ATA: No end in sight for driver shortage

ATA: No end in sight for driver shortage    Long-haul motor carriers, already facing an industry-wide shortage of 20,000 drivers, are expected to be in the hole 111,000 drivers by 2014 if current demographic trends continue, according to a report conducted by economic consulting firm Global Insight for the American Trucking Associations.
   There are an estimated 1.3 million long-haul drivers in the country, but motor carriers have had difficulty finding new drivers to haul all the available freight produced by rising imports and domestic growth. Drivers have left the industry because of low wages, long stretches away from home and difficult work conditions. Many drivers left the industry when wages dropped 9 percent below average construction earnings during the 2000 recession. Wages have increased in the past year as trucking companies try to attract workers but have failed to hit pre-2000 levels when they averaged 6 percent to 7 percent higher than construction wages, the report said. Weekly earnings in long-distance trucking are 1.5 percent below the average in construction.
   Truckload carriers on average turned over 121 percent of their driver workforce last year as drivers looked for other lines of work or jumped to other companies for better benefits and conditions. New federal security rules and tighter corporate qualification standards have also weeded out potential applicants.
   “The driver market is the tightest it has been in 20 years,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. “It’s a major limitation to the amount of freight that motor carriers can haul. It’s critical that we find ways to tap a new labor pool, increase wages and recruit new people into the industry that keeps our national economy moving.”
   The supply of new long-haul commercial truck drivers will grow at an annual rate of 1.6 percent if current demographic trends continue, less than the 2.2 percent growth in demand, or 320,000 jobs, according to Global Insight. Another 219,000 drivers must be found to replace drivers 55 and older who will retire in the next decade. The trucking industry would have to hire 54,000 new drivers per year for the next decade to fill the estimated 540,000 positions that will be needed.
   One-fifth of big rig drivers are aged 55 or older and fewer young workers are gravitating to trucking as a career. The growth of the new driver pool is expected to slow from 1.4 percent per year to 0.5 percent in 2014, the report said.
   ATA said its members will increasingly have to attract more women, African American and Hispanic drivers to grow their businesses.