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Drilling Deep: New drivers aren’t coming out of CDL schools and that’s a problem

Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

Jeremy Reymer is the founder and CEO of DriverReach, but he’s also a member of the research advisory committee for ATRI, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations.

He’s the guest this week on Drilling Deep, and he’s got a good perspective on one of the reasons why the driver market is so tight: CDL schools aren’t pumping out ready-to-drive candidates like they used to, all because of the pandemic.

Reymer also talks with host John Kingston about the upcoming ATRI survey of the biggest issues in the industry. There’s a new candidate this year: COVID-19. How will that end up in the closely watched poll?

Kingston also will talk about a quirky bit of diesel data that came out this week and what it says about demand.


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13 Comments

  1. Stephen Webster

    In Ontario Canada only larger trucking companies who self insure are offering new truck drivers $40,000 cd or $30,000 U S for the first year and maybe be home 10 or 12 days in the whole year. The truck driving schools are empty except foreign students who want to get a truck permit . In Canada if they get a truck permit and work cheap for 2 years they can get a P R then work in as a accountant or something else like a paramedic that pays much better. Until the Ford government has gov truck insurance like B C or Sask. M B many smaller trucking companies will continue to close.

  2. Jude Parsons

    It would be helpful if students had access to federal student loans for training. Driving schools are open here in Oregon. They are expensive and must be paid out of pocket. Most job seekers don’t have an extra 4 grand or more just sitting around. Flooding companies with drivers carrying a work visa or others willing to work for the lowest pay possible is on brand for these “recruiters”.

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.