
āWe recruit enough new drivers, maybe we recruit so many that they have become disposable. In essence, we have been turning up the faucet without closing the drain. Finding innovative ways to increase efficiency will help. It goes beyond that. We have to find ways to keep drivers wanting to stay, so we can succeed in our industry and you get your shipment on time.ā āTrucker Jeff Clark, writing on the website of TV and radio host and writer Michael Smerconish
The news yesterday of longtime carrier pay-package analyst Gordon Klemp, of the National Transportation Institute, and his presentation at a recent CCJ event around the subject of driver pay, rung several familiar notes, particularly those relative to what carriers named the biggest issue in the trucking industry recently: the ādriver shortage.ā (Yeah, I canāt get enough of the scare quotes around the phrase, not to belittle the real issues carriers large and small have when it comes to finding dependable people to pilot their trucks at pay rates theyāre offering.) While itās not all about pay, as I know Klemp would acknowledge ā and Jeff Clarkās excellent piece about the āshortageā at Smerconish.com, well worth a read, makes it explicit ā the boost in the average pay package offered by carriers in the last year Klemp identified as the strongest on record. He also predicted it would continue, but offered a counterpoint that is very similar to the contention of Overdrive readers on offer in this post from two weeks ago on Channel 19.
Essentially, as summed up by yours truly: āWe have seen some moves in this area (pay), but clearly itās not been enough.ā
Klemp noted that for earning potential to put new luster on the business of trucking, as elucidated in Linda Longtonās report ā¦
Raising pay is necessary, but it will take years, not months, āuntil we get to a wage number that starts to draw people in who wouldnāt have considered driving in the past,ā he says.
Though top drivers will earn between $70,000 and $80,000 this year, āthe average overall is not thereā to attract new drivers into the industry, Klemp says.
Rates need to be there to support it. As a conversation I had with owner-operator Kenny Capell about his one-truck independent Ahearn Transportation operation yesterday made clear, theyāve been going in the wrong direction in recent months. Capell, hauling in a 2003 Freightliner Columbia pulling a van trailer, was consistently hitting well north of $3/mile in negotiated revenue this time last year and through the winter season on shorter-haul loads mostly out of the Atlanta area into Florida, often enough deadheading back. Now, however, he noted at the end of a similar run, ā$2.67 is what I just did,ā not uncommon of late.
For drivers running cross-country for per-mile pay, however, Capell gave the example of an owner-operator friend grossing around $1.50/mile plus surcharge. āOf course when you sit there and think about the fuel cost,ā Capell said, āit brings me back to B.J. and the Bear making $1.50 a mile in 1978 and paying 80 cents a gallon for fuel. Realistically, weāre still making those older wages.ā
Klemp, for his part, however, sees the pay situation for drivers improving over the longer term, urging carriers āto confront as an industryā the reality that āwe have a driver supply thatās inelastic.ā
In other words, as Clarkās piece well illustrated, shift priority No. 1 from concerns of recruiting to those of making it worth the while of drivers and owner-operators to stick around in the industry. āDriver shortageā has been invoked for too long without a whole lot of evidence in real wage movement to bolster it as a reality, as Clark suggested: āWhile the industry has been crying wolf for decades about a driver shortage, just like the villagers in Aesopās fable we donāt believe them anymore.ā
As I quoted Clark up top, this should be a significant priority of all parties in the supply chain, and while itās not all about money, that is no doubt a massive piece of it: āWe have to find ways to keep drivers wanting to stay, so we can succeed in our industry and you get your shipment on time.ā