Sparsely stocked store shelves, delayed deliveries, manufacturing supplies not reaching factories on time—just some of the misery blamed on the widely publicized shortage of commercial truck drivers. According to the American Trucking Association (ATA) that shortage is at 80,000 as of November and growing.
“Without substantial action, by 2030 and at current trends, the driver shortage could grow to 160,000. Overall, nearly one million new drivers will need to be trained and hired in the next decade to keep pace with increasing consumer demand and an aging workforce,” ATA president and CEO Chris Spear testified last month during a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
But Aaron Terrazas is having none of it. He’s the economist at Convoy, a digital freight marketplace that matches drivers with loads. He contends numbers issued by the ATA and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are neither complete nor accurate.
“This idea of a shortage is so loaded. The reality is when they say that, and numbers like the 80,000 workers short, the idea there is to suggest that for some reason we’re not training or not hiring—there’s not enough workers out there,” Terrazas told Forbes.com. “They don’t count for independent owner-operators, self-employed truckers. That group has grown very quickly over the past year. The BLS data do a poor job at capturing job growth at re-incorporated companies. We know a lot of trucking companies that temporarily shut down during the pandemic have restarted. That’s not in BLS data…”
Read the rest of this Forbes article at the featured image link. Learn in this Forbes article about different methods for efficiently recruiting drivers. With DDI’s “in-house platform” and “Contractor Entrepreneur Program”, our mission is to serve, provide advocacy and leadership to Independent Contractors to help solve the Driving Shortage.
