How is "just raise wages" more simplistic than "just lower taxes?" Somebody has to foot the bill no matter what you do. Do you think tax cuts are free? They are no less free than wage increases. When you cut taxes somebody else has to get their taxes increased to make up for the short fall, or some other service needs to be cut.
"Markets don’t work that way. You raise wages, trucking gets more expensive and demand drops, causing all sorts of unintended consequences."
YES! That is EXACTLY how markets work! These "unintended" consequences you speak of are the whole beauty of the free market. When you get a shortage of one good, the price of the good increase. This sends a price signal out in the rest of the economy which means more resources gets allocated to produce more of that good. That is the so called "unintended" consequences you speak of.
"Trucking is so competitive that most companies would go out of business if they raised wages 200-300%."
No, because they could raise prices. If all the competition got 200-300% higher wages, they would also be forced to raise prices, which means you are competing on a higher price.
Take McDonalds in my native Norway. They pay their workers about $25 per hour. How can they pay that without raising prices a lot? Yes they do have much higher prices than the US. But how can they then compete? They can because everybody else has higher prices. This isn't rocket science.
"The world is governed by reality, not wishes and hopes and mandates dictated by people that have little understanding of the economics of logistics — or the economics of anything for that matter."
Exactly, in a functioning market economy, prices of a good for which there is a shortage such as truck drivers, the price would go up. When prices don't go up, it suggests it is not a functioning free market. There could be many reasons for that. One would be e.g. collusion between companies or weak competition.