Fleets find raising pay doesn’t solve driver shortage

From Transport Topics.

The flurry of fleets that raised pay early in 2021 to recruit and retain truck drivers amid labor shortages snowballed into a widespread industry trend. However, for many fleets, it’s not necessarily bringing in the expected results.

Lemont, Ill.-based Mark-It Express noticed an uptick in applicants after raising driver pay last August, said company president Tony Apa.

“Has that solved 100% of our problems? No, we still have trucks that we can’t fill,” he said, noting the company filled 12 of its 15 empty trucks following the increase. “It takes a little bit for the pay increase to get out there on the marketplace and get drivers to see it.”

Defiance, Ohio-based Thomas E. Keller Trucking noticed labor market tightness early in the COVID-19 pandemic and struggled to add drivers by mid- to late 2020. They raised driver rates three times from November 2020 through August 2021, totaling a 16% bump. The fleet achieved a net increase of 41 drivers in the second half of 2021, compared with the typical 10 to 15 additions during Q3 and Q4 in previous years.

“We’ve had a lot of great impact come from that,” said Jonathan Wolfrum, Keller Trucking president.

U.S. Department of Labor data indicates the average weekly earnings in the longhaul trucking market — primarily for drivers — have been increasing four to five times faster than the historical average, according to Bob Costello, chief economist at American Trucking Associations. Despite some localized recruitment success stories, an industrywide hiring boom is not yet apparent.

“Early evidence is that the rapidly rising pay has stopped the drop in the number of drivers in the longhaul sector, but it hasn’t increased the number of drivers,” Costello said.

See the complete article online at Transport Topics.