Yes, Rick, I have a plan. I'm in the trucking industry. Every single carrier in the U.S. is suffering right now from a shortage of drivers. You want job creation? My company has grown by 300 drivers in the past 12 months. We haul for General Motors. You might have heard of them. They had a $1.4 billon profit in the first quarter this year. Because people buy cars, and they always will. A lot of people eat food, too. All of that moves by truck.
We still need more drivers. But we can't get them. You know why? Because a large number of people who go to truck driving school (many on government-sponsored training programs) quit in the first year and go back on welfare or unemployment. Why? Because we use that dirty 4-letter word in our industry: W-O-R-K. I can't tell you how many drivers I see in a year who work long enough to get the lights turned back on and the house payment caught up, and then they quit and go back on unemployment again. Their applications have a decade of driving history for 4 months, 8 months off, 6 months working, 4 months off - on and on. I know a large number of drivers that this is their way of life. But every time they CHOOSE to live like this, they still end up on the unemployment or welfare numbers.
My wife manages a Burger King and she sees the same thing. $10 an hour ain't good enough. They have to work too hard to make that money. So they quit and go back on unemployment or welfare again. They have a want ad 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I guess the President should get off his @ss and "create" high-paying, low effort jobs for all these people, too.
My company hires the year around for driving jobs that pay $650 on the low side to over $1,000 a week once you have some seniority. Union jobs, with benefits. But yes, it is real work.
One of my terminals is in Michael Moore's old back yard - Flint, MI. When Buick City folded, some of the displaced workers took government-paid retraining to learn to drive truck. The vast majority of them went back on welfare and unemployment again, because they didn't make $26 per hour to sit on their @sses and do nothing.
But don't take my word for it - ask JB Hunt or Don Schneider or Moyes over at Swift. Between the three of them they run about 75,000 trucks, and they can't get enough drivers, either.
When my job went away when I was younger, I drove truck for 7 years and made a very good living at it. It wasn't my dream job, but it paid my mortage and took care of my kids. When I grew tired of the road and being gone all the time, I moved into the safety side of the industry and bettered myself. I did that on my own, as opposed to calling the President and demanding he create something for me.
