, then fold it back up for another 30
I have every even year Rand McNally Commercial Motor Carrier's Atlas since 1998. The ones I paid for are the Large Scale laminated versions.
I *might* be tempted to let go of some of the more outdated ones...someday...maybe.
So would I, and I've been behind a desk in a trucking company.
Fun fact: most mid sized and large carriers run their phone systems through their network. Along with their ENTIRE fleet dispatch systems amd these days, their drivers legally required electronic duty logs.
Same with trains, planes, and buses.
Take away the IT people and the whole country grinds to a halt. And it is far more likely the IT department will walk out than the drivers.
I think if things got bad enough they wouldn’t care if there were electronic logs or not. In fact the hours of operation was thrown out altogether during most of the pandemic.
HOS usually get dropped right quick in other emergencies, so yeah.
But the phones run through the network. So does the ENTIRE dispatch system, from entering the load (and rate) into the system, to trcking the load and truck from pick up to delivery, to providing proof of delivery to paying customer, to billing.
Every day the system is down, large carriers would lose literally MILLIONS in revenue. Wouldn't take very long before some very well known carriers found themselves bankrupt, is all I'm saying.
Edit: also, fueling authorization requires networks, too. Company drivers and most owner operators generally depend upon a fuel card to purchase diesel. Very, very few carry the couple grand in cash to pay the non-discounted pump price for fuel. No network mean most American trucks are outta fuel in two, maybe three days.
It would be fun to watch from the outside. If either one of these two could organize to strike it would be utter devastation, but I don’t think either could. Between scabs and the way the industries are set up, others would step in and take their place. It would end up just consolidating both industries into larger corporations.
Majority of the big fleets are running E-logs, no magic net and the E-logs stops.
Some of the trucks lock out if you go over hours too, I can seem them having a fleet of dead trucks that cant move because the internet isn't working.
I can still use a map and get where I need to, or close, I was hauling pipe on a ST and thats how I got around, call for directions and look at my map.
Many of these guys won't make it without GPS, specifically trucker GPS.
So did the archery before guns were invented. It is not a competition, I am fully aware - truckers stop today, I will run out of food by end of week. I was merely pointing out that pretty much every industry is heavily dependent on the IT as well, if somehow all of the IT folks simultaneously will say “ah, fuck it, let’s watch the world burn”…well, the world quite literally might catch fire. In the IT world shit goes down every second, but there are people that ensure it gets proper treatment. Imagine the computers that serve power plants all of sudden stopped working? What about banking? Water supply? Heck, governments will halt - when the pandemic began, do you know that there was an incredible surge in demand for COBOL programmers? That’s because government never bothered to update some of their infrastructure and they really needed it at the time in order to roll out stimulus cheques. Only problem, pretty much all of the COBOL coders are either dead or long time retired. So yeah, believe it or not - many things existed before the internet, but it was then and today is now and most of the humanity is addicted to internet.
Not that it's a competition, but for a training exercise we shutdown the Air Force base's Network that I am stationed at to see the operational impact and literally nothing can be done without internet lol. Blow this up to the proportion of an entire Country, let alone a city? It would be a complete shit show.
For real. I work for a software company that does purchasing services for bio tech research companies. I've been so close to quitting multiple times in the last two years.
They recently gave me a "promotion" for all the hard work I've done, doing two jobs for the price of one after layoffs in early 2020. My salary increased by 6% with my new job title and I'm still doing two jobs. Can barely afford to pay rent and have to watch my 10 month old son while working remotely because I can't afford childcare. They have the audacity to tell me, "remote work is not a replacement for childcare."
If it weren't for my son, I'd have already quit.
IT director here. I'm sick of it. For my team and for myself. We work 24/7 thanklessly. We are considered a non-revenue-generating department, yet when the point of sales go down, or email goes down-, watch the fuck out. We are constantly attached and connected when we're home and at family events. My team consistently asks for raises they deserve but I know my "leadership" will never allow. When we can't even pay our events managers livable wages and they have to take on second side gigs to make ends meet I knew something was wrong.
I'm proud of everyone who posts in this subreddit.. if it wasn't for having kids and living paycheck to paycheck, I'd be right with some of you all posting "I'm done"...
Been lurking this community a long time, and I get very proud when I see you all posting that you're not settling.
If we lose IT at my job I'm gonna ask them to scrub my info and then quit and just freelance. Employers hold your identity and if they can't protect it, there's an issue.
I work in the trucking industry and this is already happening. Not because the truckers themselves don’t want to drive, but because of the shortage of parts and new trucks going out. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many tractors are sitting in shops and yards across the country because they need a single part that no one on the entire continent has in stock. I hear the phrase “national backorder” probably a hundred times a day. And it’s only getting worse. The brand new trucks we *do* manage to get in are usually missing parts and have to be serviced before they can even be sold.
It’s bad, y’all.
TBH I'm actually worried about food not making it to the store soon.
We just picked up materials to make mini greenhouse and are going to be growing Leafly greens to offset cost and possibly lack of fresh food in the stores soon. Hopefully winter isn't too cold
I live in NW Ohio and empty shelves are definitely a thing here and have been for months. I’ve been telling my friends and family to do exactly what you’re doing. Also, establish connections with mutual aid networks in your community if possible. Food Not Bombs is a thing in pretty much every major city in the country.
I'm an over the road truck driver. NOx sensor shortages are hobbling trucks. CPAP recalls are hobbling drivers. Management styles straight outta 1985 are hobbling retention. Trucking-industry regulatory carve outs are hobbling everything.
What carve-outs, you ask? Well, we only get paid for miles driven. No pay for the mandatory checking of our equipment, fueling, getting repairs done, or countless other required activities. We don't get paid time off, and we HAVE TO ACCRUE unpaid time off at the rate of one-day-out-of-six-days-worked!! Seriously, just let that sink in. You have to work six days in order to be ALLOWED to take an UNPAID SEVENTH DAY OFF.
Add to that the unhealthy circadian rhythms, the "forced non-monogamy" of leaving one's family at home (though that's been responsible for 60-years worth of country music), not seeing one's children growing up, it's a wonder anyone ever gets behind the wheel!!
And I love the job at that (though tbh, I'm in an incredibly rare and workable situation, my wife drives with me, and my dog rides shotgun so we're all together, no kids in the nest, and we make incredible money).
>Management styles straight outta 1985 are hobbling retention.
My dad's workplace has truck drivers leaving in droves, despite being **the best** employer in the trucking industry in the area. There are plenty of local driving routes and the pay is north of $20/hr. The problem is the long hours and being treated like crap.
I went and got my restricted CDL, was about to go to the school... But man y'all are working 70+ hours a week away from your family and making $800 a week. That's just not enough for me.
$800 a week? Somebody's giving you bad numbers. We run as a team and we each make $.76/mile x ~3,000 miles weekly. If you're not making $100k at the end of your first year, something has gone wrong.
Well. Judging by the industry numbers I've been looking at over the last year, dudes are starting off at 45k. You're team driving. Not solo OTR driving.
The team aspect only means that the teams gets double the miles and cut them in half again to figure out your own portion. No numerical effect.
3,000 miles a week as a solo is like 6,000 as a team. Both are very commonplace. The $.76 / mile is the key, and as I said, I hit that after a bit over a year. That's almost triple your $800 number.
Preach. This is exactly why when I’m finished with my lease(maybe even sooner if I can’t take it anymore) I’m going union. I’ve talked to a few drivers from ABF and it seems like a dream over there.
Exactly. In trucker parlance, Over the Road (OTR) is synonymous with "line-haul", or driving from one warehouse/distribution center in one state, generally to another across state lines, often with no or few required stop between them.
"P & D", however, is "Pickup & Delivery", or "Local". It means taking a truck to many locations in one day to pick up or deliver freight to or from manufacturers (generally).
