Pub. 1 2020 Issue 1

26 Kentucky Trucker Kentucky Trucking Association I s there a driver shortage? Experts don’t actually agree about that. • According to reports from the American Truck- ing Associations dating back to 2005, the shortage definitely exists. They claimed a shortage of more than 60,000 truck drivers at the end of 2018. • An article on the USA Today website, written by Zoe Nicholson for The Greenville News and dated August 24, 2019, supported ATA’s take on the situation. • Heather Long at The Washington Post wrote about the shortage in an online article dated May 28, 2018. • Thomas Black at Bloomberg agreed in an online article dated July 23, 2019, and said the shortage will double in the next 10 years. A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, published in May 2019, disagrees. Steve Banker, a contributor for Forbes magazine, identified key points from the May 2019 report: • The trucking industry is an important employer. In 2017, there were approximately 1.75 million U.S. heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers. There were 877,670 drivers for light trucks and delivery services. • Drivers working across interstate lines are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to overtime provisions. The Federal House of Service Regulations limits drivers to 60 hours during a seven-day period. Employers are not required to pay a time-and-a-half premium after drivers have worked 40 hours. For most trac- tor-trailer drivers, working much more than 40 hours per week is the norm. • Companies do want to hire drivers, and the com- petition is tight. This has been helped by the fact that driving a truck doesn’t require a lot of educa- tion, and heavy truck drivers earn more than most blue-collar workers. As Steve Banker puts it, that’s what you would expect to see when overall supply is increasing because of growing demand overall. • The competition is particularly fierce for long-dis- tance truckloads, where turnover is high. How high? The average for large truckload carriers is 94%. For small carriers, the average is 79%. For firms in other parts of the industry where loads are less than a truckload is 12%. Where the ATA sees a labor shortage, the Bureau of Labor Statistics sees a need for increased regulation such as paying people overtime for working more than 40 hours per week. Steve Banker then cites the opinion of Craig Fuller, CEO at FreightWaves, whose opinion was published in an online article on Sept. 3, 2019. Craig Fuller talks about a capacity glut and, like the bureau, argues for stronger standards and regulations. The one thing everyone seems to agree about is that conditions in the trucking industry need to change. What happens if there aren’t changes? You can expect to see shortages of perishable food items like produce, higher prices all-around, and a negative effect on local businesses that aren’t big enough to compete with larger, more lucrative accounts. The U.S. needs the trucking industry, which is responsible for moving almost everything people buy. It is certainly true that the boomer retirement wave is affecting the trucking industry the same way it is affecting every other industry. Four drivers retire, but there aren’t four drivers waiting to replace them. Potential employees are more likely to get a university education than they are to go for a low-status job like Solving the Driver Shortage