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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

An article with that title is supposed to talk about how hiring decent drivers is more profitable than random cheap ones.

This one seems to have missed the memo, and only gets there briefly once or twice, but the title does not in any way imply an information-free article.

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I doubt their drivers are any better than anyone else's. Drivers are carefully trained and there are strict laws around driving trucks (much stricter than cars). They may do a bit more training than required, but there are other trucking companies that do the same.

That leaves the question of why they pay 2x more, then?

Maybe fewer road incidents, reducing liability? Like, maybe people who can provide for and spend time with their family have 11.3% fewer crashes?

(Edit: number was made up, hypothesis purely speculative.)

Because as others have mentioned, WalMart cannot afford logistic problems. A driver who knows they cannot find a better job will not bother looking for one. Thus that driver won't quit and have to be replaced on short notice. Hiring new drivers is difficult even if there isn't a shortage.

I'd venture they are one of the safest[0] fleets out there which is a direct reflection on the quality of their drivers. Hell, I'd happily say their yearly average is better than the monthly stats from the last company I drove for.

The biggest determining factor on a driver is their safety record and if you can manage to not hit anything (you're not aiming for) over a long enough time period it is quite possible to get the good jobs.

[0] https://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/query.asp?searchtype=ANY&query_t...

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