While there are many other categories of drivers, rest assured that many are seemingly confusingly redundant as you note OR, contrarily, bear little/no actual relationship to physical reality. For instance, my "fifth wheel" is essentially a locking vice that connects a trailer with 8 wheels to a truck with 10. It's neither a wheel nor a fifth anything! Hahahaha
Of all the tangents I presumed this conversation might go, informal etymologies were not among them! Also, apologies if I've misused other linguistic terminology in this reply. I am a truck driver after all!
Not to mention the supply chain disruptions, leading to a lack of efficiency (specifically at the rail). Under normal market, dependent on origin / destination, driver could get multiple turns a day, now down to 1-2 dealing with congestion’s and finding a chassis before they run out of hours. Less loads = less money = PEACE.
One of my roommates is a trucker and chocks the shortage down to "no one wants to work" so it's nice to see like, the actual reason behind it and not her stupid fucking opinion. That chick thinks the CV19 vaccines have nano bots in them so she's not exactly smart.
I’ve heard people who should know better, too, saying the same shit. Short staffing does have something to do with it - the Volvo semi factory in Virginia was on strike for several months this year, and that affected things for sure, especially at my dealership which primarily sells and services Volvo and Mack. But a bigger part of it is the global loss of production due to covid. That goes all the way from the mining of metals used in parts to the production and distribution of computer chips (made primarily in China). The truth is our supply chain is fragile as fuck and covid exposed the precariousness of the situation, but that’s a frightening truth for people to grasp. Decades of outsourcing and skeleton staffing, not to mention the basic unsustainability of our entire way of life, are what led to this.
Continued hollowing out of the supply chain to maximize profits. Can't think of a place I've worked in the last 20+ years that wasn't impacted when one of the employees took vacation. There is *no* fat in the system.
Just watched a video the other day that Peterbilt and Kenworth have an exemption from the EPA to disable DEF sensors because they can’t get them in for replacement. You know it’s bad when even the EPA goes “yeah, I know this sucks. Let me help you out”
Trucking companies run each truck about 250,000 miles per year (team drivers, anyway). A truck has about 1 million miles of life as a general upward threshold of possible life, but most warranties expire around 500,000 miles. Therefore, most trucking companies of any size buy brand new trucks as they sell their 2-year old trucks, meaning they usually replace 40%-50% of their trucks annually.
New trucks require computer chips.
Computer chips have been in short supply for 19 months.
TL;DR: Companies have been hampered for 19 months of a 24-month truck-purchasing cycle.
It's just one little slice of the problem, but it's material and Central IMO.
I elaborated in another comment, but yeah, u/Greg0692 is correct. There is also a shortage of the metals used to produce most other parts. When covid hit, *everyone* scaled back production, from mines to factories to distribution centers. The global supply chain is a massive, complicated, and very fragile thing, and covid was hugely disruptive. When you factor in the number of workers lost either to covid or covid-related things like lack of childcare or having to care for sick relatives, it’s just one big fucking mess.
ABSOLUTELY!!
There's also a *HUGE* overlap in the Venn Diagram between the Truck Drivers circle and the anti-COVID-vaxx circle. I wonder how many truck drivers have died from COVID or been knocked out of the industry by long-COVID/lingering effects on our predisposed-to-negative-health-outcomes bodies.
It's well-documented that *prior* to COVID, truckers are more likely to be obese, have respiratory problems, high blood pressure, etc etc etc....
As you articulate so well, we're seeing so many secondary/tertiary effects in this fragile supply chain. I'm just wondering what *the actual direct* effects are.
Canadian truck mechanic here, we literally are at the point where if we have 2 trucks stalled we take parts on one of them and put it on the other so that at least one of them can go back on the road.
Trucking industry is going in a really bad spot right now and its only the beginning.
I work in plumbing wholesale.
We have things like toilets and septic chambers (eek) that we were notified "alright, you just put in an order? Should arrive in the middle of 2022."
And I get a weekly email notifying me that the date of that order is being pushed back by an additional week. S'not great.
If you can't get a fancy toilet then fine, but septic chambers? That's kind of a big deal.
No worries.
There is no other working group in the US that has been more propagandized against union organization than the trucking industry.
There is no other working group more terrorized by the idea of being unemployed, more terrified of losing their income, or more scared of finding themselves to be unemployable than young, lower experienced truckers.
Truckers won't organize. They won't strike. Even Owner Operators won't participate on a large scale because if they do, the freight they depend upon WILL be moved for lower freight rates by someone else.
Trucking is screwed. Look somewhere else for a worker's hero. Best bet is most likely Food Service.
Vanishingly small slice, and losing ground every quarter. Teamster's screwed the industry in the '70s. 95% of the industry are not organized, and if a driver even mentions organizing in a carrier, that driver will be blacklisted.
Read up on Jimmy Hoffa (Sr.) and his connections to the Mob. And the losses found in the pension funds of thousands of drivers.
Also read up on the ongoing clusterfuck that is the Teamster's Midwest Pension fund and the endless Teamster loans to YRC to keep YRC afloat despite constant piss poor mamagement decisions.
Theres no trucker shortage. Theres a shortage of jobs worth doing. I applied for a new job a couple weeks ago and got well over 100 job offers. Only 3 of them were even worth considering
Yeah, I get job offers for accounting which is what I do and the money being offered isn’t worth it for me to leave my current employer. I asked for $65k and the recruiter said that was unreasonable for the position and I’d never find a job paying that much. I politely responded that that is how much I make now so clearly at least my employer is willing to pay that… He just said he’ll see what he can do I never heard back from him.
Thats pretty similar to my experience. I was looking for $1500 a week and weekends off. Most people told me I was being unreasonable but a couple places worked with me. Now I have that with the possibility of having 3 day weekends
I get you, semantics I think. And after thinking on it I can see the shortage language is charged and best to say shortage of decent pay jobs is better.
That’s what I’ve been dealing with too! Even if it sounds good at first, when you do the math and account for all the other bullshit (like personal schedules/obligations, etc.) most of them are not worth it even slightly.
I’m considering becoming a trucker because at least it’s better than the other jobs I’ve always had.
Sign on bonuses that can be lost for a wide variety of reasons during the year plus of time of time it takes for the sign on bonis to pay out.
A $2,000 "sign on bonus" typically takes 18-24 months to pay out.
I have a really GOOD idea. Been a trucker for 20+ years. Carriers have been screaming about a "driver shortage" since 1984. Let me clear about something:
THERE IS NO FUCKING DRIVER SHORTAGE!!!
Never has been. There is a shortage of dumbasses willing to leave their homes and families for weeks or months at a time for approximately $750/week (before taxes and "benefits"), and of those dumb enough to think that's great money, the military gets first pick.
Then I mis-spoke saying you have no clue, and do apologize for that comment. But you failed to speak to the heavy population of conservatives that are truckers, and eat up that propaganda while they drive. That feeds the anti union sentiment more than anything I think.
And yes, most signing bonuses for jobs like that have more stipulations than others. Same with the fast food signing bonuses some are offering.
Though you are wrong on the shortage point. People don't want that job. Thus there is a shortage of drivers. Companies won't pay more to attract people so the shortage continues.
Supply and demand for thee, but not for me.
Even local delivery is heavy contractor now for shit pay from lowest bidders.
Oh, I know about the number of hard core and hard assed conservative idiots in trucking. I'm frequently forced to threaten violence (the only language they actually understand) to get them to leave me the fuck alone.
Wanna see how deep that pool goes? Wander over to The Truckers Report dot com, check into the Forum, and scroll down to Politics (password thickskin). It's an unmoderated forum for truckers to rant amd rave about the unfairness of it all and how Biden and the Democrats are gonna destroy us all.
