A trucking firm based mostly in Fort Value, northern Texas, is providing to pay skilled drivers $14,000 per week—$728,000 a 12 months—because the U.S. grapples with a nationwide scarcity of truckers.
Sisu Vitality, which describes itself as a “cutting-edge trucking firm,” says candidates have to be over 25, with a minimum of two years of expertise, and should have a industrial driver’s license.
Jim Grundy, CEO of Sisu Vitality, advised Texas TV station KENS 5: “Insurance coverage firms will not insure you in the event you’re not 25 years previous, if you do not have two years of expertise. So, as a brand new driver popping out, these alternatives aren’t out there to you.”
Talking to Newsweek, a spokesperson for the corporate defined Grundy is “hiring owner-operators of vehicles, not simply truck drivers like firm truck drivers.
“They need to personal the truck, and he [Grundy] helps them within the means of buying a truck and to get their license,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The corporate’s director of recruiting additionally advised Newsweek: “We’re frac sand haulers within the oilfield in West Texas. $14,000 is what our highest earners make based mostly on the quantity of a great deal of sand they run.”
The U.S. has had a truck driver scarcity for greater than 15 years, in keeping with the American Trucking Associations.
A shortfall was first reported in 2005, when it stood at about 20,000, the ATA mentioned. This quantity had “skyrocketed” to round 50,700 by 2017.
The next 12 months the trade reported a fair larger scarcity, “largely resulting from strong trade freight volumes.”
There are a number of causes for the scarcity “however one of many largest elements is the comparatively excessive common age of the present workforce,” mentioned the ATA.
The issue has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the “short-term closures of state DMVs and truck driver coaching faculties [and] dried up the already fragile pipeline of recent drivers coming into the trucking trade,” in keeping with a letter despatched to Congress by 117 organizations representing the U.S. provide chain.
“Because of the already crippling driver scarcity, firms in provide chains throughout the financial system are dealing with increased transportation prices, resulting in elevated costs for customers on every little thing from electronics to meals,” the April 14 letter mentioned.
The letter urged lawmakers to move the DRIVE-Secure Act, which has had robust bipartisan help.
The laws goals to “treatment the nation’s rising scarcity of truck drivers by selling alternative and enhancing security coaching for rising members of the trucking workforce,” in keeping with the ATA.
The driving force shortages are anticipated to final past this summer season, Grundy mentioned. “That is the narrative that you simply’re listening to,” he advised KENS 5. “That this factor goes to final wherever from two to 4 years. And it could possibly be longer as a result of the inhabitants’s getting stronger.”
In accordance with the letter despatched to Congress, 70 % of the nation’s freight is transported by industrial vehicles and the trade is estimated to require an “further 60,800 truck drivers instantly—a deficit that’s anticipated to develop to greater than 160,000 by 2028.”
The trucking trade is forecast to want round 1.1 million new drivers over the following decade, to deal with elevated demand from prospects and to exchange retiring employees.
ATA’s chief economist, Bob Costello, mentioned in late March: “With the impression of not too long ago handed fiscal stimulus, and the quickening tempo of vaccinations within the U.S., we’re more likely to see continued enchancment within the financial system which is able to drive not simply more healthy freight volumes, however are more likely to create much more demand for drivers, tightening the market, so motor carriers want to stay targeted on driver retention.
“Whereas the motive force scarcity briefly eased barely in 2020 through the depths of the pandemic, continued tightness within the driver market stays an operational problem for motor carriers and they need to anticipate it to proceed by means of 2021 and past.”
This text has been up to date with remark from Sisu Vitality.
