31 www.ortrucking.org Issue 3 | 2024 How did we get here? It does not take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that somewhere along the way the trucking industry failed to recruit a generation of truck drivers. With the pursuit of college degrees being increasingly promoted to high school graduates and as the romantic depiction of the truck driver as represented in classic films like Smokey and the Bandit faded into the past, so too did the popularity of truck driving as a career. Gone are the days of a surplus of qualified drivers lining up to accept most any driving work available. Can this unfortunate trend be turned around? There is no one solution or silver bullet that can bring back the glory days of driver recruitment overnight, but we can at least get moving in the right direction. Here are some things for trucking companies to consider: Be willing to hire younger, less experienced drivers. At one time, this was considered anathema in trucking safety and risk management circles. Many companies had a standard policy of not hiring drivers with less than two, three, or even five years of commercial driving experience. Minimum. Other companies would take on the risk of less experienced drivers and then the more cautious companies would try luring these drivers away after they became established. This approach worked well for many companies for many years. What about today? A growing percentage of drivers looking for work have less than two years of experience. Companies unwilling to look into what it would take to safely onboard drivers with more limited experience are simply cutting themselves out of the driver market. Be willing to invest in training for less experienced drivers. If trucking companies are willing to bite the bullet and go after the younger driver market, that cannot happen at the expense of safety. It is to be expected that your driver finishing program will need to be beefed up to accommodate the experience level of the drivers you are taking on. Standards cannot slip. Currently, FMCSA is in the middle of a pilot program to consider lowering the legal driving age of CDL holders from 21 down to 18 years of age for interstate driving (it is already 18 years of age for intrastate drivers). Are you interested in participating in this program? This can help with some of your short-term driver needs while also contributing to identifying the types of enhanced safety protocols that may be needed to bring less experienced drivers into the workforce. Develop a robust health and wellness program for your drivers. One of the unfortunate trends that we have historically seen with commercial truck drivers is a generally lower life expectancy. The average life expectancy of a truck driver is just over 60 years of age, which falls well short of the general population that frequently averages between 75 and 80 years of age. This astounding difference is not exactly a secret. Anyone with a smart phone can google the data. What do you think your average 18-year-old is using to research information on prospective careers? How many would you expect to be super excited about a trucking career when they learn that they would statistically be very likely to live ten years less than most of their peers? Obviously, we have a lot of work to do as an industry to combat the difficult history associated with driver health. Having proven wellness programs in place and being able to articulate those programs clearly to young driver prospects can be the difference between losing another driver and bringing in fresh new talent to join your team. Offer competitive compensation packages and flexible driving schedules when possible. Everybody likes to earn as much money as possible, right? That is a no brainer. This is not the
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