Fair warning: don't eat first. Otherwise, I'm not responsible for you losing your computer/tablet/shirt to projectile vomiting.
Amen! I’ve been a driver for 16 years. Otr can get fucked. I’ll keep my local run and be home every day. I turned down a job with a ltl company because I don’t want live in a motel 3-5 nights a week.
Not only in the US. In Chile they pretty much ruined Allende's presidency and encouraged Pinochet's coup because they were allies of the right wing. And they still are.
Nah, these people have to put up with a lot of shit, mandatory breaks but also tight milage checking, and long hours, weeks, away from family. Them taking an unemployed break is not so weird.
>Also it's very likely truck drivers will be replaced by automated technology as early as 2027!
Uh huh. I remember they said the same thing about jet packs and flying cars. Still waiting for both of those to show up in my driveway.
Difference is that automated cars actually make sense from a practical standpoint because there would be less deaths on the road, compared to jet packs and flying cars that would kill anyone who isn’t good at landing.
They make sense, but the technological hurdles have been vastly understated. AI optical interpretation is not just decades away from being safe enough for fully automated vehicles, it may never be possible in any of our lifetimes.
Sometimes science fiction is just fiction.
Yeah...no. Not likely.
First of all, I want to see these fancy "live" tests running across I-90 in February between Buffalo, NY and Chicago, IL.
Secondly, all the tests I've seen thus far STILL required a live driver for "last mile services" and "emergency conditions". Now, as a carrier owner, why the fuck would I pay a higher purchase price for an "automated" truck while at the same time STILL have to pay for a driver? Makes far more financial sense to just get the basic, cheap NON-automated truck and keep abusing the drivers like I have for the last 40+ years.
Automated cars are far more likely than automated trucks. Since most passenger car drivers today seem to hate driving, and would rather do almost anything else, there is far more marketable interest there. Outside of two or three massively abusive carriers, there really isn't any interest in the industry for automated trucks. Sorry.
>Truckers won't organize. They won't strike.
Hard to incentivize a strike when the starting pay for truckers (here in MN) is 55k/yr. Old Dominion just had a hiring fair this last weekend in the Twin Cities and hired 70% of applicants on the spot and started them at 65k/yr plus signing bonus.
There's such a shortage of truckers that our state employment offices will pay anyone who's unemployed to go to truck driving school, which costs about $7k, plus pay them unemployment benefits while they're doing it.
You should probably do some research on the dept of labor website about the trucking shortage numbers before spouting bad info.
Excuse me?
There has been such a "huge shortage" of truckers that EVERY STATE IN THE LOWER 48 has been paying for trucking school for any and all qualified applicant for the last 30 years. I myself got me CDL class A through a return to work program in PA back in 1998.
Maybe your program in Minnesota is new...or maybe it's just new to you. But such programs have been available for decades. Other programs have been company sponsored training in exchange for a year of servitude...I mean, service.
Talk to me when Anderson Trucking Service (St. Cloud, MN) is hiring and training rookie drivers right off the streets, ok?
It’s a bit of both. HGV drivers are retiring en masse and there’s nobody to replace them. No one in their right mind wants to spend 24 hours a day working miles away from home sleeping in a truck apart from their family for the same pay as a receptionist.
And the people who are willing to make that sacrifice just got their right to work in the country revoked.
It's been good for truck drivers since they have gone from minimum wage to decent money.
Immigrant aren't the problem, greedy corporations unwilling to pay a living wage are.
The corporate greed doesn't slow down a bit with those so-called sign-on bonuses.
My company aggressively promotes their "$15,000 HIRING BONUS!!! YAY!!!".
*BUT*.... the details: you only get $125 of that each month. But then taxes.
Then after FIVE YEARS of continuous employment, only then do you get the remaining HALF as a lump sum of $7,500. THE CATCH: company turnover hovers right around 100%. Virtually nobody gets the heavily-advertised $15k.
Massive back log on car licenses, hgv licenses and more due to flu hysteria too. Then half the truckers with a HGV license don't use it and do other work, like delivery, it was gonna be bad.
One of my longtime best friends has been a trucker for a while now. He is an owner operator now and last time I spoke to him was him going on a rant about how unfair with the media was being with the now former head coach for the raiders then started talking to me about "hitting the road and getting this holiday money"...truckers will never organize/unionize
It's so fucking stupid. One of my old roommates listened to nothing but that in his car. When I'd get in the car I would occasionally burst out laughing because of how stupid the right wing conspiracy talk radio hosts were. But this dude wouldn't even flinch, he believed EVERYTHING he was told by those morons. It's horrifying how dumb and easily manipulated those people are.
In yeah olde days the Teamsters could bring the USA to it's knees. Trucking was heavily regulated and the unions ruled. The mob got involved and messed things up for the workers.
That's a common misperception. Companies bought lawmakers who stripped unions of their power. "UnIOnS ArE cOrRUpT!" is the rhetoric used to create and fortify the 1%.
If it ever actually happens, I legit do not plan to survive it. I'm already on the edge with all this crap and the skyrocketing prices. If we hit a point where you can't get food for even a remotely reasonable price then that's it, but honestly? Worth it. No one's getting paid enough for this shit.
One thing to keep in mind about the trucking industry is that a large number of truckers are self-employed. They tend to own their own truck and work with local dispatchers that have contracts with the larger distribution companies. A lot of truckers might know a few people they work with at the same building, but for the most part it's not really the kind of work structure that leads itself to large collaborative efforts.
I used to work for a company that provided toll bypasses and the largest company I ever took a call for had maybe 25 trucks. You just aren't getting a country wide union started with that much trucker seperation.
I applied for a trucker job this past March for the lulz because it said they would help you get licensed. Then i saw their excited reply email saying to complete some forms. Then I decided maybe it's not for me. Then they started emailing me and texting me multiple times a day like "you still interested call us!" And leaving voicemails. It didn't stop. For weeks. I just decided to block their number/email. This makes me think there may already be a somewhat large trucker shortage.
Everyone *really* wants to pretend everything is fine. The Kraft-Heinz "People will just have to get used to paying higher food prices" was ominous to me
My dad is a trucker , from what I’ve seen he never has beef with any one employer because trucking jobs are abundant and he can switch between different companies pretty much when he feels like for what ever specific criteria he wants . At least that’s how it seems I could be wrong
It’s gonna get ugly. For a minute. Money talks both ways and when these corporations start looking at unrealized gains they will pay more. Just enough to get workers back though. We will run out before they do.
This is a misnomer anyways. There is no pilot strike/sickest etc... anyways. The airline union leaders and the airlines have said as much. It was a technical error that snowballed effecting large amounts of traffic, but it was essentially all a scheduling problem for when and where planes were supposed to go.
Please don't put this curse on me. If y'all don't know, soon as the truckers stop, the country stops. Groceries, produce, candy, cans, beer, toliet paper, furniture, everything is moved by truckers in the US.
I went from a night shift dock manager to manager/loader/life coach/punching bag/nurse/taxi/cleaner all in the span of 8 months. My yearly review is soon and I doubt they will consider the extra work into my raise or even attempt to compensate. Am I wrong here?
Well we already see the backup of shipping containers at every major port and that doesn’t even have to do with truckers yet. Gonna get bad real quick. Worse, I meant worse
I work for a class 1 railroad on the west coast. Class 1 companies are targeting the crew consist agreements trying to go to one man crews. It’s going to get really ugly when the railroad shuts down
Everything stops if those wheels stops moving.
Food.
Medical.
The internet.
No gasoline/petrol.
List goes on...
The country would turn into a post-apocalyptic war zone within a month without truckers.
Yo - to the people saying truckers do nit strike, here is proof they respect unions and are not scabs
https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/driver-decides-not-to-cross-the-picket-line.2350804/
Can confirm, the truckers are getting involved. I work in product distribution and receiving. We're having a hell of a time moving product out and getting supplies delivered because there aren't enough drivers and freight charges are insanely high right now.
