I was talking about the trucking companies, since they are the direct participants in the demand side of the trucking labor market.
I agree with your analysis though. They should be willing to pay truckers whatever wage allows them to profit. They would rather have more of that surplus to themselves though. The price that the clients are willing to pay to have their goods moved ultimately dictates how much of that surplus there is for the truckers and the company to split.
> They should be willing to pay truckers whatever wage allows them to profit.
That's pretty superficial. The critical question is "how much profit?" There is a world of difference between coming out $0.01 ahead of costs and coming out $10M ahead of costs.
I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that "willing to pay whatever allows them to profit" is missing any consideration of the desired magnitude of the profit, and although this is elastic, it's not infinitely elastic.
Trucking is so under competitive pressure that it is essentially a race to the bottom. You only get into trucking when you don't have a whole lot of options left. The hours suck, you make peanuts and your body goes to shit. It should cost a lot more than it does.
I know truckers making $150k a year, living on 5 acres of land with a decent house and a 3k sqft metal shop for all their toys. Let's not go crazy making superficial judgements just to feel better about programming as a career.
Exceptions, rules and all that and I wasn't making any superficial judgements: trucking is a harsh life, besides the fact that it is downright dangerous, iirc the most dangerous job short of the fishery industry (on ocean going vessels).
So, read 'one of the most dangerous'. I've also seen articles that list it as the most dangerous, I don't have access to raw statistics nor do I care to argue the finer points of this for the sake of fake internet points, the fact is: trucking is super dangerous, far more dangerous than IT jobs ever will be and is on average comparably badly compensated. If you disagree with that in principle feel free to state why.
I agree with your analysis though. They should be willing to pay truckers whatever wage allows them to profit. They would rather have more of that surplus to themselves though. The price that the clients are willing to pay to have their goods moved ultimately dictates how much of that surplus there is for the truckers and the company to split.