Is there a driver shortage in the trucking industry?
The answer is no, yet the debate rages on.
Although multiple reports in recent years have concluded that there isn’t a shortage, the American Trucking Associations and large carriers have maintained the claim that the industry is short tens of thousands of drivers.
Next month, the topic will be the subject of a debate at FreightWaves’ Future of Freight Festival. Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, is scheduled to debate John Larkin, a strategic advisor at Clarendon Capital, on Nov. 21 in Chattanooga, Tenn.
However, is there even a reason to debate? Time and time again, the data has been analyzed with the same conclusion: There is not a driver shortage.
The most recent report refuting ATA’s driver shortage claims can be found in the National Academies of Science’s driver pay study.
Assertions of a driver shortage conflict with the basic economic principles of supply and demand, the study said.
“Notably, labor economists maintain that when demand for workers in an occupation increases, the normal response is to increase wages,” the study said. “The implication is that, in the absence of significant lag-caused friction in the process, higher wages should promptly yield a higher supply of labor. If there is friction, such as lengthy time required to train and credential workers, a labor shortage may result that extends beyond the short-term.”
This isn’t the case with the trucking industry. ATA has claimed a driver shortage since the 1980s. But instead of increasing the wages to a point that the gap would be filled, large carriers have been focused on such things as lowering the interstate driving age to 18.
The study points out that the barrier for entry already is low.
“In the case of long-distance truck driving, however, such friction would seem to be minimal and short-lived, as most training and credentialing courses for the Class A Commercial Driver’s License needed to work in heavy-duty trucking take only about six to seven weeks of full-time instruction and practice,” the study said. “Thus, although there may be lags in the response of the supply of drivers to higher wages, one would expect the lags to be on the order of several months, not the several years suggested by the trucking industry surveys and cited studies.”
Researchers concluded that large carriers have difficulty keeping drivers in the seat due to low pay and poor working conditions. But that difficulty shouldn’t be defined as a shortage, and it isn’t justification for lowering the driving age.
“Long-distance truckload drivers tend to have highly irregular work schedules, work long hours per week and have uncertain and limited time at home,” the study stated. “Variability in weekly pay due to irregular work combines with the challenges that arise from erratic schedules to create what drivers perceive to be tough working conditions for only moderate pay, which is a combination conducive to high driver turnover.”
And if one study isn’t enough for you, there are more.
In 2023, economics professor Stephen V. Burks and colleagues published a study showing that there is not a driver shortage.
“We review the evidence for a shortage and find it unconvincing,” the 2023 study stated. “We also review empirical evidence that long‐distance truckload has had persistently high turnover since the mid‐1980s.”
A few years before that, the U.S. Department of Labor also published a study that found there wasn’t a shortage. Instead, the department said that any issues in the labor supply could be corrected by increasing wages.
In addition to the studies, other sources have started to speak out against the long-alleged driver shortage. FreightWaves published an article in 2023 that refuted the claim. And this past March, Schneider National’s general counsel reportedly told ATA President Chris Spear during a public session that there isn’t a shortage.
“We don’t see the driver shortage,” FreightWaves reported that Thomas Jackson said to Spear. “We believe that truck driver hiring and retention follows freight markets … We’re not having a problem hiring drivers.”
The same week, The Wall Street Journal published an article about the trucking industry having too much supply, causing low freight rates. The article said that tens of thousands of truckers left the market, but the industry still had too many trucks on the road.
Doesn’t sound like a shortage, does it?
So, bring on the debate. We will get our popcorn ready. But the reality is that the verdict is already in. It’s been evaluated numerous times, and there is not a shortage. No fancy words at a debate are going to change that. LL
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