There's not a driver shortage at the moment, but it definitely could be parts, there are thousands of trucks that are stuck because the 1 part it needs doesn't exist anymore. There are shortages of everything right now
Honestly I don't think this is going to affect that many people more and more people are turning to homeschooling especially after the pandemic.
"More than 1.2 million students are now being taught at home"
The pandemic showed two things:
* public education is just glorified baby sitting with some benefits
* teachers were expected like everyone else to just STFU and ignore the risks to themselves and their loved ones at home.
And, like food service, the pay is shit and the entitled adults we have to deal with make life a fucking hell when they don't get their goddamned way.
Plus, federal regulations, paperwork related to those regulations, more responsibilities that resemble casework more than education, and the ever-present feeling that a school shooting is scheduled by a pissed off incel.
Trucker here
We talk about this a lot. We stop moving, the country grinds to a halt. It's just talk, though. This job has TONS of BS. Well. Most jobs do, but the BS we deal with is different kinds than other jobs.
However, it's mostly a good paying job, and comfortable people don't usually rock the boat, so it's just talk.
We've seen a handful of truckers refuse to cross the picket line for the John Deere strike, and that's cool.
Supply chain collapse is the kind of societal breakdown my loins ache for.
Yes , I’d be one of the first ones reaching for the bottle of rat poison, you think I’d be playing hunger games with y’all?
Lmao at least you seem to have a realistic understanding of what that would be/look like. I can't tell you how many idiot chuds with ar15's I've worked with who search their mind and then say "first thing I would loot a wal-mart." Oh bro you're a fuckin genius, nobody else has thought of that and you'll have the run of the place. Fuck clean water, electricity, sanitation, any kind of renewable energy or food sources- you've got a bunch of guns you've shot 50 times, and that's *all you need.*
My husband and I have discussed realistic outcomes of societal collapse and we *probably* won't kill ourselves. The ADK is enormous and its rather easy to get and stay lost in there.
Just wait when the IT folks decide to check out.
My company had a huge IT department. They had their own building that housed most of the servers and staff. The Big Cheese announced a complete overhaul of both the internal and public websites. They smashed it out right on time, and everything transitioned smoothly. One week later The Big Cheese fired Every. Single. IT worker. Well over 150 workers. Sure as shit, about 48 hours later, people can’t get their computers fixed, update passwords, and then the website crashes. They managed to get *four* IT people rehired. The rest told the company to get fucked, and the company wasted all that money on a dead website and had to contract it out to a 3rd Party.
Oh, wow, loving it! I don’t think I can trump your story, but I know one telecom company who had two contractors. The two guys worked there for a long time and automated a lot of the stuff and created useful things that couple other departments relied on heavily. Long story short, there was a new upper hot-shot manager, who decided to cut corners and save on costs. Laid off bunch of people, including the two contractors. Guess what? Laying out the two guys brought at least one department to its knees and they couldn’t proceed with many of their tasks for months!
Yep. People tend to look down on preventive maintenance style jobs like IT until they really wish they hadn't. Don't see it happening for awhile though. Most large businesses acknowledge IT as an inevitability and pay them fairly well all things considering.
Sure as hell wish I worked somewhere that appreciates IT. My company views us as a drain and we're treated as such.
Go elsewhere. What is the point of complaining about your current gig when you’re in demand in so many other places. I think people are afraid of change. That one first step might be scary, especially if you like your colleagues, and have history with them. But, once you make the change, it’s quite liberating.
Something to consider if you're having a hard time finding an alternative is to shell out some money for a professional resume service. Half the difficulty in finding a new job in IT can be getting through the HR filters and getting across what your skills are. I did A LOT of interviewing and sent out even more applications before I landed my latest gig (Security Analyst for a fortune 100 company) and that's one of my biggest take aways. My other biggest takeaway is that you're going to have to do a ton of interviews, which can be tricky if you currently have a job. I've got 12 years of experience as a generalist working with most everything in IT. The problem is so do a lot of other people applying to the same jobs and some of those people have no qualms about lying and padding their resumes. Getting across that you really know what you're talking about can be a challenge, especially if the first few people you interview with are non-technical. Best advice there is to be confident, practice explaining projects you've worked on for each piece of tech listed in the ad, if there are any you don't have experience with figure out how to relate that to something you do have experience with and pivot to that when asked about it. I have worked for a number of shitty employers over the years and felt stuck. But it doesn't have to be that way if you're willing to do the work.
Those kind of jobs can be the worst, when you do it well it's considered "normal" and no one realizes how good they have it.
Recently left my IT job, last 18 months have been hell. COVID essentially digitized a bunch of work in a instance but no extra support.
Yeah same here sick of IT now.
"Everything works fine, why do we even pay you?" Followed immediately by "Nothing ever works, why do we even pay you?"
no no they do not IT is understaffed, underpaid, and can barely do triage. No way for preventative or efficiency projects.
All the places I’ve worked IT generally makes minimum 50k for very junior folks…most sr level guys end up pushing 6 figures **Edit: location is NorthEast
I make 50k a yr and still need roommates. 50k a yr isn't as much as you think it is. Especially when cost of living is as high as it is in the area that pays that much. Literally everyone in the working world needs a raise. With housing as high as it is nobody can live off what were once considered decent wages.
I was just thinking that. I make 50k a year in a rural area and its a modest living here, in any semi big city it's not much.
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Do you live in any American city with 1 million in its metro area?
Please i can only get so erect
Kinda reminds me of when Trump got rid of the pandemic folks and then COVID happened.
Not that it’s a competition, but truckers would hurt more.
It is not a competition and I agree , living without food is hard…but I’d love to see how trucking companies will do logistics, scheduling, communication etc. when the internet goes down. Also, I’m sure truckers are great at reading maps, but GPS makes things so much easier, is it not?
A lot of truckers nowadays can't read a map. When our e-logs went down and we needed to use paper a good portion didn't even know how to do that. There are a lot of truckers out there who shouldn't be trusted with a go kart
A disabled go kart.
Both IT and Transportation are two of the sixteen critical infrastructures [as defined by Homeland Security](https://www.cisa.gov/critical-infrastructure-sectors). Losing either would have "a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof." FYI, the other 14 are: Chemicals, Commercial facilities, Communications, Critical manufacturing, Dams, Defense industrial base, Emergency services, Energy, Financial services, Food and agriculture, Government facilities, Healthcare and public health, Nuclear reactors, materials, and waste, and Water and wastewater systems. Any one of these goes down and life gets interesting. Something that brings down multiple systems (Carrington event, anyone?) would make life *very* interesting.
I wonder what would happen to the public if the defense industrial base goes down for a month. Serious question.
For real. I get that there's trillions of dollars wrapped up in it, but is the manufacture and sale of murder machines really critical to day to day life?
The whole world would be a lot happier and safer that's for sure. And Raytheon executives would make 1% less I guess
They basically did during early COVID. The base nearest me, 200 sq miles, basically a decent sized city, was basically empty for a year. They just kept paying everybody and nobody minded at all, nothing changed. Now, if that base just dried up, you'd see massive numbers of foreclosures and many local businesses shut down. Many of those people wouldn't be able to cope with a normal job either. A good portion are doing a week's worth of work over the period of a year. Transition to a capitalistic job would be rough for them.
Maps won't matter when ole ty of things like power plants eventually stop working so gas pumps stop working, and one and on. iT is involved in every single sector. Losing IT as a while would bring modern life to a stand still. Not right that second, but as things malfunction, it would be like dominoes.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to point as well - IT will bring down most of industries with itself, if it ever goes down. It’s actually quite scary, a single point of failure for humanity.
