btq96r

Sobering view of the expectations that were not met. Worth reading the thread, even if the sources used aren't your usual ones.

It's a real letdown knowing tax dollars are being used to digitally store a pic of every AT&T fiber offer I've gotten in the mail.

You're injecting logic when I'm talking about time travel? You're right though, on the whole, it's no less onerous in one period or another. I just wish I could skip around the rules of special relativity to enjoy a few things.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing. If anyone needs me, I'm gonna time travel and go pick up some of that 9mm at $0.09 per round.

So, less product needing to be moved because the cost of transport has busted the margins (presumably). That's a sign for sure.

What lead to the huge drop in declined loads, was it the supply (more drivers and trucks available) or demand (loads being requested is also way down)?

I'm set....and have a great story to share. https://nashvillemobilemechanic.co/ The guy who runs this service (one man shop) was able to come directly to my location, get in my garage, because his service vehicle is a Ford Ranger kitted out as a mobile toolbox. Where AAA and Firestone couldn't meet the clearance of my garage, this guy saved the day (or at least kept me from pushing the vehicle with someone steering it in neutral out into the street). Super friendly, and was able to swap in a new battery for me no problem. I 'm happy to put money from my pocket into his business account for the services rendered, and glad I found him. I love this kind of entrepreneurial spirit in striking out solo and putting in the work with his own two hands. Says he's staying pretty busy, which I can see in a booming Nashville Metro Area. Despite all my feelings of woe about the economy at large, I think this guy will stay in good shape come what may. Truck is humming along. He said the alternator and everything else he looked at while changing the battery are good to go. Time to get back to work. Thanks again to all for the knowledge you shared.

Starting to have my gut get some confirmation about a recession, even if economists still need to put 2 and 2 together. It's one thing when big tech stocks take a body blow. They have wide swings up and down that aren't abnormal, and they were insanely overvalued these last few years as safe places turned into tar pits for good returns. Seeing them fall is a painful but natural result of the current monetary policy. And aside from Amazon, they don't give a good picture of the economy that's centered around moving product. Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Tractor Supply Company...they all got pasted after posting their earnings for Q1. Easy to Google half a hundred articles offering analysis. But I simplify things and look at these companies (and others like them) to think about the spending and consumption habits of everyday people. When these companies have issues, we're not circulating product from producer, to retailer, to consumer as we should be. Like your vascular system, a healthy flow is needed for the body to function. These companies should be able to post steady income over time in normal conditions if the business is being run properly. But normal was so 2019. Their quarterly postings show that the supply chain crunch is still around, the labor market continues to be out of whack, and inflation has become the walls closing in on both companies and consumers alike. When consumers are squeezed and the price elasticity of supply gets funky, recessions happen while companies figure out how to adjust. Economists and government tend to lag in recognizing this while pouring over data. I still continue to think we're in the unrealized/unannounced phase of a recession. Maybe sooner or later someone in a suit at a podium on TV will tell us what truckers, warehouse workers, and regional managers are seeing in real time now.

Not yet. Still trying to peg down a mobile battery replacement service (Firestone's vehicle is too large to clear the entry for the garage. If I can't find one, I'll ask a friend to give me a lift to AutoZone, get what I need, and figure out how to swap it myself. No critters in play. I'm in a pretty urban area where my apartment building is literally the block. Never seen anything with four legs aside from a dog on a leash in the garage.

Thanks for the input everyone. Since I can't even remember when the current battery was put in, I'm going to get it changed out. Have a mobile appointment coming tomorrow for that. I'm about due for an oil change and an AC recharge, so I'll also ask them to check out the terminal clamps as well. Appreciate everyone helping out a guy who's an idiot when it comes to all things under the hood.

Went the weekend without driving it. Tried to head to the office Monday afternoon and realized it wasn't starting. Guessing Advance or Auto Zone need me to get the truck to them for the test?

@10-Ring& @Erik88fixed the video.

Gents, I know squat about vehicles except how to drive them and that gas is required. Can anyone tell me what this problem likely is? I tried jumping the battery from a portable pack and from a friend's vehicle with cables. No dice. It's currently in my apartment garage so if I need to get it to the shop, that's gonna be fun.

Are you tracking that Instagram has women, guns, food, and things actually worth looking at/watching being posted on there?

I always advise folks to get in when they can, and not try to time things. If nothing else, it's just simpler and really doesn't show much difference over long periods (like decades worth). But that chart is really great for reminding us there isn't much that's new, just shades of repeating themes. Think of how bad it looked in each of those years, and what would have happened for someone who panicked.

Cute kid. Surely doesn't get that from you.

It's a double edged sword. I'm with you that this is the right kind of work...going after actual criminal activity in firearms procurement. But the examples will be used to try and close the "private seller" exemption/loophole.

