![]() So that waiting time the driver doesn’t get paid for and it uses up the driver’s available hours to drive for the day.” “A trucking company may allow their customers a two- to three-hour time period, before they start charging detention. “Most drivers don’t get paid for the detention times,” said Kirkland. He has waited up to 36 hours, with typical wait times of several hours. “As a whole, the market for truck drivers appears to work as well as any other blue-collar labor market,” the report concluded.ĭarrell Kirkland, a truck driver based in Georgia for 31 years, explained the various ways in which truck drivers are taken advantage of by operators and shipping receivers, such as working several hours a day without pay due to waiting to pick up or drop off loads. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published an article in March 2019 discussing the widespread and constant claims of labor shortages in the trucking industry, but found that if wages rise in the industry, any long-term labor shortages would be improved. “It is indeed a pay shortage and work conditions issue.” There is no truck driver shortage,” said Desiree Wood, the president of Real Women in Trucking. “The industry has recycled this narrative about every three months for over 20 years. But truck drivers are quick to highlight the low pay, poor treatment and tough working conditions they endure throughout the industry as prevailing issues for employers who claim to have trouble finding and retaining enough drivers. ![]() This claim has been repeated consistently over the years and has recently been cited by industry groups in favor of a bill in Congress to lower the commercial driver’s license age requirement from 21 to 18. As nasty as it may sound, most of us experienced drivers carry garbage bags and a five-gallon bucket, or a potty chair with plastic grocery bags.”Īccording to the American Trucking Associations, the lobbying organization for large trucking employers, the US has a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers that is disrupting the nation’s supply chains, and the shortages are projected to worsen over the next few years. “When you have a 300-mile run and six to seven hours to be there, you don’t have time to waste, so either you’re late or you’re on time and refused use of the facilities. “If you haven’t found a place to park by 2 or 3pm in a truck stop, you’re looking for any place to park, yet we’re fined and towed for just trying to be safe,” Clemons said. Most facilities Clemons drives to do not provide bathrooms for truck drivers, and many truck stops are backed up with wait times to refuel and use the bathroom. And that’s before Covid upended the supply chain and increased demand for drivers, and the pressures they face. Drivers earn less.Īll these factors may explain why annual turnover at big trucking employers averaged 94% between 19. Dispatchers and brokers are pushing harder to deliver loads in a certain amount of time or else drivers face fines or deductions. It’s more difficult to find parking and access to bathrooms. While the industry says there is a national shortage of drivers and complains regulation is holding back hiring, Florida-based Clemons has another theory: working conditions have deteriorated since he started driving, he said.
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