Page 36 - ATR 6 2013 digital

the coming capacity crunch

Driver shortage, wages and Washington could hinder trucking’s growth

profits will be lessened by a tightening driver pay in 2013. “So pay is going up,
By steve Brawner driver labor pool and higher driver pay. but it’s going to go up even more as they
Contributing Writer Carriers need to hire more drivers at the try to recruit and retain more drivers,”
same time that drivers are becoming Costello said.
Despite a looming crunch on fleet harder to find. Compounding the problem are
capacity leading to higher rates coupled Part of the reason this is happen- new hours-of-service regulations that
with an expanding driver shortage, the ing is the improving economy is offer- Perry said will require carriers to hire
motor carrier industry should expect ing potential truck drivers other career an additional 60,000 to 70,000 driv-
things to get worse before it gets better. choices. The recovering construction ers. Making up that ground will require
Those are the views shared by two sector added about 200,000 employees some time. Meanwhile, there are 26
prominent transportation economists: to its payrolls over the last year, Costello regulatory issues – the biggest one
Chief Economist Bob Costello with said, and those jobs don’t require a being speed limiter requirements – that
the American Trucking Associations, commercial driver’s license or specialty remain to be settled. He expects the
and Noël Perry, a partner with FTR training, don’t require employees to be pace of regulatory change to slow in the
Associates, a leading transportation 21 and don’t require employees to spend first half of 2014 but quicken at the end
data collector and forecaster. Perry, who nights away from home. of the year through early 2015.
is based in Harrisburg, Penn., also owns To compete with that, driver pay Meanwhile, the carrier industry is
a research company, Transportation will have to increase. In fact, 70 per- operating with almost 6 percent fewer
Economics. cent of fleets surveyed by the American trucks than it did in December 2007,
First, the bad news. The two Trucking Associations said they had and as of late November, the total num-
economists say carriers’ short-term increased or were planning to increase ber of trucks on the road was only half

36 arkaNsas TruckiNg reporT | issue 6 2013