SCDigest editorial staff

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A recent study from the American Trucking Association, titled The US. Truck Driver Shortage: Analysis and Forecasts, paints an even gloomier picture on the prospects for driver shortage and hence trucking capacity over the next decade.

The report says that currently the industry has a shortage of approximately 20,000 drivers. That shortage will be exacerbated over the next few years based on current economic and demographic trends:

• Over the next 10 years, economic growth will give rise to a need for a 2.2% average annual increase in the number of long-haul heavy-duty truck drivers, or an additional 320,000 jobs overall.
• At least another 219,000 new truck drivers must be found to replace drivers currently of ages 55 and older who will retire over the next 10 years and to replace those in younger groups who will leave the occupation.
• Combining these two figures gives total expansion and replacement hiring needs of 539,000, or an average of about 54,000 per year. However, this is a net figure. It reflects the hiring of new truck drivers to offset drivers exiting the occupation only on a net basis, and it does not include the substantial amount of hiring that trucking companies must do each year as a result of job switching (“churning”) within the industry.

The result of all this ultimately, the study predicts, will be a driver shortage of 111,000 by 2014.

Low wages, plus lifestyle issues, are of course at the heart of the problem. As the report notes: “A critical element in the current truck driver shortage is that the competitiveness of wages in the truck transportation industry fell sharply with the onset of recession in 2000, and driver wages have yet to regain their previous position.”

For example, while average weekly earnings in long-distance trucking were 6-7% above average earnings in construction throughout the 1990s, they had fallen to 9% below construction earnings by 2001 and were still 1% lower in 2004. The report adds: “If the trucking industry is to attract the higher share of workers that it needs to achieve the growth projected over the next 10 years, earnings in the industry must, at a minimum, return to the relative position that prevailed during the 1990s.”

Security and other regulatory issues are also having an impact. The report notes that the percentage of potential drivers rejected by carriers as unqualified continues to rise in percentage terms. Lifestyle issues must also be addressed.

This report sounds warning cry, but it’s not clear that the industry will be able to overcome these fundamental demographic and economic trends. There seem to be only two answers: dramatically increasing driver pay, which will have a substantial impact on transport costs, or by allowing in Mexican drivers.