Driver Shortage Fact or Fiction

A year ago, the American Trucking Associations sounded the alarm about a truck driver shortage. So did National Logistics Management Company. But the alarm is still ringing, and nothing’s been fixed.

ATA said there was a shortage of about twenty thousand truckers nationwide.

National Logistics Management’s white paper recommended raising truckers’ average pay to sixty thousand dollars a year. This rattled a few cages since the industry average is only forty two thousand per year.

National Logistics defended its figures by noting LTL carriers which pay drivers an average of sixty five thousand dollars per year have a tremendously lower turnover rate of less than twenty per cent. This is as much as one hundred per cent lower than the turnover rate some other carriers are experiencing at this time.

Background to the turnover rate is of course the old law of supply and demand. While truckers and trailers are in short supply, the demand for shipping has increased. Today shippers pay much higher rates to get their goods hauled, whether cross town or cross country.

There you have it. Shipping rates are up, huge trucking companies profits are reported in the news daily, and no one seems able to find a solution for the drivers.

So is there an actual shortage of drivers? Or are the figures not accurate because so many drivers are changing companies at dizzying rates, getting themselves counted into the averages perhaps three or four times instead of once? Would better pay help retain drivers? If not, what would? Would you drive for a company whose only virtue was a little more money in your pay envelope?

Something to think about….