A driver can apparently bring home their pay so low now that it’s equivalent in value to an unemployment check? - Don Schneider: "... Need to be paid $75,000 a year"
Berne,IN,USA -Fleet Owner, by Sean Kilcarr -March 22, 2011: -- “Bottom line: a driver is entrusted with a $140,000 tractor and trailer and often times well over a half million dollars worth of cargo, and then he’s treated like a second class citizen by the shipper, the consignee, his dispatcher, and the very citizenry he’s serving” Steve Myers, Moser Motor Sales... And it’s that lack of respect towards the truck driving profession that’s really crippling the industry’s ability to recruit and keep drivers... That’s the crux of the problem right there in a nutshell. No one wants their kids to be truck drivers, because driving a truck for a living is looked down upon. And in fact, Richard Stocking, president and COO of Swift Transportation, noted that he’s not encouraging any of his three sons to go down the truck driving career path either... But are we surprised by this? The Department of Labor, for example, files the position of “truck driver” in the “unskilled labor” category... The reason the driver shortage continues to grow even though the national unemployment rate still hovers above 9%: A driver can apparently bring home their pay so low now that it’s equivalent in value to an unemployment check? ... Don Schneider (founder of TL carrier Schneider National) once noted back in the late 1990s that truck drivers would eventually need to be paid $75,000 a year in order to attract the “best and brightest” into the profession... “But if we really want to raise wages to this level, if we really want to commit to this kind of change, we need the shipper’s help to do it” ... In short, solving the driver shortage issue is going to require change on a very broad front, in terms of pay and perception...
* When the industry as a whole has been scrapping the bottom of the talent barrel for that past 15 years what you see at the truck stops is the result ...
Kenton,TENN,USA -Fleet Owner: COMMENT by Timothy Brady -March 22nd, 2011: ... Most trucking recruiters and they’ll tell you their job is to sell the carrier to the potential recruit by telling them what the recruit wants to hear. Avoid the negatives at all costs... One of the largest problems in finding the best and brightest for the industry goes right back to basics. What other career in America allows an employer to pay less as the job becomes more dangerous? Being paid by the mile, not being compensated for time waiting to be loaded or unloaded or waiting to be dispatched pushes the trucker to put “miles” under their seat. But if weather, road construction, accidents, congestion slows the trucker down, he earns less. Couple that with the stronger enforcement through CSA and the lack of flexibility in the HOS (particularly in the 14 hour rule), and you have a formula for a worsening driver shortage. It seems the industry wants the government to babysit its drivers through the HOS, CSA and EOBRs because trucking is unwilling to provide the proper training and pay truckers a wage in line with their responsibility and required skills... Finally all straight per mile pay must be done away with. It should be a per day or a per mile pay and day per rate for employee drivers and lease operators a percentage of Line haul plus all extras related to movement of a load. Alternatively, continue to deal with increasing trucking regulations, failures of service and bring drivers into the industry that require constant baby-sitting to be sure they are dong their job correctly... (Caterpillar truck: A complex control panel of a modern truck)
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