My father was a long haul truck driver for over 30 years. He wasn't a Wall Street wizard, nor had the know how to take his view into any kind of stock strategy...but he knew when things were working well enough, and when things were a mess. If there is a canary in the coal mine on the health of the US economy, it's the trucking industry. A database to amalgamate enough data from the industry would yield an understanding into a substantial size of the economy and forecasting recessions would get a helluva lot easier. You could even drill down into specific sectors with enough data points.

I have a feeling, just a gut one really, that were in a recession and don't know it quite yet.

Spot-on. We have a lot of box checking in the hiring process that should be examined. The "labor shortage" forcing that issue would be a benefit. It's a conversation to have. Work requirements should be on the table to discuss. On a contract job for a DARPA program that was being handed over to big Army, I started to dabble in small things behind the scenes. It wasn't proper coding, but just getting to play with the web.config files of our servers taught me to think with what I now know as paradynamics. It's made me so adaptable to different problems and needs where I can be of benefit to the organization. It's why you see a lot of engineer types in financial analysis (one of which I learned a lot from in my first two years on the current job before he left).

We probably have that now. Our system was not optimized to train well. I suppose my prior comments should come with the disclaimer about that, but I was really talking about the labor market in a competitive sense. When there's real competition for workers, companies can and should undercut each other to attract/retain talent. We're seeing it in a lot of places...nursing is a great example of where a sub-service the whole enterprise can't do without needs to be funded at least a short-term loss to stay solvent. And yeah...you're avoiding the "i word"...but as we reach the realistic work limits of our current population, we'll need more labor to keep things even, and certainly to grow. It's just a question of if we're ready to have a work based system that's used to close gaps, because the primary purpose for the old one was to keep wages suppressed.

Repeat after me: there is no such thing as a labor shortage in a free market. Every job can be filled for the right price. That may be more than acceptable profits for an employer would allow, and I get that means the cost of things go up to correct the margin. But that's not the labor market's fault, that's a consumer issue. If a service or product is too expensive to produce at a point where it can be tendered for a profit...it's either the financial model being unreasonable, or the service/product itself is the problem. This is a healthy purging of inefficiencies in an unbalanced labor market. It's messy now, but good for the long-term. A lot of folks aren't leaving the workforce, they're just switching jobs because hiring is catering to what their current employer for some reason refuses to budge on some things. Expectations are high on that list. I'm seeing this a lot in my place of employment. "Good pay" is subjective when people have finally woken up to realize just how tilted the system really is towards those with equity and their capital partners. I'm still a capitalist despite what some probably think, but if we don't have vibrant jobs that provide an avenue for upward mobility for the middle class, it's Marx/Lenin time sooner rather than later. Workers want more returns from their effort than they're getting. Right now, there is so much competition that for the first time in a long time, they have options to seek that. They're also seeing out other incentives than W2 comp. A lot of folks will come back to the office kicking and screaming, and look for a job where that's not required. I applaud those who put family and personal happiness over a false satisfaction they get from working themselves to the bone. I'm not able to be among them yet, but that's a psychological flaw on me I hope to work out someday. We let ourselves become our work before other things, and a sociological change was pretty much overdue.

If our economy is good at one thing, it's optimizing the price point to exactly what someone can afford to pay. Not necessarily what they want to pay, but what they can handle for the most part. Some level of credit always comes into play, often enough over leveraging folks who don't think critically. The housing market is a great example of this. With the interest rates going up, you'll stop seeing the insane trajectory of home values rising. Supply and demand issues will keep them from dropping locally I think. But there's only so much someone can actually afford, and the market is very efficient at sniffing that value out. It's why the low interest rates have fueled the housing boom as much as California refugees. In the end, the amount of money from someone's pocket in monthly payment won't change much, but the sale prices will stabilize, and the banks will make more money from interest. Just a tilting of what comes from which side of the formula. Financial institutions will always win in the great coin flip. Heads, they get steady cash flow from interest payments at a good rate. Tails, they ride the wave of asset inflation (rising stocks and home prices) by being the broker of capital during the spending sprees. We're just swinging the pendulum at the moment because things got too out of whack one way, so we needs try the other way for a bit until we find a happy point. Then before long someone or a great many someones will muck it up again.

I would normally say "may his memory be a blessing", but clearly in Stumpy's case, it was, is, and forever will be. Condolences, Grunt. I'm glad this man was around when you needed him, and stayed in your life for the rest of his.

Yeah that's my situation. Between my fears of buying due to a weird job situation, not really knowing what I wanted when I started and adversion to feeling like I'll be settling...it's fast forwarded me to a place where I had to live with a rent hike while missing the boat on a good house at a cheap mortgage. Kicking myself in near perpetuity.