America has a massive truck driver shortage. Here's why few want an $80,000 job

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Originally Posted by Judy

HIgher wages for truck drivers and most any American Worker is a good thing

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More money for the same amount of work? No, that's inflationary!

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Originally Posted by Judy

and yes when demand increases and supply doesn't, then that can result in some inflation in that industry.

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Have you every seen wages go down when demand goes down? The only solution is to lay people off then hire new workers at a lower wage, if the wage isn't fixed by union contracts. https://www.alipac.us/images/icons/icon13.png

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Originally Posted by Judy

But as wages rise, more will enter that work force providing more supply which stabilizes the inflationary effects because as prices rise, consumers pull back and reduce their demand. This is called capitalism.

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And the prices then go down? No! The prices go up and stay up. Then as work becomes less available because of a slow down, workers demand more money for the same work, again, so they can maintain their living standard. And another round of INFLATION begins. It is a one way street.

Prices go up and down all the time on hundreds of thousands of products. For example, gas prices go up and then they go down every day or two. Real estate values go up and then they go down all the time.

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Originally Posted by Judy

Prices go up and down all the time on hundreds of thousands of products. For example, gas prices go up and then they go down every day or two. Real estate values go up and then they go down all the time.

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And the sun comes up, and the sun goes down every day. Yet some days it doesn't get as hot as other days. But time does not go backward. The Stock Market goes up and down, but over time, its track is always up. My groceries sometimes are cheaper, especially if there is a sale. But year to year, they have always gone up. Gasoline has ups and down, but year to year it is always up. Name anything that has gone down in price, other than new products as mass production brings them down. Cars haven't gotten cheaper. I remember a billboard near me as a kid, where Volkswagon Beetles were advertised for $1499! Adding another zero since then will not cover the increase. And over the years, I watched such billboards upping it to $1599, $1699, $1999, etc. But I never saw the price go lower.

It's all INFLATION!

That is supply and demand driving the prices, not wages.

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Originally Posted by Judy

That is supply and demand driving the prices, not wages.

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Yes, competitors in the same market compete by having sales or being able to lower prices by being more efficient. But wages are the bases for the cost of everything.

Diamonds don't cost anything. Nature makes them. But it is the labors to obtain them and get them to market that make them expensive. Oil likewise is free but for the labor to get it and refine it and deliver it. Labor is the one thing that makes everything expensive.

Supply and demand can justify higher wages, but wages are the variable that can make or break a business.

As Trump Stresses Manufacturing Jobs, How Important Are Labor Costs for Automakers?

by Paul A. Eisenstein / Feb.06.2017 / 11:26 AM ET

American consumers pay an average of $35,000 for their new car, truck, or crossover. But what does that sum actually cover? And with President Donald Trump's border tax threats that could add 20 percent to the price of any car manufactured outside America, exactly how crucial are labor costs to consumers — and automakers?

"We’d kill to cut a nickel off the price of a car,” one high-ranking automotive insider told NBC News.

Labor is nowhere near the most expensive part of building a car. Add in all factory costs, including the $1 billion price tag for the plant itself, and you’re looking at roughly 10 to 15 percent of that vehicle’s $35,000 sticker price, according to several senior industry executives who asked to remain anonymous in revealing typically proprietary data.

The auto industry has found itself in the political spotlight in recent months, as Trump has called on automakers to shift production back from Mexico to the U.S. Though a variety of factors have led them to move many models to plants south of the border, labor costs are one of the key factors.

Mexican auto workers barely earn as much in a day as their U.S. counterparts do in an hour — between $50 and $60, including wages and benefits, when you average out various union and non-unionized plants across the States, according to industry data.

Mounting Labor Costs

By far, parts and components add up to the single biggest factor when it comes to the cost of building a car — anywhere from 60 to 65 percent, says analyst David Andrea, with the Center for Automotive Research, or CAR, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

But both parts and labor figures are fluid and depend upon the type of vehicle. When it’s a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, equipped with such niceties as heated and cooled massaging seats, infrared night vision and semi-autonomous safety systems, those parts account for significantly more of the vehicle’s price tag.

Labor costs mount with complicated products like a Ford F-Series, explains CAR’s Andrea. That pickup “is a highly customized product, with a great number of permutations: bed lengths, cab sizes, powertrains. You can have 20,000, even 30,000 variations before you get to color and trim options. So, for a carmaker managing that sort of complexity, your manufacturing costs can be significantly higher.”

And that’s more than labor. There are the logistics of managing the plant — making sure the right parts are in the right places along the line. Such complex operations may be more difficult to automate and, where robots are used, they may be more costly because they have to be flexible enough to handle a variety of different tasks.

“On the opposite end of the spectrum are the entry level products sold almost purely on price,” such as a Ford Fiesta, Nissan Versa or Honda Fit, says Andrea. That’s why those vehicles normally have lower equipment levels, options available grouped together into manageable packages.

Vehicle manufacturers are trying to limit complexity,” he notes, adding that, “It becomes an economies of scale game.”

On average, parts and manufacturing costs still average about three-quarters of the cost of a new vehicle.

Roughly 10 percent more goes for advanced research and development, design and engineering. But the exact figure is also somewhat fluid. It’s one thing to update an existing vehicle. It’s another thing, entirely, to launch an all-new model.

And R&D costs climb even higher for breakthrough products such as the new Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first mainstream-priced, long-range battery-electric vehicle. It can cost billions to develop all-new, high-efficiency, low-emissions powertrain systems.

What's the Profit Margin?

Assuming there’s room left, the industry is, on the whole, shooting to earn to achieve net returns of about 10 percent, though only a handful of companies come close. That would work out to roughly $3,500 of that new vehicle.

What’s left covers a variety of general sales and administrative costs, a broad catch-all covering everything from overhead to marketing and incentives, as well as the interest a manufacturer must pay on its debt.

Wrap things up with the money dealers earn on each vehicle. Surprisingly, reports the National Automobile Dealers Association, those retailers typically don’t pocket much for a new car after covering the costs of running a showroom, paying employees, and other expenses. With some brands, it can be less than $100 a vehicle.

But don’t let that scare you off from bargaining for a good deal. Dealers make most of their profits on financing, insurance, and maintenance and repairs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/aut...makers-n716001

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Labor is nowhere near the most expensive part of building a car. Add in all factory costs, including the $1 billion price tag for the plant itself, and you’re looking at roughly 10 to 15 percent of that vehicle’s $35,000 sticker price, according to several senior industry executives who asked to remain anonymous in revealing typically proprietary data.

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Anonymous, of course!

So how did that plant come to be? It was labor that built the pieces and assembled them.

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By far, parts and components add up to the single biggest factor when it comes to the cost of building a car — anywhere from 60 to 65 percent, says analyst David Andrea, with the Center for Automotive Research, or CAR, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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And how are those parts created? LABOR! The high price of all of those parts are the result of the high labor costs!

Even if the vehicle is manufactured by robots, who build the robots? It still LABOR!

Maybe someday machines will build and maintain machines that build everything. But then, what will labor be worth then?

It's dishonest to list labor to assemble the parts but exclude labor to create those parts or the labor to build the plant. It all requires labor.

Shale country is out of workers. That means $140,000 for a truck driver ...
www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-shale-oil-boom-20180608-story.html
1 day ago - Shale country is out of workers.
That means $140,000 for a truck driver and 100% pay hikes.
By David Wethe. | Bloomberg |. Jun 08, 2018 ...
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Shale Country Is Out of Workers and Dangling 100% Pay Hikes

By David Wethe
June 6, 2018, 4:00 AM PDT

• ‘This economy is on fire,’ and that’s not necessarily all good
• How to compete with $140,000 a truck driver can pull down?

Everything You Need to Understand Fracking

Jerry Morales, the mayor of Midland, Texas, and a local restaurateur, is being whipsawed by the latest Permian Basin shale-oil boom.


It’s fueling the region and starving it at the same time. Sales-tax revenue is hitting a record high, allowing the city to get around to fixing busted roads. But the crazy-low 2.1 percent unemployment rate is a bear. As the proprietor of Mulberry Cafe and Gerardo’s Casita, Morales is working hard to retain cooks. As a Republican first elected in 2014, he oversees a government payroll 200 employees short of what it needs to fully function.

“This economy is on fire,” he said from a back table at the cafe the other day, watching as the lunchtime crowd lined up for the Asian Zing Salad and Big Mo’s Toaster hamburger.

Fire, of course, can be dangerous. In the country’s busiest oil patch, where the rig count has climbed by nearly one third in the past year, drillers, service providers and trucking companies have been poaching in all corners, recruiting everyone from police officers to grocery clerks. So many bus drivers with the Ector County Independent School District in nearby Odessa quit for the shale fields that kids were sometimes late to class. The George W. Bush Childhood Home, a museum in Midland dedicated to the 43rd U.S. president, is smarting from a volunteer shortage.


https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v0/200x-1.jpg

Weekly rig count in front of a bank in downtown Midland.
Photographer: David Wethe/Bloomberg

The oil industry has such a ferocious appetite for workers that it’ll hire just about anyone with the most basic skills. “It is crazy,” said Jazmin Jimenez, 24, who zipped through a two-week training program at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs, about 100 miles north of Midland, and was hired by Chevron Corp. as a well-pump checker. “Honestly I never thought I’d see myself at an oilfield company. But now that I’m here -- I think this is it.”

