Truculent Truckers

Eighty percent of the goods being delivered across the United States depend on good old fashioned trucks. And as the economy picks up, there is a huge bright spot in the employment picture: demand for drivers in the long-haul segment of this industry is soaring. The pay is good, but life on the road – away from family – can be trying even in the best of times. Unfortunately, even with high unemployment, long-haul trucking appears to be one job category that Americans are avoiding in droves.

“U.S. companies are expected to create more than 115,000 truck driver jobs per year through 2016, but the number of Americans getting trained to fill those jobs each year is barely 10 percent of the total demand, said Page Siplon, executive director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics... [Siplon added:] ‘If we don't have enough workers, it's going to be slower and more costly to move products. If I can't move as much product to the shelves as I want to, the cost to consumers goes up.’” Jobs.Aol.com, October 31^st.

The mostly likely applicants tend to be drivers in their 50s with experience, but clearly this age group is unlikely to provide the same years of service that we could expected with younger drivers. Unlike stoop labor andmigrant farm workers, other job categories that U.S-born workers won’t take regardless of the pay, truckers are generally well-compensated and have pretty good health and retirement benefits. Their work isn’t seasonal, and their job security given the current labor shortages is fairly strong. With starting drivers pulling down an annual $40,000, seasoned drivers can make well over double that sum.

But the future for finding the needed drivers isn’t particularly favorable: “[T]ruck drivers will account for 43 percent of expected growth in logistics jobs, but those will also be the positions with the fewest workers trained to fill them... [O]lder drivers are feeling pressured to retire by federal safety regulations enacted in 2010 that keep a closer watch on drivers’ work hours, drug testing and any tickets or traffic citations they get on the job. And the job can be hard to sell to younger workers who don’t think it's worth the money to spend days and weeks on the road away from their families.” Jobs.Aol.com

The problem goes well beyond those immediate trucking jobs. When you think of supply-side deliveries needed to enable factories and manufacturing or the deliveries needed at the wholesale and retail levels, you can see how a missing truck driver can take a vastly bigger chunk out of the economy than just his or her annual compensation. We need a seamless connection between all these aspects of our economy, and truck drivers are usually at the heart of that connective tissue.

If you have been on just about any American highway of late, I’m sure you’ve seen the writing on the back of the biggest rigs touting available jobs with good pay. But if Americans won’t respond to these cries for drivers, along with the expected continued rise in the cost of fuel, we can expect driver pay to rise until workers are ready to take those jobs and fill the demand. Of course, that means we will all pay more for just about everything we buy. But for those younger workers looking for a career with steady pay and benefits, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the value of working as a long-haul trucker.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are opportunities out there, with more to come as time passes.