Trucking Is the Security Crisis You Never Noticed | Hacker News Reader

Trucking Is the Security Crisis You Never Noticed

foreignpolicy.com

12 pointsmolecule11 comments

Lurking behind the article's entire thesis, and yet barely addressed in it, is the issue that despite demand for truckers outstripping supply, their employers aren't willing to significantly raise wages. They instead eat the costs of trucks sitting empty despite loads available to carry. "Higher demand for labor raises wages" is the bread-and-butter of mainstream economical arguments for how to help poorer segments of society and, fundamentally, why economic growth is a good thing- yet cases like these show that it is simply not true. Raising wages for less skilled workers is apparently so absurdly painful for employers in almost any field that they'll pay almost any other cost.

This is how wage growth has stagnated for the majority of workers in the U.S., even in the face of a prolonged economic boom [0]. The standard economic models of the labor market do not work, and yet almost no one is willing to acknowledge this.

[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...

They can afford to have trucks sitting idle rather than raise pay because the cost of capital is at historic lows. If the cost of capital were higher, the balance between capex and opex would favor labor more.

Much of the middle class hollowing effect could be helped by rather small changes in capital costs.

I’m not an economist, and the following argument is qualitative- “cost of capital” essentially means the cost of things (as opposed to, the cost of services/labor.) Perhaps, indeed, when the cost of things goes up, this will lead to an increase in wages- but humans also require and purchase things, so this will drag their effective earning (their purchasing power) back down, even if their nominal wage has increased.

Which leaves peoples’ motivation to be truckers (and the fortunes of the middle class) in roughly the same boat regardless of the cost of capital.

No, cost of capital is not synonymous with "cost of things". It's how much you have to pay to use someone's money for a while. There are all kinds of other costs that go in to the cost of goods.

Big trucking companies borrow money and buy semi trucks. They get them straight from the manufacturer complete with 4-5 years worth of all maintenance and warranty. They run them for that time, spending nothing else other than fuel, tires, driver pay, and insurance cost, and then sell them at the end of the 4-5 year period. The cost of using the truck is essentially the difference between the purchase price-selling price, plus the interest cost of the borrowed money.

If that interest rate is low, let's say it's zero: they can buy 1,000 trucks and let them sit idle and not lose much money because they just turn around and sell them as almost new, and don't have to pay interest. If the interest cost is high, they need to keep the trucks working to bring in revenue to cover the depreciation + interest cost.

Lower and middle-class people don't use debt anywhere near the extent that capital-intensive businesses do. Higher interest rates do not affect their bottom line as much. So if the cost of capital goes up, there is pressure on that capital to produce, which makes it more beneficial to spend money on labor to create revenue. Labor gets a bigger slice of the revenue pie because it is more valuable compared to capital.

Even better, a dollar spent by a consumer is far more beneficial to the economy than a dollar spent by a corporation, because such a high proportion of corporate spending ends up back in the pockets of plutocrats and plutocratic corps. A dollar spent by a consumer tends to go back in the local economy at the grocery store, gas station, mechanic's shop, child care, etc. That same dollar gets spent again and again in the local economy as it passes along.

It's easy to roll back capital costs if you make a mistake. That is far harder to do with people.

It still works. It just means, letting the deliveries go idle is cheaper than raising wages. For all their complaining, it doesn't sound like they're in a big hurry to get those shipments underway: "but for most of us, the resulting delays are mostly an inconvenience."

Typically employers will always complain about not finding cheaper labor. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a big enough problem. Once the problem becomes big enough, they will need to raise wages or find ways to automate it: eventually they'll do whatever is cheaper.

Why not rebuild railroads here in the US? On a trans-country trip by Amtrak, I was struck by the number of abandoned spurs to industries which still seem to be operating. Presumably those industries have switched to road-based transportation.

Rail freight in the US is the highest in the world. Europe focuses on passenger rail which is where the misconception comes from. However the vast majority of the freight is travelling cross country from west to east.

Last mile rail is incredibly inefficient which is why intermodal has taken over. The shipping container is simply transferred from the train onto a truck bed for the last mile. This eliminates the need for expensive and rarely used spur lines which is why you see them mostly abandoned.

Freight rail in the United States is unmatched. Cheapest ton/$ and on-time.

Coal power plants are comfortable scheduling supply intake on a daily granularity as it’s very rare for it to arrive late. It’s also a reason passenger rail is more dismal in the states; the rails are operated by the freight companies and passenger trains have the lowest priority so they pull over to let a 2 mile train of coal pass by at 15 mph.

It’s also difficult to expand this capacity as the complexity of handling so many trains isn’t linear. Rail yards are both tough to revamp because they’re near 100% in-use and even just tough to physically expand: http://www.chicagonow.com/dennis-byrnes-barbershop/files/201...

If you have 1000 trucks and 10 000 containers to be moved, you have a problem with 100% of the delivery distance. Now if you cover 80% of the delivery distance by rail, you still have the impossible calculation of transporting 10 000 containers with just 1000 trucks for the resto of the 20% of delivery. This has been the problem since beginning of logistics, the bottleneck on the last mile to target.

>In the past, the fee per container going from Asia to Europe was often 2,000 euros [$2,300]. Today, it’s 200 euros [$233].

wow. i had no idea a container shipping fee was that low.

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