Driver shortage expected to rise

“We’ve got the trucks, we’ve got the freight, we’ve got the trailers, but what we don’t have are the drivers,” said Chris Anderson, vice president of recruiting and retention for general carrier TCSI/Transland Inc. in Strafford. At Transland, the driver turnover rate is 57 percent, low compared to the American Trucking Association’s annual turnover rate of 120 percent for the first quarter of 2005, 16 percent below fourth-quarter 2004 level.

The driver shortage now sits at 20,000, according to “The U.S. Truck Driver Shortage: Analysis and Forecasts,” a report released in May and conducted by Global Insight Inc. for ATA. The study anticipates the shortfall will reach 111,000 by 2014.

The industry faces its own unique challenges that contribute to the driver shortage, such as long hours and time spent away from family. A commercial driver’s license can’t be obtained until age 21, which cuts into the number of available new drivers.

“Usually by the time they’ve turned 21, they’ve created relationships and a career start to the point where now they don’t want to disconnect from that and go drive a truck,” said John Hancock, director of training and driver recruiting for Prime Inc.

Shifting gears

Feeling the pinch of the current shortage and its projections for the future, local transportation companies are changing their priorities in hiring and retaining drivers.

“Wages right now have become a bigger issue than they’ve ever been,” said Jim O’Neal, president of O & S Trucking.

O & S, with 174 owner-operators and 184 company drivers, has a turnover rate of 65 percent. “In the past driver surveys you’d get issues like comp time, respect and all those things and wages would be down around third or fourth,” O’Neal said. “Right now pay is a bigger issue partially because drivers know they can command it because they can jump from one (company) to another.”

Local drivers, O’Neal said, typically earn between $45,000 and $55,000 per year.

At Prime, where turnover is under 50 percent, Hancock agreed that pay is a major factor. “If you simplify it, am I going to pay them enough where they feel like their time and effort is a fair trade for the amount of money they made?” he said.

First-year drivers at Prime have the potential to earn $40,000 to $50,000, Hancock said.

Communication is being used as a tool to retain drivers at O & S. “We’re trying to stay way ahead of the issues by literally keeping our finger on the pulse of every driver every day to see that they’re satisfied,” O’Neal said.

Exit surveys are used to learn from drivers that leave O & S.

“We’ve had a huge response from that, where they will talk a lot more that way about the issues that they have,” said Charlotte Eckley, chief business development officer for O & S.

More communication is used with new drivers as well, including letters sent to drivers’ spouses to let them know about company benefits. New drivers are encouraged to share their expectations, Eckley said.

“Some of them want home time, some of them want a lot of miles. They want all of these different things,” Eckley said. “So we created an expectation sheet, and when they come through the door, they have to write out everything that they want. We sit with them and talk about what’s realistic and what’s not and how soon we can meet their needs.”

Driving? Sí!

Some transportation companies are looking to the Hispanic population to help ease the shortage.

The Global Insight study reported that Hispanic males comprise a higher percentage of truck drivers than they do of the overall labor force, and the study anticipates strong growth of the number of Hispanic male truck drivers ages 30–64 through 2014.

Hispanic males comprised 14.6 percent of truck drivers in 2004; the report projects Hispanic males will comprise 18.7 percent of truck drivers by 2014.

While Transland is preparing to launch a radio campaign in Monett to recruit Hispanic drivers, Anderson said that isn’t the company’s main focus.

“I’ve always asked for drivers in general. I didn’t care anything about race or creed or anything. I just asked for drivers, and we do accept all kinds of drivers,” Anderson said.

Hancock said that Prime advertises for drivers in some Spanish publications nationwide and has hired bilingual drivers, but a number was not available. “He’s got to be able to converse, to read and understand English,” Hancock said of regulations placed on drivers by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

O & S offers a class to teach Spanish to employees, not just drivers. “Are we going to make that our No. 1 target area to market? Probably not, but it’s an area that we’re going to look at and try to gain a little bit of that market,” Eckley said.

“I think it’s important because our Hispanic neighbors are part of our culture now and that’s a great thing,” O’Neal said. “Diversity in our community and our workplace is a great thing.

So they are part of that labor force we’re going to draw from. But I don’t believe you’re going to get enough drivers … from that approach,” O’Neal added. “If you’re a qualified driver we’ll work out the language part.”