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 <i>simply not true</i>. Raising wages for less skilled workers is apparently so absurdly painful for employers in almost any field that they'll pay almost any <i>other</i> cost.<p>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 <i>do not work</i>, and yet almost no one is willing to acknowledge this.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...</a>
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.
><i>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].</i><p>wow. i had no idea a container shipping fee was that low.