Featured Truck sales: bad news

Fortunately, the Prius hate never really happened over here, but early adopters all drove slow with slow acceleration
for some reason ..... maybe lack of confidence in what the mighty machines could do.
My first eye opener regarding the gen 2 Prius was a trip trying to keep up with a Gen 2 in our '74 Kombi and being very impressed with just how well it accelerated and held the speed limit up hill and down the other side.

The truck driver poor training seems to have crept in over here as well, along with the "Maharaj" truck drivers who don't seem to have any truck driving skill worth mentioning, they seem to buy a licence back home, then use that to get an Australian heavy vehicle licence.

So, it's more a driver shortage over here than lack of work to keep the industry viable ....

T1 Terry

 

i question if most of the commercial drivers here even have licenses

 

Welp.....INTERESTING you should point that out!

More may have US licenses starting about a month ago.....
........The U.S. has temporarily suspended the issuance of work visas for commercial truck drivers (including the H-2B, E-2, and EB-3 classifications) to conduct a comprehensive review of screening and vetting protocols, effective immediately as of late August 2025.

SO....the good news is that there will be fewer out-of-work drivers driving all of those trucks that are not being built and sold.

 

You have to make up your mind.
Either unemployment is rampant and we need more jobs, or there is a 'yuge' demand for workers for all of the jobs that are not being worked.

I do not subscribe to the theory that funny talking feriners drive more poorly than US-born folks so I really do not have a donkey in this stampede.....
As a matter of fact, I'm sure that some drive-by statistician will weigh in and drop some c-c-p knowledge about how home grown drivers are quite horrible.
HOWEVER (comma!!!) I cannot help but believe that for independent owner-operators the visas are a good thing, and ALSO that those same independent owner-operators take a little bit more care of their equipment.
I'm not against the major shippers outsourcing their labor and giving the %$#@! unions a little more competition - but there are some parts of our economy that need no further....'shortcuts.'

It's a mosaic - and (as always) idiotlogues are fish-slapping each other with individual tiles about how good/bad the picture looks.

SSDD.

 

Truck Sales down. Ha! Who'da ever thought that would happen over 100+ yrs of truck sales. Got to be one man's fault.

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You think the drivers are bad... You oughta read about the lawyers who work for the insure companies in defense of these drivers. Truly sick how many lives truck drivers have ruined without any meaningful consequence.