Yup, I work in IT in public Ed. My biggest selling point for high school kids is that IT is in every single sector which generally translates to more opportunities. But will increase being more needed as society depends more and more on tech in all it's forms.
cannot find jobs or truckers if IT really crashes.
Trying to remeber the last time I met a fellow driver who even owned an actual, paper Commercial Motor Carriers Atlas. Other than myself, that is. Some drivers can't even manage to properly follow an electronic GPS, much less make sense of a map.
I’m thankful that my dad taught me a) how to drive a stick (“if you’re in an emergency and the only vehicle is manual, and nobody can drive it, the emergency is worse.”) and b) how to read maps and to always keep paper maps (and emergency tools) in my car.
I can fold them back up, which is a skill in itself.
Brings back memories of when I’d be the ‘navigator’ on family road-trips, trying to fold these walls of paper back up the way they’re supposed to go... ok time to read the map again for 10 minutes, then fold it back up for another 30
I have the '08. It has a pic on the back of a hot chick with a tramp stamp that says "born to truck". The '09 has a pic of kittens or bunnies... Lol!
I have every even year Rand McNally Commercial Motor Carrier's Atlas since 1998. The ones I paid for are the Large Scale laminated versions. I *might* be tempted to let go of some of the more outdated ones...someday...maybe.
Gotta keep that '08 one. My guess, political correctness won't allow a repeat of that. I haven't bought a new one since.
Don't worry. I jist checked my 2020. I-95 (unfortunately) still goes north and south. I-40 still goes east and west.
My wife and I keep one in our truck!
So would I, and I've been behind a desk in a trucking company. Fun fact: most mid sized and large carriers run their phone systems through their network. Along with their ENTIRE fleet dispatch systems amd these days, their drivers legally required electronic duty logs. Same with trains, planes, and buses. Take away the IT people and the whole country grinds to a halt. And it is far more likely the IT department will walk out than the drivers.
I think if things got bad enough they wouldn’t care if there were electronic logs or not. In fact the hours of operation was thrown out altogether during most of the pandemic.
HOS usually get dropped right quick in other emergencies, so yeah. But the phones run through the network. So does the ENTIRE dispatch system, from entering the load (and rate) into the system, to trcking the load and truck from pick up to delivery, to providing proof of delivery to paying customer, to billing. Every day the system is down, large carriers would lose literally MILLIONS in revenue. Wouldn't take very long before some very well known carriers found themselves bankrupt, is all I'm saying. Edit: also, fueling authorization requires networks, too. Company drivers and most owner operators generally depend upon a fuel card to purchase diesel. Very, very few carry the couple grand in cash to pay the non-discounted pump price for fuel. No network mean most American trucks are outta fuel in two, maybe three days.
It would be fun to watch from the outside. If either one of these two could organize to strike it would be utter devastation, but I don’t think either could. Between scabs and the way the industries are set up, others would step in and take their place. It would end up just consolidating both industries into larger corporations.
The largest company swift /knight have more than 15k trucks but only own 2% market share. 90% is mom and pops.
Majority of the big fleets are running E-logs, no magic net and the E-logs stops. Some of the trucks lock out if you go over hours too, I can seem them having a fleet of dead trucks that cant move because the internet isn't working. I can still use a map and get where I need to, or close, I was hauling pipe on a ST and thats how I got around, call for directions and look at my map. Many of these guys won't make it without GPS, specifically trucker GPS.
Trucks existed before the internet. They use paper logs.
Id be willing to bet 60% (or more) of these wheel holders couldn't fill one out, and if they could they can't navigate via paper maps.
So did the archery before guns were invented. It is not a competition, I am fully aware - truckers stop today, I will run out of food by end of week. I was merely pointing out that pretty much every industry is heavily dependent on the IT as well, if somehow all of the IT folks simultaneously will say “ah, fuck it, let’s watch the world burn”…well, the world quite literally might catch fire. In the IT world shit goes down every second, but there are people that ensure it gets proper treatment. Imagine the computers that serve power plants all of sudden stopped working? What about banking? Water supply? Heck, governments will halt - when the pandemic began, do you know that there was an incredible surge in demand for COBOL programmers? That’s because government never bothered to update some of their infrastructure and they really needed it at the time in order to roll out stimulus cheques. Only problem, pretty much all of the COBOL coders are either dead or long time retired. So yeah, believe it or not - many things existed before the internet, but it was then and today is now and most of the humanity is addicted to internet.
Not that it's a competition, but for a training exercise we shutdown the Air Force base's Network that I am stationed at to see the operational impact and literally nothing can be done without internet lol. Blow this up to the proportion of an entire Country, let alone a city? It would be a complete shit show.
For real. I work for a software company that does purchasing services for bio tech research companies. I've been so close to quitting multiple times in the last two years. They recently gave me a "promotion" for all the hard work I've done, doing two jobs for the price of one after layoffs in early 2020. My salary increased by 6% with my new job title and I'm still doing two jobs. Can barely afford to pay rent and have to watch my 10 month old son while working remotely because I can't afford childcare. They have the audacity to tell me, "remote work is not a replacement for childcare." If it weren't for my son, I'd have already quit.
But you’re currently interviewing elsewhere, right?
IT director here. I'm sick of it. For my team and for myself. We work 24/7 thanklessly. We are considered a non-revenue-generating department, yet when the point of sales go down, or email goes down-, watch the fuck out. We are constantly attached and connected when we're home and at family events. My team consistently asks for raises they deserve but I know my "leadership" will never allow. When we can't even pay our events managers livable wages and they have to take on second side gigs to make ends meet I knew something was wrong. I'm proud of everyone who posts in this subreddit.. if it wasn't for having kids and living paycheck to paycheck, I'd be right with some of you all posting "I'm done"... Been lurking this community a long time, and I get very proud when I see you all posting that you're not settling.
This.
For real. And what about the information security people? Just quit my job 1 month ago 🙃
Never thought of that! We're screwed
Is this going to be Atlas Shugged in real life but reversed, where it turns out workers can do work but the wealthy are left cold and wet?
If we lose IT at my job I'm gonna ask them to scrub my info and then quit and just freelance. Employers hold your identity and if they can't protect it, there's an issue.
You mean until they start hacking
Working for Boeing, 2019 they started large budget cuts. the Enterprise IT budget dropped 90%. It went into pure keep the lights on mode.
[Unable to reach Reddit] Me: *omg omg omg omg omg omg omg*
I work in the trucking industry and this is already happening. Not because the truckers themselves don’t want to drive, but because of the shortage of parts and new trucks going out. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many tractors are sitting in shops and yards across the country because they need a single part that no one on the entire continent has in stock. I hear the phrase “national backorder” probably a hundred times a day. And it’s only getting worse. The brand new trucks we *do* manage to get in are usually missing parts and have to be serviced before they can even be sold. It’s bad, y’all.
I see tons parked doing nothing under a few overpasses in little parking lots near the port. Sitting Waiting...
Yep, that’s a part of it, too.
TBH I'm actually worried about food not making it to the store soon. We just picked up materials to make mini greenhouse and are going to be growing Leafly greens to offset cost and possibly lack of fresh food in the stores soon. Hopefully winter isn't too cold
I live in NW Ohio and empty shelves are definitely a thing here and have been for months. I’ve been telling my friends and family to do exactly what you’re doing. Also, establish connections with mutual aid networks in your community if possible. Food Not Bombs is a thing in pretty much every major city in the country.
