Yeah people who are willing to lose money trying to buy market share suck. There’s a reason why it’s not actually legal (just allowed because anti trust enforcement is dead). It’s extremely destructive. If there’s one thing I’m grateful for it’s that trucking is too big and too fragmented for losing money to buy market share to be a good strategy.
Not that that’s stopping Uber freight from trying of course lol. I’ve talked to some people who source trucks for them and their individual carrier reps are burning 6-7k a DAY to service the prices they gave customers. To put this in perspective I don’t generate that much gross profit in a week this year and I’m comfortably in the top 5% of the occupation. They aren’t in any danger of ever getting to 1% of the market either. If they ever did they’d lose more money than the rest of Uber combined * 50.
I’m genuinely looking forward to Uber going out of business. I genuinely dislike their entire ethos and business model.
It is a very common story in construction. Like why was @zikzak building a bunch of homes in Texas, but now (I think) working in western MA doing like custom (high margin) small jobs by his lonesome.
I know a guy who does high-end custom cabinetry, sometimes in historic mid-century modern homes like this amazing place:
I’d love to do something like that - but based on my experiences in shop class and some woodworking - I don’t have the patience for it. I like to force things when they won’t go.
My uncle had a custom cabinetry business for 35 years, usually had around 20 employees. Spent the entire time going from one disaster to another, barely making payroll multiple times. I understand there were some, uh, questionable accounting practices. Shop burned down twice. Sawdust, allegedly. I have my suspicions but the insurance paid. The business had a final crisis a final time a couple of years ago and they shuttered it. He’s 65 years old, broke and delivering pizzas. Has to be like bottom 1 percentile of outcomes for a 35-year business with tens of employees.
My uncle was a general contractor for 20 years. Fell off a ladder and shattered both his ankles. He had private health insurance. But of course his plan went into a death spiral so his premiums went up 4x in one year. He went w/o insurance for a while then got a corporate job. Then his wife went back to work and he got on her insurance for a while.
America - so awesome for hard-working small business people!
He had some kind of mini-stroke at age 63 and now he’s kind of fuzzy and doesn’t want to leave the house. He seems done. Breaks my heart as none of my 4 uncles are all there (one died at 61) and definitely makes me not want to spend all my 50s and early 60s in the rat race.
Haven’t been following the conversation closely so not sure what point this is supposed to illustrate. I do make more money now flying solo with a lot less stress and bullshit than when I was running multiple crews, but I’m not exactly getting rich and I was doing much more high end work in TX than here. Austin is a boom town with shitloads of money. Western MA, not so much. Honestly I’m just phoning it in most days.
Basically in line with my point. I am making ok money now phoning it in on my own after going into debt being very busy with up to 3 crews.
I’m not saying you went into debt in Texas, just that construction doesn’t scale. Especially residential construction. Maybe big housing tracts or something, but not the kind of stuff I do.
Trucking definitely scales inversely to some degree. It’s why freight brokers like me exist. There are a million (only exaggerating by 3-4x lol) small trucking companies or something.
Seems like the money is in selling the jobs to people and then turning around and hiring guys like Microbet to execute and pocketing a commission… Or selling guys like Microbet solar panels that you bought by the container in China…
Or basically being anyone but the installer. Fair enough. There are lots of businesses like that.
About half my work is subcontracting, I charge more than just about anyone doing that, and it’s not terribly good work for me. If/when I get anything like regular income from programming (trying to get back into that), I will drop all subcontracting.
Some subcontractors are out there charging so little, they can’t get by without doing absolute shit work, and I’ve taken enough work fixing things to know that happens.
You sound exactly like the owner of one of the older/better trucking companies right now. I’m not knocking you, I’m just pointing it out. Tough businesses where it’s possible to do semi well for yourself as long as you stay small and surround yourself with decent people that have negative economies of scale.
I think I’m starting to get what’s going on here is all.
Half of the states of NSW and QLD are on fire right now and tomorrow is rated a “catastrophic” fire danger day in several populated areas (including parts of Greater Sydney), a designation which means that people should under no circumstances stay and try to protect their homes as it will be impossible to do so under those conditions.
We’ve had months of dry conditions in the areas, which has increased fuel load, leading to these fires. Usually bad fires come late in the summer, here it’s not even close to summer yet. Several people are dead, others missing, and 200+ homes have already been lost, with worse probably to come.
Naturally, now is not the time to POLITICIZE TRAGEDY:
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has slammed the climate change concerns of “raving inner city lunatics” at a time when rural Australians are dealing with catastrophic bushfires, venting his frustration at questions about climate.
“We’ve had fires in Australia since time began, and what people need now is a little bit of sympathy, understanding and real assistance - they need help, they need shelter,” the Nationals leader told ABC Radio National on Monday after a series of questions about climate change.
“They don’t need the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time, when they’re trying to save their homes, when in fact they’re going out in many cases saving other peoples’ homes and leaving their own homes at risk.”
Mr McCormack singled out Greens leader Richard Di Natale and Melbourne MP Adam Bandt for “disgraceful” attempts to score political points by using the bushfires to prosecute their agenda on climate change and shut down the coal industry.
It’s gonna take a wildfire in a major city that causes hundreds of billions in damages for countries to actually truely get serious about climate change. And even that might not be enough.
The Earthwatch Institute concluded in the last debate of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that bees are the most important living being on the planet, however, scientists have also made an announcement: Bees have already entered into extinction risk.
Bees around the world have disappeared up to 90% according to recent studies
Sometime you wonder which catastrophy will gets us first.
