Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Peter, Paul and Mary

If there is one universal complaint I hear in the industry, it is a lack of qualified drivers. It is getting worse. How can this be? Unemployment is stuck at 9 %. If you add those who have given up looking for employment the number is closer to 17 % effective unemployment in this county. 43% of young people are not satisfied with their current level of employment. Youth unemployment stands at 18.1%.

The majority of the industry shrunk their fleets during the Great Recession and numerous surveys show that the majority has no plans to increase fleet size. Those that do, plan to grow through adding owner operators. This is a pipe dream because you can’t find them. Yet, there are many companies today doing an involuntary reduction in force because they can’t find drivers.

Shippers and brokers bear responsibility for this. During the Great Recession, freight volumes dropped dramatically followed by a rapid drop in rates. Shippers employed technology which allowed them to slice and dice data to get the cheapest rate. TMS systems were deployed to hand freight to the lowest priced carrier. Everything became a backhaul. Traffic professionals were replaced by purchasing managers incentivized on how much transportation costs they squeezed out of carriers. Brokers took bigger cuts from the carriers after under bidding them on mega-bids.

During the cost cutting mania of 2008 and 2009, carriers were placed in survival mode. Carriers responded by shrinking their fleets and cutting driver pay and benefits. They kept their best drivers and let the worst go. Most driver schools were shuttered as carriers abandoned training programs and shifted to hiring qualified, experienced drivers. Now carriers are competing for that shrinking pool of qualified, experienced drivers.

Most drivers are paid either on a piece rate per mile or a percentage of revenue. Drivers suffered not only from the reduction in their rate of pay, but took a double hit with the reduction in miles. Industry analysts who track driver income have found big drops during recessions. Compensation has not returned to pre-recession levels.

Owner operators were decimated. As miles and rates dropped, many went out of business. For those who survived, their equipment aged and credit became tighter. It is almost impossible for an owner operator to obtain credit now unless they have a large down payment and gold plated credit. The EPA has continued adding costs to the purchase of new equipment and the price is now out of reach for most of these folks. As a result, used equipment prices have skyrocketed along with maintenance costs. Average age of tractors is at record levels. Owner operators now obtain equipment predominately from leasing companies affiliated with carriers rather than from a truck dealer. Regardless of the sourcing of a truck, as old equipment is replaced by new, costs will continue to rise.

Demographics play a big role. We have been hearing for years that the driver force will age and is not being replaced by younger folks. The clock has been ticking all this time. As the driver population has aged, more and more leave the industry due to health problems, death, retirement or simply frustration. I had the honor recently of touring the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. I had lunch with a young cadet who clearly was very squared away. He told me that his dad was an owner operator with a 1998 Peterbuilt in Toledo. He plans to fly F-16’s.

Population shifts play a role. Although drivers come from an interesting variety of backgrounds, one can generalize that the majority of them come from family farms where they learned to operate heavy machinery. Since baby boomers entered the industry, there has been a shift from small family farms to large corporate farming. There has also been a long ongoing trend of relocation in the labor force from rural areas to urban areas. Young people are leaving small rural farms, going to college and headed for the city.

The government has played a big role. I had a good driver from a liberal state quit after 8 years to draw unemployment. Unemployment was originally intended to help a person for 16 weeks while he looked for a job. It was not given out if the termination was due to the fault of the employee. During the Recession, governments gave out unemployment like candy and extended it for over a year. Would you rather drive a truck, with the lifestyle that entails, or collect $400 per week for doing nothing, while doing some remodeling or painting work on the side where you don’t declare taxes?

The government meanwhile barrages drivers with a never ending stream of new regulations which affect their lives such as medical screening, sleep apnea, CSA, reduced hours of service, paperless logs, cell phone bans, anti-idling ordinances and others. All the while, technology entering the cab is eroding the “freedom” of the road which attracted so many to the industry.

Labor has the government’s ear and a raft of new labor regulations scare the Willy’s out of employers. The EEOC is suing trucking companies to force them to put admitted alcoholics on the road under the ADA. The EEOC sued trucking companies for “hostile work environment” when they put a female student driver with a male trainer, and then when the carrier adopts same gender policies for trainer/trainee teams; they sue the same carrier for discrimination against women. Immigrants can’t get a work visa to drive a truck because the INS categorizes truck drivers as unskilled labor.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have made a fortune suing trucking companies for bad accidents and the verdicts are rising at a rapid pace. You see the ads and billboard soliciting victims. Negligent hiring has been added as a count in these lawsuits in order to make a claim for punitive damages. This along with the reaction from insurance companies and CSA has caused all carriers to increase hiring standards. As a result, the overwhelming majority of applicants for driving jobs are now unqualified to be hired.

Due to government regulations, plaintiffs’ lawyers and insurance industry practices, carriers won’t hire drivers younger than 23. I obtained a chauffer’s license when I was 18 and drove a school bus. This is unthinkable today. By 23 a young person has finished high school, married, had children and became established in some other job. Are they are going to leave that for 2 weeks or more at a time away from their family on the road?

A driver’s job continues to be tough as shippers and receivers hold them up at the understaffed warehouses with insufficient parking, while regulations put a premium on their time. They don’t get paid for sitting.

With an economic recovery, increased construction and infrastructure jobs will draw many more out of the industry for higher pay and a better home life. The new ones aren’t coming in at a rate that will replenish the force.

Shippers have failed to invest in the capacity they will need. Truckers haul 70% of this nation’s freight. How can freight be moved without enough drivers as demand increases over the next few years? The answer is simple. Government needs to back off and the compensation for drivers and the lifestyle must be improved to draw the numbers into the industry this economy will need. Of course, carries can only afford this, if the rates are sufficient to support it. They have a long way to go.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings