Teresa Maki, owner of T Enterprises, a Pasco private trucking school certified in Commercial Driving License (CDL) training by the state Department of Licensing, exclaims that the trucking industry has exploded and enrollment in her school has nearly doubled since 2020. Maki goes on to claim that “employers hiring new drivers have increased significantly. Before, they could easily find someone with a little bit more experience, but now they just can’t find enough drivers.” Read more…
John Esparza, chief executive officer of the Texas Trucking Association, insists that “a shortage of commercial truck drivers is contributing to increasing supply chain issues” within the state. With nearly 200,000 commercial truck drivers, the most in the nation, Texas is continuing to lose a generation of truck drivers and not replacing them accordingly. The median wage in the state for truck drivers, $47,000, is certainly not helping the issue either. Read more…
The Coca-Cola company has pledged to donate “$1 million to the Technical Colleges System of Georgia’s (TCSG) Commercial Truck Driving Program to support what its executives call critical training and job opportunities for Georgians.” The company goes on to say that “businesses and consumers rely on Georgia’s trucking industry, which is facing a driver shortage that has been particularly heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic,” and this donation will hopefully help address the issue. Read more…
With the current trucker shortage probably doubling by 2030 according to the ATA, it has become imperative that the issue is addressed immediately. There are many factors contributing to the continued shortage, amongst them are: “high average age of truckers and an increasing number of retirements,” “the inability of some candidates to pass a drug test,” “and a federal law prohibiting truckers younger than 21 years old from crossing state lines.” Read more…
The American public appears overwhelmingly skeptical of at least two possible solutions to the trucker shortage currently blighting our nation: “nearly 71 percent of registered voters polled by NewsNation opposed lowering the required age to get a commercial driver’s license from 18 to 16. Currently, drivers have to be 18 to transport goods within a state, or 21 to transport goods across state lines.” In addition, “65 percent of Americans said they would feel at least somewhat unsafe with self-driving trucks on the road.” Read more…
With burnout from the mental and physical labors of truck driving, especially during a global pandemic, the American Trucking Association has predicted a possible shortage of up to 160,000 drivers over the next decade. On the bright side, during President Joe Biden’s recent press conference regarding the industry, Missouri was among the states highlighted that are addressing the shortage, with the state raising its trucker employment rate “by more than 8% over the past year, one of just five states to do so.” Read more…
President Joe Biden addressed multiple important issues facing the trucking industry as part of an update on his Trucking Action Plan (TAP), including ensuring female driver safety from sexual predators and the lack of safe parking for big rigs. The plan initially launched last December by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Department of Transportation was to “increase the supply of truck drivers by creating new pathways into the profession, cutting red tape to expand high quality training… and laying the foundation for improving job quality to keep people in the profession.” Read more…
With long stretches away from home and family already making truck driving jobs less than desirable, low pay has compounded the trucker shortage even further. As drivers around the country “quit their jobs en masse, the trucking industry needs an estimated 80,000 more drivers to operate optimally. That’s a historic high, according to the American Trucking Associations.” Many believe that the only way to fix this issue, as with many other industries across the pandemic-stricken economy, is to re-evaluate wages and benefits for these applicants. Read more…
Despite seeing them everywhere on the news and social media, truck drivers have been exiting the workforce at an unmanageable pace. An aging workforce, high cost of driver training, and high insurance premiums have all led to a mass exodus of the industry, in turn severely impacting the North American supply chain and economy. Solid messaging needs to be increased, such as how rewarding a truck driving career can be with pay much higher than minimum wage and a guaranteed job until retirement. Read more…
The American Trucking Associations – the largest national trade association for the trucking industry – is set to join the 90-Day Trucking Apprenticeship Challenge, an initiative set by the Biden-Harris administration to “launch Registered Apprenticeships as a route toward getting more well-trained drivers on the road in good paying jobs.” The program has also been created to “enhance industry training and safety standards, and support the recruitment and retention of drivers in good trucking jobs.” Read more…