That’s understandable, considering the $28-a-hour she makes is double what she was earning until December as a guard at the Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs. When the boom goes bust, as history suggests they all do, shale-extraction businesses won’t be able to out-pay most employers anymore. Jimenez said she’ll take the money as long as it lasts.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v0/200x-1.jpg

A roughneck cleans the drilling floor of a rig for Chevron in the Permian Basin near Midland.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

And this one could go on for a while. Companies are more cost-conscious than ever, and the evolution of oilfield technology continues to make finding and producing oil quicker and cheaper in the pancaked layers of rock in the Permian. It now accounts for about 30 percent of all U.S. output.

There’s no question the economic upside is big in the basin, which covers more than 75,000 square miles in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Midland saw year-over-year increases of at least 34 percent in sales-tax collections in each of the last four months. Morales said coffers are full enough that he may ask for raises for city workers -- so they don’t bolt for the oil fields.

How Low Can You Go?

Oil boom drives Midland to record-low unemployment at 2.1 percent

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics


The labor shortage is inflamed by the real-estate market: The supply of homes for sale is the lowest on record, according to the Texas A&M Real Estate Center. The $325,440 average price in Midland is the highest since June 2014, the last time the world saw oil above $100 a barrel. Apartment rents in Midland and Odessa are up by more than a third from a year ago, with the average 863-square-foot unit commanding $1,272 a month.

That’s one reason the Ector County Independent School District has more than 100 teaching positions open, said spokesman Mike Adkins. People who move for jobs are stunned by the cost of living. Armin Rashvand’s apartment is smaller and costs more than the one he rented in Cleveland before moving last August to run the energy-technology program at Odessa College.

“That really surprised me,” he said, because Texas’s reputation is that it’s affordable. “In Texas, yes -- except here.”

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v0/200x-1.jpg

The George W. Bush Childhood Home
Photographer: David Wethe/Bloomberg

Another surprise: Some of his students, with two-year associate degrees, can make more than he does, with his master’s in science, electrical and electronic engineering. At Midland College’s oil and gas program, which trains for positions like petroleum-energy technician, enrollment is down about 20 percent from last year. But schools that teach how to pass the test for a CDL -- commercial drivers license -- are packed.

“A CDL is a golden ticket around here,” said Steve Sauceda, who runs the workforce training program at New Mexico Junior College. “You are employable just about anywhere.”

And you can make a whole lot more money than waiting tables at Gerardo’s Casita. Jeremiah Fleming, 30, is on track to pull down $140,000 driving flatbed trucks for Aveda Transportation & Energy Services Inc., hauling rigs.

“This will be my best year yet,” said Fleming, who used to work in the once-bustling shale play in North Dakota. “I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v0/200x-1.jpg

McDonald’s hiring event
Photographer: David Wethe/Bloomberg

Morales, a native Midlander and second-generation restaurateur, has seen it happen so many times before. Oil prices go up, and energy companies dangle such incredible salaries that restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and other businesses can’t compete. People complain about poor service and long lines at McDonald’s and the Walmart and their favorite Tex-Mex joints. Rents soar.

“This is my home town. I don’t want that reputation,” he said. He’s not yet quite sure what to do about it as mayor of a city that has been on the oil-industry rollercoaster for nearly 100 years.

He has, though, come up with strategies for his restaurants.

For example, he now issues paychecks weekly, instead of twice monthly, and offers more opportunities for over-time hours. He also makes common-sense bids to employees tempted by the Permian’s siren call.

His pitch: “If you’ll stay with me, I can give you three quarters of what the oil will give you but you don’t have to get dirty or worry about getting hurt.” And just maybe, when crude crashes, they’ll still be employed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/u...njunction.html

Damn, that is music to my ears!! GO TRUMP GO!!! Beautiful. Save the money, workers, this is a boom in the oil business, it won't last forever, so save your money for the future when they're finished drilling.

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Shale country is out of workers.
That means $140,000 for a truck driver and 100% pay hikes.

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The would-be employees are probably smoking pot and not caring about earning a living. It will only get worse!