Though many trucking companies lament the fact that they are low on truck drivers, this runs counterintuitive to the fact “that there are many times more commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) issued than there are jobs in the industry.” With unemployment levels below 4%, it appears that many truck drivers are leaving the industry to find one with a “safe, steady job that will enable them to provide a reasonably comfortable life for themselves and their families.” Read more…
Officials predict 80 new logistics jobs will be coming to South Alabama as New York-based DC Safety and Averitt Express will both be expanding their operations to Mobil County, Alabama. Upon the announcements, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey exclaimed: “days like today prove why Alabama’s economic comeback is leading states around the country and why the Mobil area is a major catalyst for the entire state.” Read more…
While truck driver training programs help applicants find positions amongst the nation’s biggest freight haulers, quitting during these courses can often have severe repercussions. Despite the fact many of these programs fail to deliver the compensation and working conditions they promise, “drivers who quit early can be pursued by debt collectors and blacklisted by other companies in the industry, making it difficult for them to find a new job.” Read more...
Despite the claim of a driver shortage due to the pandemic, professor Jason Miller claims that they just don’t want to drive for mega carriers anymore. With many claiming that the mega carriers treat them poorly and pay them peanuts, some are becoming owner operators themselves or going to work for smaller carriers. Miller goes on to share BLD data “which shows that the average size of US trucking establishments plummeted from 10.6 employees at the end of 2019 to 9.4 employees in the third quarter of 2021.. 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…
Though preliminary numbers might change in the next two months, a two year streak of trucking employment growth has come to an end, “perhaps indicating the economy hitting the brakes after unprecedented consumer demand.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 5,000 trucking jobs were lost in March, which “marks the first month-to-month decrease since April 2020, when the start of the pandemic wiped out nearly 80,000 trucking jobs.” Read more…
Most experts believe that despite the rapid rise in automation, jobs will largely remain in the warehousing and logistics industries. While many e-commerce giants, including Amazon and Chewy, have begun to utilize automation to improve efficiency, their warehouses will continue to create thousands of jobs for the workforce. While automation helps with not having to rely on any one single person, there will be a continued need to have the right balance between people and machines for companies to remain fecund. Read more..
Though we didn’t start experimenting with self-driving vehicles until the 2000’s, we’ve created incredible strides with the hardware in the last 15 years, but the early estimate of 2025 as when most new vehicles would drive themselves won’t become a reality. There are still harder issues being tackled, including the fact that the vehicles’ systems don’t work 100% of the time. Though almost all “long haul trucker jobs would be eliminated,” and “the effects would be felt across the country as truckers can account for significant income to several rural areas,” this bleak future for truck drivers is still many years away. 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…
New jobs are coming to Virginia as A. Duie Pyle, a large trucking, warehousing logistics company based in Pennsylvania, is opening multiple new locations in Richmond, Roanoke and Manasses. A. Duie Pyle “provides transportation and distribution services mainly under a ‘less-than-truckload,’ or LTL, business model, shipping from 27 service centers and 16 warehouse facilities.” Read more…
