Shortage of Truck Drivers

The American Trucking Association has recently completed a study that shows that there is at present a shortage of more than 20,000 truckers in the growing trucking industry. The association’s study has shown that if this trend continues, the number of truck drivers to keep pace with the expanding industry will continue to be at a huge deficit. This is a very sobering figure when you consider the amount of materials, products and goods that are transported by truck across the country every single hour of every single day.

Throughout the run of a year the amount of tonnage of transported product is astounding. The total tonnage of product needing to be transported by truck is expected to grow to 14 billion tonnes during this decade! Without a huge pool of truck drivers there’s simply no way to move the amount of material necessary by truck throughout the nation. Many trucking companies have simply closed up operations because they’ve been unable to find enough qualified truckers to fill open trucking jobs. There’s an estimated 3.4 million truck drivers on the road with just over 1.3 million of them being long-haul truck drivers. The long-haul segment of the industry is expected to be hardest hit by this shortage as it is also the fastest expanding sector of the trucking industry. The association’s study also predicts a need for over 200,000 new long-haul drivers to come into the industry over the next ten years.

Visit the websites of leading trucking and transportation employers and you’ll see how they’re pulling out all the stops to find drivers:

• Old Dominion Freight Jobs
• Wilson Trucking Jobs
• TMC Transportation Jobs
• Roadway Trucking Jobs
• Everyone’s hiring it seems!

To help with this increasing need for drivers, many companies are targeting a larger percentage of women truck drivers and minority truck drivers to be employed as long-haul truckers. At present, women make up only 5% of truck drivers, but that number is growing at a steady pace. African Americans and Hispanics make up 11.7% and 9.7%, respectively. These numbers will need to increase if the number of truckers available for long-hauling is to match the industry’s growth rate. Learn more about the industry’s needs on the websites of various trucking industry associations. Drivers looking to make their career in the long-haul trucking industry will most likely find no better time than now to do so.