There’s gold in the driver shortage for the ATA

The American Trucking Associations win. Trucking and its people lose. The problems remain. And, as Sonny and Cher once said in a song, the beat goes on.

The FMCSA has announced details of the program that will put as many as 3,000 under-age-21 truck drivers on the road as apprentices, most likely in the truckload sector, most likely with big carriers where the youngsters will pass through a brief period of employment like water through a bucket with a great big hole in the bottom.

The ATA got what it wanted – more recruits in the bucket. In a grossly misleading effort over decades, the ATA convinced enough lawmakers, news editors, and citizens that a dire shortage of qualified truck drivers will sink the economy. According to the ATA, the industry was approaching a cliff.

It reminds me of a trucking magazine editor back in the 1980s who was so upset over new dump truck regulations that he seriously declared, “Pretty soon there won’t be any dump trucks!”

Well, we still have dump trucks, and there is no cliff.

For a brief moment, it seemed like we might be about to work on that big hole instead of just pouring in more recruits.

On Jan. 12, U.S. DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg told the Transportation Research Board that driver pay and retention were problems in the industry.

His statement seemed to agree with a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that found the problem was turnover, not a shortage of drivers.

Ah, the Bureau of Labor Statistics report of March 2019.

The ATA didn’t like that report, so they shoved their staff economist into the spotlight to refute what was irrefutably true. Blinking in the glare, he issued a shoot-from-the-hip news release. Uh, well, you see, the bureau doesn’t understand the trucking industry, he said. From other absurd points in the news release, you could reasonably conclude the ATA didn’t understand it either.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics report came and went. Nobody seemed to care – especially in Congress, where a bill had just been introduced to address the nonexistent driver shortage. The idea was to pour more recruits into the driver bucket by lowering the age for interstate truckers from 21 to 18. Despite well-documented, tragic experiences with younger drivers over decades, the bill was called the DRIVE-Safe Act – one monumental snow-job of a title. The ATA maintained its driver-shortage drumbeat and turned up the volume.

The ATA publicity machine is a wonder to behold. When it comes to reporting on trucking, every media outlet goes to the ATA first. In turn, the ATA provides them good information – except for the driver shortage, of course. To be fair, some may truly believe there is a shortage, so it’s not exactly deception on their part. All the more reason for reporters to take the driver-shortage story at face value. Why wouldn’t they?

So, for more than two years, the ATA’s driver-shortage story appeared in national media from time to time. The ATA’s shortage was covered in local media as well because trucking serves local businesses and employs local people. Every story segment that didn’t start with statistics from the ATA, used them later in the story. Senators and representatives pay attention to local news.

State trucking associations reliably echoed the ATA. Local carriers complained about trying to hire drivers, though they didn’t always mention the pay they were offering. Directors of community college CDL programs spoke proudly of students who had gotten their CDLs and driving jobs. Big-name carriers were at the door, waiting for their graduates, they said. Did they know how many were still driving for those big carriers a year later? Nobody asked.

All that coverage, all that PR work, paid off for the ATA.

A watered-down version of the DRIVE-Safe Act was rolled into the huge, bipartisan infrastructure bill that made it through Congress and was signed into law on Nov. 15, 2021. Only now are some media outlets writing about teenage truck drivers, but it’s too late. Besides, hysteria over supply chain problems has moved politicians and editors to see 18-year-old truck drivers as a cure – at least a partial one – for the scary driver shortage and a turn away from the ATA’s imaginary cliff.

The truth, of course, is that 18-year-old truck drivers are even less likely than older drivers to stick with grueling truckload jobs. Even when the apprenticeship pilot program ends and the job is open to all 18-year-olds, there will be no substantial difference in turnover rates as a result.

But that’s all beside the point. Last week, even Transportation Secretary Buttigieg told Transport Topics, the ATA newspaper, that while the U.S. DOT was interested in driver turnover, he recognized the need to pour more recruits into that awful bucket.

The ATA won big time.

Yet, the drumbeat goes on. The ATA still promotes the driver shortage. Why?

Well, there is still more on the table in Washington, D.C. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor spends more than $800 million on various job training programs, including tuition support for CDL schools. According to Time Magazine, “California paid $11.7 million to truck driving schools in the state in 2020.” Most of it is federal money. The Labor Department also provides tax credits for employers who participate in apprenticeship programs. Will that include the big carriers that pushed for 18-year-old drivers? If not, you can bet they’re working on it. Why not get the feds to pay for training the industry should be paying for itself?

And how about easier work visas and eliminating that pesky requirement that drivers have a reasonable understanding of English? Then we could import lots of drivers to keep us off the ATA’s cliff.

There may be no actual driver shortage, but the perception of one is pure gold for big carriers and their representatives in D.C., the ATA. LL