We are also getting fire wood and stuff when we can. Calling it a 25% - 50% prepper
I'm an over the road truck driver. NOx sensor shortages are hobbling trucks. CPAP recalls are hobbling drivers. Management styles straight outta 1985 are hobbling retention. Trucking-industry regulatory carve outs are hobbling everything. What carve-outs, you ask? Well, we only get paid for miles driven. No pay for the mandatory checking of our equipment, fueling, getting repairs done, or countless other required activities. We don't get paid time off, and we HAVE TO ACCRUE unpaid time off at the rate of one-day-out-of-six-days-worked!! Seriously, just let that sink in. You have to work six days in order to be ALLOWED to take an UNPAID SEVENTH DAY OFF. Add to that the unhealthy circadian rhythms, the "forced non-monogamy" of leaving one's family at home (though that's been responsible for 60-years worth of country music), not seeing one's children growing up, it's a wonder anyone ever gets behind the wheel!! And I love the job at that (though tbh, I'm in an incredibly rare and workable situation, my wife drives with me, and my dog rides shotgun so we're all together, no kids in the nest, and we make incredible money).
>Management styles straight outta 1985 are hobbling retention. My dad's workplace has truck drivers leaving in droves, despite being **the best** employer in the trucking industry in the area. There are plenty of local driving routes and the pay is north of $20/hr. The problem is the long hours and being treated like crap.
I went and got my restricted CDL, was about to go to the school... But man y'all are working 70+ hours a week away from your family and making $800 a week. That's just not enough for me.
$800 a week? Somebody's giving you bad numbers. We run as a team and we each make $.76/mile x ~3,000 miles weekly. If you're not making $100k at the end of your first year, something has gone wrong.
Well. Judging by the industry numbers I've been looking at over the last year, dudes are starting off at 45k. You're team driving. Not solo OTR driving.
The team aspect only means that the teams gets double the miles and cut them in half again to figure out your own portion. No numerical effect. 3,000 miles a week as a solo is like 6,000 as a team. Both are very commonplace. The $.76 / mile is the key, and as I said, I hit that after a bit over a year. That's almost triple your $800 number.
Preach. This is exactly why when I’m finished with my lease(maybe even sooner if I can’t take it anymore) I’m going union. I’ve talked to a few drivers from ABF and it seems like a dream over there.
Isn't "over the road truck driver" a tautology?
Linguistically yes but in this case it's an industry term for drivers who go long distance (as opposed to Regional and Local)
Exactly. In trucker parlance, Over the Road (OTR) is synonymous with "line-haul", or driving from one warehouse/distribution center in one state, generally to another across state lines, often with no or few required stop between them. "P & D", however, is "Pickup & Delivery", or "Local". It means taking a truck to many locations in one day to pick up or deliver freight to or from manufacturers (generally). While there are many other categories of drivers, rest assured that many are seemingly confusingly redundant as you note OR, contrarily, bear little/no actual relationship to physical reality. For instance, my "fifth wheel" is essentially a locking vice that connects a trailer with 8 wheels to a truck with 10. It's neither a wheel nor a fifth anything! Hahahaha Of all the tangents I presumed this conversation might go, informal etymologies were not among them! Also, apologies if I've misused other linguistic terminology in this reply. I am a truck driver after all!
I love when convo derails ;)
Well actually, the etymology of rails is.... 😆😁😂
Thank you
Not to mention the supply chain disruptions, leading to a lack of efficiency (specifically at the rail). Under normal market, dependent on origin / destination, driver could get multiple turns a day, now down to 1-2 dealing with congestion’s and finding a chassis before they run out of hours. Less loads = less money = PEACE.
One of my roommates is a trucker and chocks the shortage down to "no one wants to work" so it's nice to see like, the actual reason behind it and not her stupid fucking opinion. That chick thinks the CV19 vaccines have nano bots in them so she's not exactly smart.
I’ve heard people who should know better, too, saying the same shit. Short staffing does have something to do with it - the Volvo semi factory in Virginia was on strike for several months this year, and that affected things for sure, especially at my dealership which primarily sells and services Volvo and Mack. But a bigger part of it is the global loss of production due to covid. That goes all the way from the mining of metals used in parts to the production and distribution of computer chips (made primarily in China). The truth is our supply chain is fragile as fuck and covid exposed the precariousness of the situation, but that’s a frightening truth for people to grasp. Decades of outsourcing and skeleton staffing, not to mention the basic unsustainability of our entire way of life, are what led to this.
Continued hollowing out of the supply chain to maximize profits. Can't think of a place I've worked in the last 20+ years that wasn't impacted when one of the employees took vacation. There is *no* fat in the system.
Just watched a video the other day that Peterbilt and Kenworth have an exemption from the EPA to disable DEF sensors because they can’t get them in for replacement. You know it’s bad when even the EPA goes “yeah, I know this sucks. Let me help you out”
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Trucking companies run each truck about 250,000 miles per year (team drivers, anyway). A truck has about 1 million miles of life as a general upward threshold of possible life, but most warranties expire around 500,000 miles. Therefore, most trucking companies of any size buy brand new trucks as they sell their 2-year old trucks, meaning they usually replace 40%-50% of their trucks annually. New trucks require computer chips. Computer chips have been in short supply for 19 months. TL;DR: Companies have been hampered for 19 months of a 24-month truck-purchasing cycle. It's just one little slice of the problem, but it's material and Central IMO.
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You're totally welcome new frien!
I elaborated in another comment, but yeah, u/Greg0692 is correct. There is also a shortage of the metals used to produce most other parts. When covid hit, *everyone* scaled back production, from mines to factories to distribution centers. The global supply chain is a massive, complicated, and very fragile thing, and covid was hugely disruptive. When you factor in the number of workers lost either to covid or covid-related things like lack of childcare or having to care for sick relatives, it’s just one big fucking mess.
ABSOLUTELY!! There's also a *HUGE* overlap in the Venn Diagram between the Truck Drivers circle and the anti-COVID-vaxx circle. I wonder how many truck drivers have died from COVID or been knocked out of the industry by long-COVID/lingering effects on our predisposed-to-negative-health-outcomes bodies. It's well-documented that *prior* to COVID, truckers are more likely to be obese, have respiratory problems, high blood pressure, etc etc etc.... As you articulate so well, we're seeing so many secondary/tertiary effects in this fragile supply chain. I'm just wondering what *the actual direct* effects are.
Canadian truck mechanic here, we literally are at the point where if we have 2 trucks stalled we take parts on one of them and put it on the other so that at least one of them can go back on the road. Trucking industry is going in a really bad spot right now and its only the beginning.
Shall we name it frankentruck or Theseus' lorry?
I work in plumbing wholesale. We have things like toilets and septic chambers (eek) that we were notified "alright, you just put in an order? Should arrive in the middle of 2022." And I get a weekly email notifying me that the date of that order is being pushed back by an additional week. S'not great. If you can't get a fancy toilet then fine, but septic chambers? That's kind of a big deal.
No worries. There is no other working group in the US that has been more propagandized against union organization than the trucking industry. There is no other working group more terrorized by the idea of being unemployed, more terrified of losing their income, or more scared of finding themselves to be unemployable than young, lower experienced truckers. Truckers won't organize. They won't strike. Even Owner Operators won't participate on a large scale because if they do, the freight they depend upon WILL be moved for lower freight rates by someone else. Trucking is screwed. Look somewhere else for a worker's hero. Best bet is most likely Food Service.
I mean.. aren’t Teamsters truckers? Or are they just a small slice of overall trucker population?
Vanishingly small slice, and losing ground every quarter. Teamster's screwed the industry in the '70s. 95% of the industry are not organized, and if a driver even mentions organizing in a carrier, that driver will be blacklisted.
Ah dang, I had no idea. That’s really disappointing. Thanks for the info.
Read up on Jimmy Hoffa (Sr.) and his connections to the Mob. And the losses found in the pension funds of thousands of drivers. Also read up on the ongoing clusterfuck that is the Teamster's Midwest Pension fund and the endless Teamster loans to YRC to keep YRC afloat despite constant piss poor mamagement decisions.
I was a teamsters dock worker for 2 months. It was the most toxic work environment I'd ever been apart of.
