OMFG ... Funniest thread EVER ... ROFLMFAO !!!
@loaders ... I had to look over my shoulder and see if you were standing in my office ... get out of my head ... LOL. What you said is damn near word for word what I was thinking !!!
@artmax ... I suspect your $33k reefer O/O is low for the industry, and your $55k dry van O/O is an outlier. Generally speaking though an O/O wants to be able to pay for the truck, fuel, license, insurance, maintenance, usual repairs, and put about $120k in the bank as a wage. Most of them that work for good companies can do that.
Now, I shall ascend my soap box
The biggest issue, as Rob suggested, is new entrants that somehow think that load brokers are responsible to these people to make sure they make a profit. Nothing could be further from the truth. A load broker is responsible to make him/herself money. If a carrier, or independent, can't figure out on their own how to make money, then what are they even doing in the business in the first place?
The answer to that question is actually easier than you think. There is nothing else they can do.
Let's be honest ... most of this group are immigrants, and God Bless them for coming here as it takes a lot of guts to leave everything you know to move to a new country, with a new climate, and a new society, and start all over again. Frankly, I am not too certain I could do it.
A surprisingly large number of them come from their home countries with either post secondary education, or trade skills. These are not dumb people. They are traditionally quite skilled in their chosen calling. However, since they cannot, by law, perform in those industries in this country, they fall back on the only things left for them to do. Drive a truck, or start farming. Unfortunately doctors, surgeons, dentists, lawyers, x-ray techs, etc., etc., etc., are generally not business minded, not entrepreneurs, and do not normally make good truck drivers let alone independent operators, and they typically do not have the financial resources to get into farming in Canada.
Can you imagine, in your home country you were a skilled heart surgeon. You took people's hearts out of their chests, cut them apart, reassembled them into a better functioning heart, and in a few days the patients walk out of your hospital, alive and well. You come to Canada and the most you are qualified to do is drive a truck working for a fellow countryman whose societal rank in your home country is slightly lower than a common criminal.
So, our heart surgeon has had enough of working for a common criminal. He saves up whatever he can and buys a used truck ... from another common criminal, but he doesn't know that ... and jumps into the trucking business. If a common criminal can do it, how hard can it be, right? And now, our story begins to spiral out of control.
The bar for getting into this industry is so low it entices almost everyone with the lure of easy money. All you have to do is buy a truck and call a load broker, right? Except it's not easy money and these unfortunate people don't get to figure that out until they are mired so far in debt that the light at the end of the tunnel is nothing more than a pin dot, if if it can be seen at all.
Like him or not, Doug Ford's idea of Blue Seal testing immigrants is a good idea. It puts skilled people where they want to be, where we need them, and has the hidden benefit of getting them out of our industry.
Adopting California's AB5 regulation will finish the job of cleaning up this trucking industry mess we have on the go today.
I'm stepping down from my soap box now
Discuss ...
