ATA Cites Driver Shortage in New Report

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

merican Trucking Associations said in a report issued Wednesday that the U.S. long-haul trucking industry is short 20,000 drivers and that the shortage could get worse in coming years.

The study, U.S. Truck Driver Shortage: Analysis and Forecasts, predicts the shortage of drivers will rise to 111,000 by 2014 if current demographic trends remain.

"The driver market is the tightest it has been in 20 years," said ATA President Bill Graves.

"It's a major limitation to the amount of freight that motor carriers can haul [and] it's critical that we find ways to tap a new labor pool, increase wages and recruit new people into the industry that keeps our national economy moving," Graves said.

ATA Vice Chairman Ray Kuntz, chief executive officer of Watkins and Shepard Trucking Inc., Helena, Mont., testified at a House subcommittee Wednesday in support of a bill that would add commercial truck driving schools to the list of educational and training programs eligible for payments.

Kuntz told the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee that such payments should be available under the Montgomery GI bill.

Of the 3.4 million truck drivers on the road, 1.3 million are long-haul truckers, the driver segment most severely impacted by the shortage, ATA said.

Although the current driver shortage is 20,000 drivers, it seems even larger to the trucking industry because of the high level of driver "churn," or drivers moving from carrier to carrier. Large truckload carriers reported an average annual turnover of 121% last year.

Truckload carriers said earlier this year they would continue pushing up pay rates to curb what has become a continuous struggle to find and keep qualified drivers. (Click here for previous coverage.)