Trucking industry’s bumpy road

You’ve likely noticed that delivery of many consumer and business materials is taking much longer than in past years. That new refrigerator, that updated computer monitor, those special-order shoes – whether for home or business use, raw materials or finished products, what might once have arrived in days is now often taking weeks, perhaps even months. These delays are no surprise to leaders of local trucking companies, and the slowdowns may be the new normal for the foreseeable future due to a variety of complicating factors, from driver shortages to tie-ups at shipping ports and explosive growth in demand linked to the post-pandemic economic recovery. Local trucking leaders share some of the same frustrations as the public at large – albeit for different reasons. And while the news isn’t all negative for the trucking industry, those leaders say there’s ample reason for concern in both the near- and longer-term. “From the positive side, we’ve got tons of freight, lots of opportunities out there,” said Michael Gerdin, chairman and CEO of Heartland Express, headquartered in North Liberty. “Our drivers are driving all they can every day, and we’re moving freight as quickly and as safely possible, so that’s a really good thing. The main (negative) is the lack of drivers and the aging of the driver population.” Riley Larson, general manager of Cedar Rapids-based JMS Transportation, concurred that a shortage of available drivers is the industry’s biggest challenge. “It’s been getting worse for a few years now,” Mr. Larson said. “That’s no secret to anybody. It’s the number one issue in the industry right now. A lot of the drivers are retiring, and not a lot of young people are getting into (trucking). It’s worrisome when you think about it, not even now but down the road, with more of those older drivers starting to retire and not a lot of young people coming in, it begs the question – what’s the endpoint here? It’s an ongoing concern that’s always needing to be addressed.” An aging workforce The median age of over-the-road truckers in the United States has been on the rise for several years, currently standing at age 46 as compared to an average age of 42 for all occupations, according to a report from alltrucking.com. The median age is 35 for drivers in training. And the contrast is most striking for private fleet drivers, who are a median 57 years old. “These ages are a bit concerning for those in the trucking industry, as it’s believed the older ages of the drivers contribute to the country’s current and looming trucker shortage,” the report indicates. “To drive a tractor-trailer across state lines, a person must be 21 years old — meaning adults between 18 and 20 may be gainfully employed in another field by the time they could enter trucking as a career.” In addition, it can be challenging to keep drivers working for a specific company even after they’re hired, Mr. Larson said, so service loyalty and longevity are lessening. “Driver retention is becoming a bigger issue for a lot of us,” he said. “Right now, there is such a shortage of drivers, and companies need drivers any way they can get them. Drivers are recognizing that, so they’re more apt to leave a company quicker than they would normally because they know that there (are) 10 other companies looking to hire them if they leave. Before, it was more of a job security  thing, where they would have been probably more inclined to stay. Now they’re leaving because they know that there are other companies out there that need them just as badly, and fleets are trying to get creative with ways to keep drivers.” The driver shortage was only exacerbated by COVID-19, Mr. Gerdin noted. “We had a lot of drivers coming off the road,” he said. “And the (driving) schools have been shut down pretty much for the whole year last year. They’re starting to open now to bring some new (drivers) into the industry, but we’re losing way more than are coming in.” No shortage of demand On the flip side, there’s plenty of demand for trucking services, both locally and nationally, as the economic recovery continues to pick up steam. “We have the highest demand of all time,” Mr. Gerdin said of Heartland, which operates a fleet of about 3,000 trucks in 25 states. “Every day since last July, it’s all day, every day, non-stop stuff to move. The consumer is just buying and buying and buying, and it’s just all we can do, every single day.” Mr. Larson took it a step further for JMS, which has about 150 trucks and specializes in regional, long-haul trucking, mostly scrap paper used to make boxes and other packaging materials. “It was a little bit different with us, because when things started shutting down with the pandemic, our demand, if anything, picked up,” he said. “Everyone stopped going to the store and started ordering online. When those online things come to your house, they come in a box, and those boxes need to be produced. So our demand really didn’t wane a whole lot during the whole shutdown. Right now, as it’s getting more and more open, demand definitely shot up. I think a lot of places are trying to play catch-up. They shut down and didn’t produce for so long, and now they’re trying to make up ground that was lost during the shutdown. But then some of these other issues arise. We need the drivers to be able to take the high demand and load. Then once we have some drivers, we need a couple of trucks, but it’s been hard to get these trucks in a timely manner.” In many cases, due to equipment supply shortages, trucking companies are ordering new vehicles well before they anticipate needing them, Mr. Larson said. “Fleets are trying to be proactive,” he said. “They might not feel they need any new trucks, but they’re going to get those orders in because it might be six months to over a year before that truck gets to them, and by that time, they’re probably going to need it. They’re just kind of riding it out, hoping things will balance out and get better sooner rather than later. It’s trying to play that balancing game, so you don’t find yourself in a predicament. But it’s hard to be proactive when you don’t really know what the what the future holds.” Search for solutions While the issues facing the trucking industry have intensified in recent years, they aren’t new, so several solutions have been pursued, with mixed results. “We’ve tried everything we could think of,” Mr. Gerdin said. “It’s the million-dollar question — how we get more drivers out driving? But the fact is, not many people want to sit behind the wheel and drive 2,500 miles a week. It’s a tough job. The younger generation is not really interested in driving trucks. They’re more interested in their laptops, sitting in an office doing their work. We’re into the $80,000 (range) for good hard-working drivers, and it still doesn’t seem to attract the numbers that we need. You can drive 10 hours a day, so it’s more than a 40-hour workweek. That’s another detractor. With as much freight as there is out there right now, you’re going to be driving a lot. And that doesn’t interest a lot of people.” Awareness of that pay potential might help in the long run, Mr. Larson said. “Pay is one of the things that could actually get a lot of these young people into the profession, if they knew how much a truck driver can make right out of the gate,” he said. “Truck drivers aren’t seen the way they used to be seen, as the guardians of the road. The view of truck drivers has been spun in a negative way, which affects a lot of young people wanting to get into it.” ICR Iowa has a Transportation and Logistics sector partnership, Mr. Larson said, brainstorming recruitment ideas for the profession. “One thing that was brought up multiple times — a lot of these young people don’t realize how much money a truck driver can make without having a bunch of student loan money to pay back. Some people are realizing there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting a college degree, but there’s also nothing wrong with going into the trades. Instead of going to college for four years and accumulating $100,000 of student loan debt, you can go to truck driving school for a year and accumulate maybe $3,000 of debt and start making money right away.” Industry’s future secure Many are predicting the demise of the trucking profession, with innovations such as driverless rigs and soaring fuel costs cutting into profit margins, but to Mr. Gerdin, such innovations are years away from significantly impacting the industry. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the autonomous portion,” he said. “We’re way too far off from that happening on a big scale. And even then, it’s still going to take a driver to back these (trucks) in and put them into alleyways and places that we deliver. It’s so complex, I don’t think you can write a computer program to do what our drivers do. “We’re just in a difficult spot here, and COVID accelerated things,” he added. “We’re going to have less people working. It’s going to take longer to get goods. And unless we get all of the people back that we had, there’s going to be shortages and time constraints on a lot of things. It may last two or three years. I don’t know the time frame. I just know we’re in this thing and it’s going to be a while before we come out.”