Lingering Shortage Puts Truckers in the Driver’s Seat : Transport: Grueling lifestyle, other factors push some out of the business. Companies raise pay and use other incentives to retain drivers.
Ed Owen loves this job.
He’s heading home to San Antonio, bearing a load of aluminum in a white Fisher Freight rig with bold red lettering. The tall, dark-haired 36-year-old leads his preteen-age son and daughter, who ride with him in the summer, past the humming rigs at this famed truck stop an hour south of Dallas.
“Driving the truck, I think it’s the easiest job I’ve ever had. But it’s the lifestyle. You’re either a Gypsy or you’re not a Gypsy,” he said.
Owen has even more reason to love his job now. There’s a shortage of truckers like him, so since the first of the year, Fisher has provided Owens with insurance and a nearly 10% pay raise, to 23 cents per mile.
Many trucking companies are taking similar steps, hoping to recruit and retain precious drivers.
“You can quit one place and take your pick of where you want to go to work tomorrow,” said Owen, who’s been at it four years.
While the shortage has eased with the slowing economy from the “epidemic” levels that led to some parked rigs in 1994, it still persists, industry analysts say.
“Even though this year’s a better year, perhaps the best in five or six years, it’s still a nightmare compared to what most industries have to do to find a pool of qualified workers,” said Thom Albrecht, a transportation analyst for the investment firm A.G. Edwards & Sons.
There are roughly 2 million professional over-the-road drivers, and the American Trucking Assns. estimates 300,000 new drivers will be needed each year for the next 10 years.
The industry’s turnover may run as high as 60% to 80% a year, Albrecht said.
“A lot of companies still say they’re having trouble finding drivers for long-haul work in particular,” said Ken Simonson, the ATA’s chief economist.
“It’s one of the major problems facing the trucking industry today,” said Charles Reimer, president of Little Rock, Ark.-based Cal-Ark International Inc. “It is at times hard to take on new business if we don’t have enough drivers to operate the equipment.”
Reasons for the shortage are numerous. Most often cited is the dreary lifestyle, with weeks away from home and many nights spent sleeping in the cab, that has turned off many drivers.
Long-haul truckers, who typically earn around $30,000 to $40,000 per year, often can make the same money doing easier work that doesn’t keep them on the road up to 300 days a year.
“It takes a special type of family to put up with a truck driver because you’re gone all the time,” said Al Goralewicz, 53, who was hauling a load of candy for San Antonio-based Bee Trucking Inc.
Goralewicz said he gets home to his wife and three children, now grown, about two or three days of every 10.
“It’s a lonesome life out there,” agreed Carmen Nelson, 51, of Missoula, Mont., an independent trucker along with husband, Willard.
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Just as bad can be the ill treatment and lack of respect from dispatchers, motorists and especially receivers where drivers unload. Warehouse workers sometimes won’t even let truck drivers use the bathroom, telephone or vending machines, ATA officials said.
“It’s a tiresome job. . . . It’s a non-thank you job,” said Ted Stoneback, 60, as he pumped gas into his cylindrical silver truck ferrying liquid chocolate between M&M; plants in Waco and Cleveland, Tenn.
“More like it’s dog-eat-dog out here now, cuss each other out on the CB and stuff,” said Stoneback, who’s been driving for nearly four decades.
Other problems include the shrinking demographic pool of people ages 21 to 40; downsizing of the military, which traditionally has been a driver source; and the requirement that long-haul truck drivers be at least 21 years old, missing workers who pick another career straight out of high school.
Government regulations; the 1992 standardized commercial driver’s license; drug and alcohol testing, and the 1993 cut in the tax deduction for business meals also get some of the blame.
In response, many trucking companies have raised pay and added driver benefits. Some companies also are adding sleeper cabs and better communications equipment in the rigs, and addressing other quality-of-life issues -- “making sure dispatchers realize the drivers are really the stars in this business,” Albrecht said.
