Tens of thousands of H-2B visas are given out each year, but government data reveals that very few of those are used to hire foreign truck drivers.
In November, the Department of Homeland Security made an additional 64,716 H-2B visas available for fiscal year 2025. That is on top of the 66,000 temporary nonagricultural worker visas that Congress mandates each fiscal year.
Although H-2B visas can be allocated to truck drivers, numbers from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show that a very small portion goes to the transportation sector as a whole. Last fiscal year, DHS issued the same number of additional visas. In total, only a few thousand visas were given to “transportation and material-moving” occupations across all sectors, accounting for 3.5% of all visas.
Transportation/warehousing companies with the most visas include Great Falls, Mont.-based Transport Leasing Company (145 visas), Zolfo Spring, Fla.-based ATP Agri Services (134), Watertown, Mass.-based Olympia Moving and Storage (115) and Charlestown, Mass.-based Gentle Giant Moving Company (100).
So far for the first half of fiscal year 2025, only about 400 H-2B visas have been allocated to transportation and material-moving occupations at more than a dozen transportation industry companies.
Transport Leasing Company again leads with 163 visas, already surpassing all of fiscal year 2024, followed by Sugarland Ag with 95 visas. In a distant third is Alamo, Texas-based Aleman Trucking.
Available data only shows how many H-2B visas were allocated to transportation and material-moving occupations within the transportation/warehousing industry. Data specific to truck drivers is not available.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 40% of transportation and material-moving workers are involved in driving. Drilling down further, only about 20% are heavy-duty truck drivers. Based on that information, it is likely that the number of H-2B visas given to truck drivers is closer to around 1,000 for all of fiscal year 2024.
Under the H-2B visa program, U.S. employers can hire foreign workers to perform temporary, nonagricultural work on a one-time occurrence, seasonal, peak load or intermittent basis, as defined by law. A wide variety of industries take advantage of the program, including hospitality, tourism, landscaping, seafood processing and trucking.
According to the American Immigration Council, the landscaping services industry accounts for nearly a third of all H-2B labor certifications. In a distant second is the hotel industry at 8%, followed by services for buildings and dwellings at 7%. LL
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