Ann Curry exemplifies how low pay, long hours and other labor issues are strangling the trucking industry.
When Curry retired last year after working for three decades in the criminal justice system, she thought trucking sounded like a good second career. The 53-year-old got her Class A commercial driver’s license, took a job with a long-haul trucking company and completed a 7,000-mile training run accident-free.
Health issues, meager pay and time away from her Knoxville, Tenn., home quickly changed her mind.
“I did three weeks and said this is not the lifestyle for me,” Curry told Trucks.com.
Unfortunately for the industry, it has become a common refrain. Trucking companies are carrying near-record freight loads resulting from a steady economy, lower fuel prices and the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for online shopping. The trends are sending trucking industry employment demand through the roof, causing widespread shortages, turnover and churn.
Critics, however, claim that carriers have brought the problem on themselves. They maintain that truck driver jobs aren’t what they once were. The lack of higher pay in an era of nearly full employment is leading drivers to quit, particularly long-haul drivers. Age restrictions are prompting millennials to bypass the industry in favor of jobs that are better paid and not as heavily regulated or physically demanding.
It’s fair to ask whether driving a truck is still an attractive job, says Norita Taylor, spokeswoman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represents 157,000 drivers.
Her solution: “Pay more.”
What Deregulation Hath Wrought
If only it were so simple. Labor shortages have plagued the industry since the 1980s, when deregulation sparked a jump in the number of trucking companies. That pushed demand for drivers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration counted 5.7 million commercial motor vehicle drivers in the country in 2014, including 3.9 million with commercial driver’s licenses needed to operate tractor-trailers or other heavy-duty trucks.
Despite those numbers, the industry has about 48,000 fewer drivers than available driver jobs, according to a 2015 American Trucking Associations report. The ATA estimates that the industry will need 890,000 new drivers through 2025 to meet rising demand.
The rapidly aging driver population makes finding new drivers urgent.
To read the full story, visit https://www.trucks.com/2016/06/14/truck-driver-shortage-self-inflicted/.