As post-pandemic supply-chain challenges have been thrust into public consciousness, a new class of armchair experts has risen to explain all that ails America's trucking industry. Bureaucrats, essayists, and other cultural commentators—most of whom have no real-world experience in trucking—are quick to explain why, for example, the industry faces a labor shortage as it strives to hire the next generation of professional drivers. They almost always point to high turnover rates as the empirical epicenter of trucking's labor woes.

Case in point: This recent New York Times essay, which oddly pinballs between saying the job is too dangerous on one hand, but that lifesaving technology is too Orwellian on the other. But setting these rhetorical contortions aside, the author also claims to have struck the nail on the head when it comes to driver turnover rates: 

For decades, truckers have quit at alarming rates, leading to a chronic shortage. The turnover rate was at a staggering 91 percent in 2019, which means that for every 100 people who signed up to drive, 91 walked out the door. Plenty of people have the commercial driver’s licenses needed to operate trucks, said Michael Belzer, a Wayne State University economist who has studied the industry for 30 years. “None of them will work for these wages,” he added.