Driver demand has been slowly swelling all year. It’s likely to get hotter in 2011, even if the economy only crawls forward in fits and starts.
By this time next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s talk of where to find new driver pools. Whenever this has come up in the past, one response has often been: immigrants.
Immigrants don’t dominate trucking in the way Indians and others do cab fleets in New York City, but they represent many thousands of CDL holders. A recent Time magazine story, “Trucking in the U.S.A.: Where the Accent Is Russian,” takes an interesting look at that niche of foreign-born truckers.
It gets into some good topics – language barriers, discrimination, and CDL schools that fraudulently graduate immigrants. And it mentions several Russian truckers, like Phillip Dmitriev:
“… on the cab door of his Freightliner truck is the imperial crest of old Russia, the double-headed eagle, glistening with raindrops. It is the proud insignia of Mikhail Trucking, a transport company in Spokane, Wash., founded in 2006 by brothers from Russia.”