America’s trucker shortage could undermine economy
America’s trucker shortage could undermine economy
By Heather Long Posted Jun 28, 2018 at 12:23 PM
LAKE MILTON, Ohio - Bob Blocksom, an 87-year-old former
insurance salesman, needs a job. He hasn’t saved enough money for his
retirement. And trucking companies, desperate for workers, are willing to give
him one.
Age didn’t matter, they said. If Blocksom could get his
“CDL” - commercial driver’s license - they would hire him for a $50,000 job.
One even offered to pay his tuition for driver training school, but there was a
catch: Blocksom had to commit to driving an 18-wheel truck all over America for
a year.
So far, that has been too big of an ask for Blocksom, who
doesn’t want to spend long stretches of time away from his wife of 60 years.
“The more I think about it, it would be tough to be on the road Monday through Friday,”
he said.
As the nation grapples with a historically low level of
unemployment, trucking companies are doing what economists have said firms need
to do to attract and retain workers: They’re hiking pay significantly, offering
bonuses and even recruiting people they previously wouldn’t have considered.
But it’s not working. The industry reports a growing
labor shortage - 63,000 open positions this year, a number expected to more
than double in coming years - that could have wide-ranging impacts on the
American economy.
Nearly every item sold in America touches a truck at some
point, which explains why the challenges facing the industry, including
trucking companies rapidly raising prices as they raise wages, have special
power to affect the entire economy. Already, delivery delays are common, and
businesses such as Amazon, General Mills and Tyson Foods are raising prices as
they pass higher transportation costs along to consumers. A Walmart executive
called rising transportation costs the company’s primary “head wind” on a
recent call with investors.
Technology leaders such as Elon Musk hold out driverless
trucks as a solution, but industry insiders say that is many years away. For
now the industry simply can’t find a way to move goods as fast and as cheaply
as they have in the past. This logjam will be especially perilous, economists
say, if competition for truckers pushes up prices so quickly that the country
faces uncontrolled inflation, which can easily lead to a recession.
“This is slowing down the economy already,” said Peter
Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group. “If it takes me
a week instead of two days to ship products from point A to B, I’m losing
potential business.”
At TDDS Technical Institute, an independent trucker
school in central Ohio where Blocksom has considered enrolling, veteran
teachers say they have never seen it this bad. They think there are closer to
100,000 truck driver openings.
“As long as you can get in and out of a truck and pass a
physical, a trucking company will take a look at you now,” said Trish Sammons,
the job placement coordinator at TDDS, whose desk is full of toy trucks and
fliers from the companies who call her daily begging for drivers. “I recently
placed someone who served time for manslaughter.”
There’s only one option right now for most trucking
companies: Give substantial raises. Recruiters that show up daily at TDDS are
offering jobs that pay $60,000 to $70,000, with full benefits and a $4,000
signing bonus.
In interviews with more than 60 trainees, recruiters and
people who explored trucking but decided not to take the job, most feel higher
pay will help, but the industry’s problems are much deeper than that.
Trucking remains one of the most dangerous professions in
America. There were over 1,000 fatalities among motor vehicle operators in
2016, according to the U.S. Labor Department, meaning being a commercial driver
is nearly eight times as deadly as being a law enforcement officer.
“It takes a special breed to be a trucker. It’s a tough
job,” said Rick Rathburn Jr., the owner of TDDS, a school his late father
started in the early 1970s. A trucking company recently tried to buy the entire
school.
The community around TDDS is full of shuttered factories
and bars named “Lucky Inn” and “Horseshoe.” The steel mills closed in the
1980s, and a GM factory just announced more than a thousand layoffs. One of the
only industries growing in the area is trucking, yet locals are hesitant to
become truckers.
One man, a janitor, hanging out at Larry’s Automotive
repair shop in nearby Warren, said his uncles were truckers and told him they
would “kill him” if he ever got into the harsh business. The owner of the shop
said he had thought about becoming a trucker but decided it wasn’t feasible
after he had children.
Trucking jobs require people to leave their families for
weeks at a time and live in a small “cabin” with a hard bed. Divorces are
common, veteran drivers say, and their children forget them. A life on the road
is often costly and unhealthy. Drivers sit for hours a day in diesel trucks and
pull into truck stops that typically serve greasy hot dogs and chili.
Weight gain and heart disease are common, says Gordon Zellers,
an Ohio physician who spends half his time examining truckers and administering
drug tests, which increasing numbers of CDL applicants fail. He advised the
TDDS students to see a nutritionist, but he knows most won’t.
Alex Thomas and Rob Neal are two of the youngest students
at TDDS - Thomas is 26 and Neal is 28. As they sat in a truck in the TDDS
parking lot practicing, they joked with each other about which one would be the
first to develop a “trucker’s belly.”
Thomas and Neal had construction jobs before they
enrolled in the 16-week course at TDDS.
Trucking often competes with construction and
manufacturing for workers. Both of those industries have been on a hiring spree
lately as well, and unlike trucking, construction and factory jobs typically
don’t require additional schooling. To get a commercial driver’s license, an
applicant needs to attend several weeks of school, which can cost about $7,000
before financial aid.
The two young men who switched into trucking say they’re
doing it for the money and, they hope, more freedom. But many of their friends
were surprised by the move.
“I used to work in a sand and gravel pit. Workers in the
pit called the truckers scum,” said Thomas.
As it has trouble recruiting new workers, the industry is
also struggling to hold on to drivers. Turnover in the trucking industry has
skyrocketed to 94 percent, according to the American Trucking Associations,
meaning most drivers at the major trucking companies don’t spend more than a
year in their jobs.
That reflects a combination of poaching and quitting. (A
new government requirement went into effect in December that requires all
drivers to electronically log their hours, meaning they can no longer cheat
regulations by driving more than 11 hours a day.)
People with CDLs suddenly seem as coveted as computer
programmers. Trucking company recruiters descend daily on America’s roughly
truck driver training schools - roughly 500, according to the Commercial
Vehicle Training Association - to fight for new graduates.
“These guys are like diamonds right now,” said Jason
Olesh, a vice president at Aim Transportation Solutions who left his family
vacation to rush to TDDS to talk to students. “We’re down 90 drivers across our
fleet of 650.”
Olesh gave his best pitch to the students: He offered
them jobs that pay $70,000 a year with full benefits and regional routes
hauling water to oil drilling sites that would have them home most nights.
“I’m offering you a regular job with a 10- to 12-hour
shift so you can see your kids,” Olesh said.
He never used to recruit drivers right out of school
because his jobs are the coveted ones in the industry that don’t require
drivers to go “over the road,” trucker speak for being away from home for at
least a month. But he started coming to TDDS this year because the company
needs drivers so badly that it is lowering the bar for new hires.
At the end of his session, a few students gave Olesh
their contact information, not enough to even make a dent in the job openings
he has.
Lately the industry has tried to broaden its appeal, but
women still make up just 6 percent of drivers, and African Americans only 10
percent. Still, trucking can be a pathway to a middle-class life. TDDS alumni
often stop by, including many Somali refugees who’ve been trained there.
But while the TDDS faculty love trucking and serve as
cheerleaders for the industry, most of their own children have gone to college
and now work desk jobs.
“Trucking is seen as a last resort if people can’t find
another job,” said Otto Smith, an admissions representative at TDDS. “We’re a
hidden diamond for people looking for work.”
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