Posted on 07/24/2012 12:04:38 PM PDT by Signalman
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- During tough economic times with high unemployment, Americans should be jumping at any chance to work, but trucking companies are struggling to hire drivers.
There are as many as 200,000 job openings nationwide for long haul truckers, according to David Heller, director of safety and policy for the Truckload Carriers Association.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also sees the demand for truckers increasing, up from the 1.5 million drivers on the road now. It expects trucking to add 330,100 jobs between 2010 and 2020, an increase of 20%.
But these positions are difficult to fill, and even harder to keep filled.
"Nobody wants to drive a truck," said Heller.
The pay isn't bad: Truckers earn a median annual wage of $37,930, which is $4,000 more than the median wage for all jobs, according to the BLS. The top 10% of truck drivers make more than $58,000 per year.
So why do so many long-haul trucking jobs remain unfilled?
First, it's difficult to get certified. The biggest hurdle for the unemployed is probably getting a commercial driver's license, which requires a training course that's up to eight weeks long and costs about $6,000.
"Drivers are put under intense scrutiny before they get into the industry, and for good reason," said Brett Aquila, trucker and creator of the blog TruckingTruth. "It's incredibly risky putting someone behind the wheel of an 80,000 pound truck with your company's name on it."
And when drivers do get on the road, they find the long-haul lifestyle isn't easy, living for weeks at a time in the cramped confines of the back of the truck.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
This is from CNN.
Come on you all fall for that. I don’t. CNN just pimping for Obama.
This is from CNN.
Come on you all fall for that. I don’t. CNN just pimping for Obama.
There are no jobs out there only scam ads. People are desperate.
Look,not that many want to work long hours,seldom see family,be harassed by snotty brokers if they DO try to follow the driving laws, and so on, for a modest income.
25 years ago my girlfriend suggested I take up truck driving as I would be home every other weekend! Well,ex-girlfriend.I deduced she really didn’t care all that much.
Long haul truck is kind of strange :you would think the better way to move goods would be by rail ,then only local trucking needed.Most marriages do not benefit from long seperations.
As for owner operators,I see what some are paid to haul a full load from Ohio to Texas.Say an average $1000(it varies depending on the broker,for the same load from the same origin to the same destination).Subtract the cost of 150 or more gallons of $4 fuel.Trucks loaded get 4 to 6 mpg.Factor in insurance ,taxes, tires,other maintenance.
Owner operators have no easy road.
Many trucks are driven by Mexican and other foreign people because as low as the pay,it still beats what they could get back home.
“My son tried trucking. He concluded there was no money to be made as a solo driver.
As a new solo driver, he was assigned runs with multiple stops or left waiting for several days in a stop for his next assignment. Add in modern rules about length of day (including stops) and time driving with GPS monitoring, and he was barely making enough money to cover his food & medical insurance.
The DOT has made it as difficult as possible to become/remain a truck driver. They now count warnings as traffic tickets.
Everything Obama bureaucrats do is intended to overwhelm the system.
“Derek Leathers, president and chief operating officer at Werner, said that his company has about 100 open long-haul truck driving positions. The current shortage of truckers has forced his company to work much harder than it used to in order to fill these positions, spending more money on advertising and additional recruiting staff.”
That is the company my son worked for...for a while.
Combine GPS monitoring & the loads they assigned him with multiple stops for loading/unloading & maintenance (which count against your duty day but are NOT paid for), and he was averaging <$200/week. At 50 weeks/year on the road 7 days/week, that would still work out to well under $10K/year.
He said team driving would have helped, but he didn’t like sharing a truck with someone he didn’t know.
Maybe Derek should increase the pay/mile & save on his advertising and schooling costs.
Ha!! I know where that is..........
I have seriously considered doing this. I’m single with no dependents. Two problems: 1.) If I do it, I’ll probably be nuking my college degree, although I’ve long questioned the value of it to begin with(story too long for here). 2.) The long time, nearly 8 weeks for training, makes it very difficult for me to do while I am still employeed. How do you do get in the training so you can give a current employer 2 weeks notice? It’s as if you have to already be unemployeed to have the time for the training.
Don’t believe the CNN article here.
Having towed a camper and thus experienced first hand what it’s like to drive a large, slow-moving and heavy setup (still no comparison to an 18 wheeler, much less a double trailer), you couldn’t pay me enough to be a truck driver.
The idiots on the road who can’t be bothered to pay attention while driving, maintain their vehilces, nor obey the simplest of traffic laws, must make truck driving an excrutiatingly stressful job.
I still have this personal fantasy that someday, law enforcement will crack down on the numerous examples of obviously dangerous driving practices on our nations higways, rather then hiding in the bushes at the side of the road hoping for someone to drive by at a few mph over an arbitrarily set speed limit.
A shortage of drivers is just what Obama set up. First he allowed Mexican drivers into the US, then he changed the DOT rules that made it impossible for American drivers to make any real money.
Give it a year or two and most drivers won’t speak English...
What should I not believe about it? Are you saying I should not get into trucking under any circumstance?
Question is do you believe this CNN article?
It amazes me even on conservative sites people still believe the liberal mainstream media including CNN.
This industry is being regulated to DEATH. Every second of your day is controlled or monitored by the government. We even have our very own police force in every state, dedicated solely to making our lives more difficult and to generating revenue from us, and us alone.
Do I believe WHAT? I’m looking for feedback on the viability about trucking jobs, not the political bent of this article.
It’s just as true in engineering and technical. I started off my software career in an entry level company, they paid squat but the took people straight out of college and taught them how to be actual professionals. Now I’m in a company that won’t even look at you in tech support (normally considered entry level work) until you’ve been in the industry a few years. For us “entry level” means entry into the company not the field. The pay’s a lot nicer. And we outsource and inbound, we need the quality people and we really don’t care where they come from.
It all boils down to money. They need competent people to get the job done right, and those competent people have easier ways to make equivalent money.
It might be something for a young couple: spend time together driving across the US, live in the truck, accumulate some cash to buy a house, then find a new line of work.
My BIL worked at Werner for a while. You’re really only supposed to work there long enough to pay off your training and certification loan, by then you’ve got experience and can work someplace that doesn’t suck. Of course during those years you’re making fastfood wages. BIL couldn’t stick it out. Werner makes their money just fine though, because eventually BIL wound up paying them back anyway, and of course how much they charge is way above the regular training and certification.
That’s probably all true, but there is an old saying about wanting to get rich: Find a need, and fill it.
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