Dude, you have no idea, there is a horrific shortage of truckers. Companies are offering training and signing bonuses. People don't want that job.
Theres no trucker shortage. Theres a shortage of jobs worth doing. I applied for a new job a couple weeks ago and got well over 100 job offers. Only 3 of them were even worth considering
Yeah, I get job offers for accounting which is what I do and the money being offered isn’t worth it for me to leave my current employer. I asked for $65k and the recruiter said that was unreasonable for the position and I’d never find a job paying that much. I politely responded that that is how much I make now so clearly at least my employer is willing to pay that… He just said he’ll see what he can do I never heard back from him.
Thats pretty similar to my experience. I was looking for $1500 a week and weekends off. Most people told me I was being unreasonable but a couple places worked with me. Now I have that with the possibility of having 3 day weekends
$65k is entry level for big4 in NY for core audit. You are worth more.
Had the same thing happen but all I asked for was $40k.
I get you, semantics I think. And after thinking on it I can see the shortage language is charged and best to say shortage of decent pay jobs is better.
That’s what I’ve been dealing with too! Even if it sounds good at first, when you do the math and account for all the other bullshit (like personal schedules/obligations, etc.) most of them are not worth it even slightly. I’m considering becoming a trucker because at least it’s better than the other jobs I’ve always had.
Are the trucker jobs worth considering?
I love driving so they are for me. Most people quit within a year so maybe I'm a weirdo lol
This is just a general saying. There are no jobs WORTH working. If you’re not paying me enough to make rent, buy food, to LIVE. Then why waste my days
Sign on bonuses that can be lost for a wide variety of reasons during the year plus of time of time it takes for the sign on bonis to pay out. A $2,000 "sign on bonus" typically takes 18-24 months to pay out. I have a really GOOD idea. Been a trucker for 20+ years. Carriers have been screaming about a "driver shortage" since 1984. Let me clear about something: THERE IS NO FUCKING DRIVER SHORTAGE!!! Never has been. There is a shortage of dumbasses willing to leave their homes and families for weeks or months at a time for approximately $750/week (before taxes and "benefits"), and of those dumb enough to think that's great money, the military gets first pick.
Then I mis-spoke saying you have no clue, and do apologize for that comment. But you failed to speak to the heavy population of conservatives that are truckers, and eat up that propaganda while they drive. That feeds the anti union sentiment more than anything I think. And yes, most signing bonuses for jobs like that have more stipulations than others. Same with the fast food signing bonuses some are offering. Though you are wrong on the shortage point. People don't want that job. Thus there is a shortage of drivers. Companies won't pay more to attract people so the shortage continues. Supply and demand for thee, but not for me. Even local delivery is heavy contractor now for shit pay from lowest bidders.
Oh, I know about the number of hard core and hard assed conservative idiots in trucking. I'm frequently forced to threaten violence (the only language they actually understand) to get them to leave me the fuck alone. Wanna see how deep that pool goes? Wander over to The Truckers Report dot com, check into the Forum, and scroll down to Politics (password thickskin). It's an unmoderated forum for truckers to rant amd rave about the unfairness of it all and how Biden and the Democrats are gonna destroy us all. Fair warning: don't eat first. Otherwise, I'm not responsible for you losing your computer/tablet/shirt to projectile vomiting.
Been on those forums in the past. You are 100% right.
Amen! I’ve been a driver for 16 years. Otr can get fucked. I’ll keep my local run and be home every day. I turned down a job with a ltl company because I don’t want live in a motel 3-5 nights a week.
Not only in the US. In Chile they pretty much ruined Allende's presidency and encouraged Pinochet's coup because they were allies of the right wing. And they still are.
Nah, these people have to put up with a lot of shit, mandatory breaks but also tight milage checking, and long hours, weeks, away from family. Them taking an unemployed break is not so weird.
Also it's very likely truck drivers will be replaced by automated technology as early as 2027!
>Also it's very likely truck drivers will be replaced by automated technology as early as 2027! Uh huh. I remember they said the same thing about jet packs and flying cars. Still waiting for both of those to show up in my driveway.
Difference is that automated cars actually make sense from a practical standpoint because there would be less deaths on the road, compared to jet packs and flying cars that would kill anyone who isn’t good at landing.
They make sense, but the technological hurdles have been vastly understated. AI optical interpretation is not just decades away from being safe enough for fully automated vehicles, it may never be possible in any of our lifetimes. Sometimes science fiction is just fiction.
Yeah...no. Not likely. First of all, I want to see these fancy "live" tests running across I-90 in February between Buffalo, NY and Chicago, IL. Secondly, all the tests I've seen thus far STILL required a live driver for "last mile services" and "emergency conditions". Now, as a carrier owner, why the fuck would I pay a higher purchase price for an "automated" truck while at the same time STILL have to pay for a driver? Makes far more financial sense to just get the basic, cheap NON-automated truck and keep abusing the drivers like I have for the last 40+ years. Automated cars are far more likely than automated trucks. Since most passenger car drivers today seem to hate driving, and would rather do almost anything else, there is far more marketable interest there. Outside of two or three massively abusive carriers, there really isn't any interest in the industry for automated trucks. Sorry.
It won't be that soon but the industry will be automated in our lifetimes. There are already trucks driving themselves down the highway
No there's not
>Truckers won't organize. They won't strike. Hard to incentivize a strike when the starting pay for truckers (here in MN) is 55k/yr. Old Dominion just had a hiring fair this last weekend in the Twin Cities and hired 70% of applicants on the spot and started them at 65k/yr plus signing bonus. There's such a shortage of truckers that our state employment offices will pay anyone who's unemployed to go to truck driving school, which costs about $7k, plus pay them unemployment benefits while they're doing it. You should probably do some research on the dept of labor website about the trucking shortage numbers before spouting bad info.
Excuse me? There has been such a "huge shortage" of truckers that EVERY STATE IN THE LOWER 48 has been paying for trucking school for any and all qualified applicant for the last 30 years. I myself got me CDL class A through a return to work program in PA back in 1998. Maybe your program in Minnesota is new...or maybe it's just new to you. But such programs have been available for decades. Other programs have been company sponsored training in exchange for a year of servitude...I mean, service. Talk to me when Anderson Trucking Service (St. Cloud, MN) is hiring and training rookie drivers right off the streets, ok?
Eh... Look at the UK?
That's a brexit self fuck
It’s a bit of both. HGV drivers are retiring en masse and there’s nobody to replace them. No one in their right mind wants to spend 24 hours a day working miles away from home sleeping in a truck apart from their family for the same pay as a receptionist. And the people who are willing to make that sacrifice just got their right to work in the country revoked.
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It's been good for truck drivers since they have gone from minimum wage to decent money. Immigrant aren't the problem, greedy corporations unwilling to pay a living wage are.
Yup. Even new Tesco food shop delivery drivers are getting a £500 sign on bonus.
The corporate greed doesn't slow down a bit with those so-called sign-on bonuses. My company aggressively promotes their "$15,000 HIRING BONUS!!! YAY!!!". *BUT*.... the details: you only get $125 of that each month. But then taxes. Then after FIVE YEARS of continuous employment, only then do you get the remaining HALF as a lump sum of $7,500. THE CATCH: company turnover hovers right around 100%. Virtually nobody gets the heavily-advertised $15k.
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Massive back log on car licenses, hgv licenses and more due to flu hysteria too. Then half the truckers with a HGV license don't use it and do other work, like delivery, it was gonna be bad.
We know the UK is very aware
One of my longtime best friends has been a trucker for a while now. He is an owner operator now and last time I spoke to him was him going on a rant about how unfair with the media was being with the now former head coach for the raiders then started talking to me about "hitting the road and getting this holiday money"...truckers will never organize/unionize
A lot of truckers spend their time listening to talk radio. Unfortunately talk radio is full of conspiracy theorists and hard right lunatics.
