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February 28, 2006
Short on Drivers, Truckers Offer Perks
By IAN URBINA

PHILADELPHIA — The men gathered in front of the BZ Ballaz Club barbershop in a gritty, mostly Hispanic section of North Philadelphia were listening intently as Kimberly Cromer made her pitch for a career in long-haul trucking.

"Why pull $7 an hour cutting hair when you can make $19 an hour driving an 18-wheeler?" Ms. Cromer said, handing the men a pamphlet in Spanish explaining the requirements for a federal commercial driver's license. "Seriously guys, don't you want to get a job with a future and get out of this neighborhood to see the country?"

Faced with what trucking experts describe as the worst labor shortage in the industry's history, recruiters like Ms. Cromer are canvassing cities and holding job fairs.

Fueled mostly by retirements, the driver shortage grew dire, industry economists say, starting in 2000 when average wages in construction and other blue-collar jobs surpassed those of long-haul drivers.

"Guys figured, why be out on the road for three weeks when they could swing a hammer during the day, make more money and sleep in their own bed each night?" said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association.

With predictions from the association that the current shortage of 20,000 drivers will grow nearly fivefold within a decade, trucking companies are offering generous 401(k), stock option and health care packages to new recruits and cash bonuses and prizes to drivers who refer viable candidates.

In hope of stealing drivers from competitors, companies have begun outfitting more of their cabs with satellite radio and television and introducing policies to allow drivers to bring pets and spouses on the road.

Allied Holdings, a trucking company based in Decatur, Ga., employs chaplains to check on the morale of its drivers. Schneider National, based in Green Bay, Wis., holds "driver recognition days" every few months at regional repair shops, featuring Elvis impersonators, free barbecue and raffles for motorcycles and iPods. The trucking association has also begun pressuring large truck stops to add Internet portals.

"Hands down, this is the most serious crisis the industry has faced," said Duff Swain, president of the Trincon Group, a transportation consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio. "Close to 10 percent of major fleets have their trucks sitting up against the fence because they're short on drivers."

Since more than three-quarters of all goods in the United States are shipped by truck, it is only a matter of time, Mr. Swain said, before the shortage causes delays in products hitting the shelves and leads to consumer price increases because of rising transportation costs.

Despite the 7.4 million Americans out of work as of last December, and the recent round of layoffs in manufacturing industries, trucking has struggled to find workers in part because the lifestyle is so grueling.

"I missed my son's birth, first steps and kindergarten graduation," said Nasser Adams, who has been a trucker for eight years. "And I'm better off than most drivers who don't get home every weekend like I do."

Mr. Adams, 47, said that before he began hauling bottled beer for the Abita Brewing Company last year, he drove chemical tanker trucks. "Now that's stressful stuff," he said. "One wrong move and you're in a traffic accident with a bomb at your back."

Since 2000, drivers' wages have started to rebound, though they have not caught up with construction, according to the association. In 2004, the average annual pay for a truck driver was $34,920, compared with $37,890 for a construction worker, according to the Department of Labor.

Union truck drivers make on average about $60,000, and roughly 10 percent of all truck drivers in the country are unionized, an economist with the Teamsters said.

The driver shortfall is expected to worsen in coming years since about 219,000 of the country's 1.3 million long-haul truckers are over 55 and are likely to retire in the next 10 years.

"It's called long-haul trucking for a reason," Mr. Costello said. "Even though a lot of companies are redesigning routes for shorter runs, it's hard to avoid long stretches away from home, and that's a tough way to live."

Victor Rivera described another factor that adds to drivers' stress: time pressure.

"You don't get a hotter load than this," said Mr. Rivera, 34, referring to deadlines that come with perishable cargo like the $150,000 worth of shrimp in his refrigerated 18-wheeler at the TA Trucking stop just off Exit 57 on Interstate 95 in Baltimore. "You're making seven or eight stops for one truckload, and if traffic or whatever backs you up at the beginning of your run, all the rest of the stops have to be rescheduled, and the dispatcher gets really angry."

Trucking companies also complain that they need to hire even more drivers because federal rules passed in January 2004 limit how long their drivers can remain on the road each shift before resting. Under the rules, truckers can drive for 11 hours at a time, but they have to take 10 hours off between shifts, 2 more hours than previously required.

"Trucking is incongruous with what we've come to expect with the blue-collar economy these days," said Donald Broughton, the transportation analyst with A. G. Edwards & Sons, a brokerage firm based in St. Louis. "Productivity improvements mean that other industries are scaling down whereas it still takes one driver per truck to move goods, and there is little way around that. What's more, other industries can outsource, but trucking can't."

To meet the growing need, some carriers are turning to new sources of labor like women, retirees and especially Hispanics.

"The industry realizes that Hispanics are the fastest-growing population in the country, and they're eager to tap into them," said Ms. Cromer, who works for Congreso de Latinos Unidos, a community group in Philadelphia that joined forces in 2004 with the Truckload Carriers Association to begin recruiting more Hispanics into long-haul trucking.

Companies have begun advertising on Spanish radio and in Spanish newspapers, and trucking schools have added intensive English courses to help prepare their non-English-speaking population to pass the federal exam required for a commercial license. Federal transportation laws require that long-haul truckers be able to speak, read and write English and undergo background checks and drug tests.

The number of truck drivers who are not white males increased to 30 percent in 2004, up from 26.6 percent in 2001, according to the Department of Labor. Hispanics now account for 15 percent of all truck drivers, up from 12 percent during the same period, federal records show.

"We decided two years ago to switch trucking companies because we had the leverage," said Claire Rocha, who, with her husband, Daniel, drives for the Celadon Group, a trucking company based in Indianapolis. Ms. Rocha, 51, said that they earned about $100,000 between the them, a 10 percent increase over what they were earning. "There couldn't be a better time to be a team driver," she said.

Chris Burruss, president of the Truckload Carriers Association, said that many truck driving schools were getting calls from trucking companies looking for husband-wife teams or female drivers.

"Women spouses are especially attractive once they have finished raising their kids because they start wanting to spend time with their husbands on the road," Mr. Burruss said. "Women are also seen by a lot of carriers as more dependable and less prone to jump from company to company."

Todd Jadin, senior vice president of operations for Schneider National, said that in hope of bolstering retention, his drivers in January 2004 received the largest raise in the company's 70-year history, about a $4,000 annual increase for drivers who averaged about 100,000 miles per year.

"But more than wages, it's really quality-of-life issues that matter," said Mr. Jadin, citing the stress of traffic and rushed hauls across country, coupled with unpredictable schedules and long periods away from home as the main factors deterring people from entering the profession.

With that in mind, Mr. Jadin said that his company had redesigned some of its routes so that several hundred of its 15,000 drivers could sleep at home at least 17 weeks a year. The company has also tried to increase the 500 or so husband-wife teams it employs because they have lower turnover rates than single drivers, he said.

But the most popular move has been the company's driver appreciation events, Mr. Jadin said, like the one the company held in January in Memphis, featuring an Elvis impersonator and free barbecue.

"That event was a really big hit," Mr. Jadin said. "I guess a little Elvis goes a long way when it comes to boosting morale and keeping drivers on the job."