To say that the trucking industry is facing a driver shortage is an understatement.

Record demand for trucking services exacerbates the problem. According to analyst Donald Broughton of A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis, truckers will move 9.8 billion tons of freight this year, up from 9.1 billion in 2003. The volume of shipments hit historic highs during the summer and is forecast to rise by an additional 5 percent in the fourth quarter.

Nationwide, there is a shortage of 80,000 to 100,000 drivers, said Mike Russell, a spokesman at the American Trucking Association. According to national labor studies, as many as 200,000 additional drivers will be needed in the next five years. While the demand for qualified drivers skyrockets, the trucking industry estimates that thousands, possibly tens of thousands of driver openings are currently going unfilled.

With an empty or near-empty barrel of drivers to choose from, some in the industry have tried cutting corners. They have tried importing foreign drivers, sought permission to use younger drivers and have even scoured prisons for drivers. Totally green, inexperienced candidates have been and are being rushed through some training programs so fast that when they finally find themselves out on the interstate behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound semi, they scare themselves.

According to a report aired by San Diego’s Channel 10 News, “Joe” (a name used to protect the driver’s anonymity) was recruited and “trained” by CRST Van Expedited with West Coast headquarters in Fontana, Calif. “It was the scariest job I ever did in my entire life,” Joe said. He spent four days in the CRST classroom, studying for the Department of Motor Vehicles exam for big rigs only to later be given all the answers to the exam – some tough, some easy – and told to just study the answers. After about six days of driver training, during which he shared a truck with nine other students, Joe teamed up with an experienced driver and hit the road. He told Channel 10 News, “You’re immediately thrown out on the road, on the freeways in all kinds of weather conditions and with hardly any experience whatsoever of driving the big rig.”

Joe quit soon thereafter.

The trucking industry has applied Band-Aid after Band-Aid to its hemorrhage of drivers. Finally, faced with the very real prospect of bleeding to death, it is beginning to seriously ask, “What must we do to attract and retain qualified drivers?” The answer repeatedly returns to money.

According to a July 2003 survey by the Labor Department, the average annual pay for a truck driver was $32,134, slightly above the average pay for all blue-collar occupations, but below the $37,784 average for all workers. Although a trucker’s base pay – cents per mile – has risen 22 percent in the last 10 years, inflation has risen 27 percent.

As they compete for a share of the available labor pool with others who offer fewer hours and more home time, trucking is coming up the loser. “We have to take an abnormal share of the labor pool to meet the current demand,” said Scott Arves, president of transportation for Schneider National. “The only way to take that share is to significantly raise wages, something fleets are reluctant to do. … Most people have focused on $60,000 or more to attract new entrants to the driver pool.”

In an article written by Sean Kelley and published by E-Trucker.com, Covenant Transportation’s founder and CEO David Parker, and Duane Acklie, chairman of Crete Carrier Corp., agree that salaries between $60,000 and $65,000 would be needed to fill the current shortfall.

“LTLs (less-than-truckload carriers) are paying $65,000 and have less than 20 percent turnover,” Parker said. “We’re paying $42,000 and have 100 percent turnover. … I think you’re going to see driver pay increase over the next few years, 5 or 6 cents a year for the next five years.”

According to Acklie, “We don’t have a shortage of drivers, just a shortage of drivers willing to work for what we pay.”

Acklie further says that such a major increase could have benefits in safety, productivity and customer service. “At $65,000 with a cost of living index to it, you’d probably have a quality of driver increase as well.”

This driver is pleased to see his industry beginning to get serious, and I agree with Acklie that as driver pay significantly improves, so will the quality of the drivers. But why stop there? Few, if any of the workers who the Labor Department found to be averaging $37,784 are required to work 70 to 100 hours per week for that pay while truckers put in that many hours and more, week in and week out. It has always been my sincere belief that until the sweatshop conditions imposed on drivers by the outdated pay-per-mile method of computing driver pay (regardless of the rate) is replaced with an honest pay-per-hour system and drivers are placed fully under the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, trucking reforms will remain as ineffectual as band-aids on a battlefield.

While market forces demand a significant increase in driver pay, such an increase, seasoned with a dash of justice, will go a long way toward raising the trucking industry from the muddy bog it now finds itself in.

Come on trucking, quit blathering and bite the bullet. It’s a new day.

Guy Bourrie has been hauling on the highways for 20 years. He lives in Washington, Maine, and can be reached at [email protected].