- But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell.
A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.
About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.
Mass layoffs will wreck any community. I grew up outside of Rochester, NY. In 2012, Kodak laid off about 27,000 people...in a city of less than 200,000. Rochester hasn’t recovered, and probably won’t. The surrounding area is still devastated from that blow.
No shit. I'm also from that area. It's weird - there's been some gentrification of Rochester and taking down the Inner Loop to me is still a net-positive, and there's been quite a few spinoff companies from Kodak (and Xerox) but...it's not enough. There's no easy way to entirely restructure a cities workforce like that.
I've been processing this article for a while, because this is right smack dab in the center of my company's business. When I read the article, I opened up our customer database and did a quick search... Celadon is not our customer. Whew! But.... For several years now, it has been VERY hard to get and retain truck drivers. Every trucking company has open unfilled truck driving positions.... local, short haul, long haul, partial loads, mixed loads, regular routes... no matter what type of truck, if you have a CDL truck driver's license, you can get a job tomorrow. But.... The truck driving industry has a 90-100% turnover rate. Yes, you read that right: By this time next year, you will have all new drivers working for you. Every one of those drivers need to be trained. Every one of them needs to be licensed and have current drug tests and clear records and and and ... But.... Recently a new law went into effect that you can no longer have "paper logs". Truck drivers are required by law to record ALL of their driving in log files. Any time they are stopped by a police man or drive through a weigh station or cross a border, they need to be able to produce their logs for the last 8 days. These logs must document where they traveled from/to, where they stopped to take mandatory breaks, where they slept at night, what truck they were driving, what load they were carrying, and a record of every single pre-trip and post-trip inspection they performed before turning the truck on in the morning and turning it off in the evening. That used to be all on paper, and very sketchy and inaccurate a lot of the time. Then tired or amphetamine-powered truck drivers ran into minivans and killed whole families and the government had to get involved. Now all these logs must be done on a tablet computer using an approved and certified app. It's called ELD, or Electronic Logging Device. This device talks to the GPS satellites and to the engine's ECM and verifies everything the driver says/does in their logs, and prevents them from falsifying their driver logs. And suddenly truck drivers are leaving the business in DROVES. Retiring. Going to other industries. Becoming mechanics rather than drivers. And now your 93% driver turnover rate is up over 110%, while shipping and transportation is at an all-time high demand, and you will hire anyone with two limbs and one eye as a driver. And Celadon goes out of business suddenly. Sure, because of fraud. But the BUSINESS of trucking is not in good shape, not healthy, and not sustainable. And then Tesla comes out with an electric truck. And then a load drives from LA to NYC without a driver - a completely autonomous vehicle with a 50,000lb load drove public roads across the country, without incident. (Apparently.) Even without fraud at the top, running a trucking business today is simply too many variables out of your control, and is just constantly firefighting whatever is burning closest to your face at this very moment. There's no time to plan, think, or even get a good night's sleep. People have no idea what the hell is coming. It's a weird place to be right now.
We may be progressing faster than I initially thought: ... There were zero “disengagements,” or times the self-driving system had to be suspended because of a problem, Kerrigan said. I wish truckers had the time and/or drive (oops) to begin learning other skill sets, and demanded the opportunity at a unionized level. Young truckers especially. Are there young truckers? Sounds like a band name.A self-driving truck delivered butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
I've heard that there are parts of the country that haven't been able to fill enough CDL jobs for years and parts of the country that there is no work for truckers. I don't think that long haul trucking has good prospects going forward but if you'r any good at it and can pass a drug test there are places where you can get a good job. I've had people ask me if I ever considered getting my CDL and come work for them.
I'm not trying to speculate, but if trucking is like retail, manufacturing, and other industries, then I can probably guess both the pay and quality of work isn't what it used to be. I was pretty surprised to read how many companies are failing and I wonder if they're mostly smaller businesses that have to contend with a ton of overhead in a really competitive market.
Or it's a 40 hour a week 4 day a week city job that comes with a pension, decent benefits, a living wage and as much overtime as you are willing to take. It takes three months of bureaucracy and the ability to pass a drug test but those jobs are there. You have to show up at 6 am sharp or you'll get fired and be willing to muck about in sewers, it isn't all that bad a deal.