The trucking industry moves 70 percent of the nation’s freight but struggles to retain workers.
Instructor Matt Hanlon, 53, who’s been teaching big-rig driving for two decades, shakes his head and tells the trainee to pull the Freightliner forward and try again. His brother Mike, 49,Much of the nation’s $23 trillion economy rides on the back of trucks such as this one. But as the pandemic upends consumer spending habits, there has never been a bigger mismatch between the mountain of freight that needs to be hauled around the country and the number of truckers willing to do the hauling.
That requirement will be good for business at SAGE — which charges about $5,000 in tuition — but it could aggravate the driver shortage. Small carriers, which often do their own training, and those in rural areas where there may be few approved instructors, fear the regulation will make hiring more cumbersome. Canadian and U.S. government vaccine requirements also loom.
An independent group, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, says the real problems are long-distance trucking’s unappealing lifestyle and inadequate compensation. Drivers spend weeks away from their families, often struggle to find a place to stop for the night or use the bathroom, and waste several hours each day idling in lines.
One of the newly minted drivers is David Nivar, 32, who trained here for the big rigs after driving a local delivery van. He plans to get a local job in the less-than-truckload market, where companies combine shipments from several customers on a single vehicle. Fierce competition keeps a lid on wages, since a carrier that raises wages excessively can easily get underpriced by a rival hauler. So
Riding shotgun as Mason Mott, 18, steers a tractor trailer around the campus of Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, Hanlon mixes gentle correctives with praise.
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