aiyah, i know this biz more intimately than you lah. prime truck drivers are mainly those who drive very heavy rigs and vehicles for special goods and services. we have shipping contractors that hire drivers to drive 40-foot long container trucks from jiuhu factories to sg warehouses. they have to be on longer jiuhu roads for hours, driving mostly in the night and wee hours in the morning. by the time we're at the warehouse at 6.9am, they are already there, waiting and sleeping at the dock. they are paid handsomely as one full container can cost several tens of thousands and sextisfies the tastebuds of hundreds of sinkies. local drivers of small trucks and vans are happy with $3.69k. but if advertise for $2.69k, no sinkie takers. we are looking for young ah beng sinkie drivers so they can be groomed for the biz as they age. moreover they need to haul boxes and hand-truck pull pallets. what's the point of hiring old sinkie (prime truck) drivers who are happier elsewhere in other more lucrative businesses? contrary to what you claim about tiongs, the few tiongs we hired were actually safer drivers and more reliable workers than jiuhukias and sinkies. they returned to china after making their money and after mom increased the sinkie-fw ratio some years ago. we actually miss them dearly. so good and so cheap. now jiuhukias take their spots and are happy with $2.4k. that's the ongoing rate for light truck and van drivers. biggest truck we have is the 20-foot container truck. these are for bigger deliveries to major food provider warehouses. drivers of these trucks are paid more as they have to deal with overbearing personnel and idiosyncrasies of each retail outlet warehouse. it's not just all about driving.
great ,but my question still remains ...how is it that busineeses paid 5k monthly to local prime mover truckers yesrs before and made profits but now cannot ,so importing foreign workers and paying them about 2k and still complaining ?
now ,about container trucking ...since your family businesse is foodstuff ,your interaction might be more with jiu hu kia truckers ...yes,mostly ah nehs and paid by trips depending on the distance ....but containrisation and trucking is far more complex
e.g., 20 foot container truck of yours ...it's totally redundant today ...all containers in sinkie road are 40 footer ...the very first container ship arrived in sinkie was Illoyds shipping ..and the very first prime mover trucking company belonged to an ah neh...in fact most of the ship handling businesses and tongkangs that shuttle cargoes to and fro singapore river to break bulk vessels belonged to ah nehs
the container and warehousing is far far more complex...depending on the cargo ..since your family dealt on food stuff may not be that familiar
containers are not all box type you regularly see ,,they flip type ,open container refrigerated containers and so on ..so ,stuffing and unstuffing is a very specialised jobs warehousing people do ...e.g. you cannot play with very very expensive oil machines that is shipped from Germany but has to transit in sinkie and shipped to a remote part of indonesia ...thus ,warehousing ,stuffing and unstuffing and trucking is far far more specialized than you would think ...if you load and unload and damage any of these highly specialised machines ,it's gonna cost millions ...whreas food stuff can handle roughly
all kinds of logistics and the control room came under my watch...so ,I do know bit here and there