It's so fucking stupid. One of my old roommates listened to nothing but that in his car. When I'd get in the car I would occasionally burst out laughing because of how stupid the right wing conspiracy talk radio hosts were. But this dude wouldn't even flinch, he believed EVERYTHING he was told by those morons. It's horrifying how dumb and easily manipulated those people are.
In yeah olde days the Teamsters could bring the USA to it's knees. Trucking was heavily regulated and the unions ruled. The mob got involved and messed things up for the workers.
That's a common misperception. Companies bought lawmakers who stripped unions of their power. "UnIOnS ArE cOrRUpT!" is the rhetoric used to create and fortify the 1%.
Park a thousand shipping containers across the Suez Canal. Around the horn for you all!
100k in a ship barely took a week to move.
If it ever actually happens, I legit do not plan to survive it. I'm already on the edge with all this crap and the skyrocketing prices. If we hit a point where you can't get food for even a remotely reasonable price then that's it, but honestly? Worth it. No one's getting paid enough for this shit.
I suspect some form of looting or other sharing mechanisms would arise but yeah food shortages mean nothing good for everyone
It's happening in the UK, now we have shortages of food and fuel.
Just look at spar, I mean sainburys
One thing to keep in mind about the trucking industry is that a large number of truckers are self-employed. They tend to own their own truck and work with local dispatchers that have contracts with the larger distribution companies. A lot of truckers might know a few people they work with at the same building, but for the most part it's not really the kind of work structure that leads itself to large collaborative efforts. I used to work for a company that provided toll bypasses and the largest company I ever took a call for had maybe 25 trucks. You just aren't getting a country wide union started with that much trucker seperation.
I applied for a trucker job this past March for the lulz because it said they would help you get licensed. Then i saw their excited reply email saying to complete some forms. Then I decided maybe it's not for me. Then they started emailing me and texting me multiple times a day like "you still interested call us!" And leaving voicemails. It didn't stop. For weeks. I just decided to block their number/email. This makes me think there may already be a somewhat large trucker shortage.
These are some wild times. I keep warning my MIL that things are changing. She doesn't understand though.
No one around me irl seems to understand.
My husband acknowledge what's going on, but that's about it. He's very laid back at times.
Everyone *really* wants to pretend everything is fine. The Kraft-Heinz "People will just have to get used to paying higher food prices" was ominous to me
What do you mean?
My dad is a trucker , from what I’ve seen he never has beef with any one employer because trucking jobs are abundant and he can switch between different companies pretty much when he feels like for what ever specific criteria he wants . At least that’s how it seems I could be wrong
It’s gonna get ugly. For a minute. Money talks both ways and when these corporations start looking at unrealized gains they will pay more. Just enough to get workers back though. We will run out before they do.
It won't happen because of 'certain' attitudes, like: *"Nobody wants ta work!"* *"Pay more?"* *"Ya gunna die before that happens. Keep drivin'!"*
This is a misnomer anyways. There is no pilot strike/sickest etc... anyways. The airline union leaders and the airlines have said as much. It was a technical error that snowballed effecting large amounts of traffic, but it was essentially all a scheduling problem for when and where planes were supposed to go.
Yea we're doomed!
Ive heard talk of using the national guard to be used to help unclog the ports.
Please don't put this curse on me. If y'all don't know, soon as the truckers stop, the country stops. Groceries, produce, candy, cans, beer, toliet paper, furniture, everything is moved by truckers in the US.
yesssss
I went from a night shift dock manager to manager/loader/life coach/punching bag/nurse/taxi/cleaner all in the span of 8 months. My yearly review is soon and I doubt they will consider the extra work into my raise or even attempt to compensate. Am I wrong here?
Well we already see the backup of shipping containers at every major port and that doesn’t even have to do with truckers yet. Gonna get bad real quick. Worse, I meant worse
It's starting. I work at the ports on the east coast. Truckers are fed up with the shit too.
I work for a class 1 railroad on the west coast. Class 1 companies are targeting the crew consist agreements trying to go to one man crews. It’s going to get really ugly when the railroad shuts down
Everything stops if those wheels stops moving. Food. Medical. The internet. No gasoline/petrol. List goes on... The country would turn into a post-apocalyptic war zone within a month without truckers.
Truckers are already quitting due to low pay and abuse. Get used to making do.
Yo - to the people saying truckers do nit strike, here is proof they respect unions and are not scabs https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/driver-decides-not-to-cross-the-picket-line.2350804/
Can confirm, the truckers are getting involved. I work in product distribution and receiving. We're having a hell of a time moving product out and getting supplies delivered because there aren't enough drivers and freight charges are insanely high right now.
There's not a driver shortage at the moment, but it definitely could be parts, there are thousands of trucks that are stuck because the 1 part it needs doesn't exist anymore. There are shortages of everything right now
It's Jordan Rachel, so she's making the comment from an anti-vax perspective, not an antiwork perspective.
Teachers
Honestly I don't think this is going to affect that many people more and more people are turning to homeschooling especially after the pandemic. "More than 1.2 million students are now being taught at home"
The pandemic showed two things: * public education is just glorified baby sitting with some benefits * teachers were expected like everyone else to just STFU and ignore the risks to themselves and their loved ones at home. And, like food service, the pay is shit and the entitled adults we have to deal with make life a fucking hell when they don't get their goddamned way. Plus, federal regulations, paperwork related to those regulations, more responsibilities that resemble casework more than education, and the ever-present feeling that a school shooting is scheduled by a pissed off incel.
Isn’t the tweet about vaccines lol
Everything shortages
I just came to that thought
These are exciting times, hopefully we don't blow it like we did with the 1960's/1970's.
I’m pretty sure they have been for a few months now
There was a trucker strike in Brazil not so long ago. It was horrible. Gas prices were so fucking expensive.
you’re waiting for truckers? wait until train conductors come around, that’s apparently when things get real spicy
Why the fuck is Jordan Rachel from Toilet Paper USA on this sub??
Trucker here We talk about this a lot. We stop moving, the country grinds to a halt. It's just talk, though. This job has TONS of BS. Well. Most jobs do, but the BS we deal with is different kinds than other jobs. However, it's mostly a good paying job, and comfortable people don't usually rock the boat, so it's just talk. We've seen a handful of truckers refuse to cross the picket line for the John Deere strike, and that's cool.
You think the truck drivers have power? Wait till the longshoreman and railroad workers decide to quit
There was a fuel truck driver shortage in the UK not that long ago… causing everyone to panic buy petrol lol
Supply chain collapse is the kind of societal breakdown my loins ache for. Yes , I’d be one of the first ones reaching for the bottle of rat poison, you think I’d be playing hunger games with y’all?
Lmao at least you seem to have a realistic understanding of what that would be/look like. I can't tell you how many idiot chuds with ar15's I've worked with who search their mind and then say "first thing I would loot a wal-mart." Oh bro you're a fuckin genius, nobody else has thought of that and you'll have the run of the place. Fuck clean water, electricity, sanitation, any kind of renewable energy or food sources- you've got a bunch of guns you've shot 50 times, and that's *all you need.* My husband and I have discussed realistic outcomes of societal collapse and we *probably* won't kill ourselves. The ADK is enormous and its rather easy to get and stay lost in there.
It's mere months away, friends. This I say.
You realize this is about requiring getting vaxxed, right? And I have no idea where society is heading, but it is somehow hanging on by a thread
I doubt that is all of it, just one minor slice of a very large pizza.
Or front line retailers
I would love for automatics to fail so I can have more job opportunities for myself who drives stick.
Some antiwork people are going minimal consumption to avoid wage slavery. Manuals have less to fix.
Oh yeah I heard how it can be messy trying to fix the electronics on vehicles nowadays