With the exception of 2014-15, pay evidence of a supply/demand imbalance in OTR truckload drivers’ favor is not found during 2005-15, during which a driver shortage was documented for nearly every year by one analyst or another, excepting during the worst part of the recession. Even with strong increases in 2014-15, pay is only now returning to inflation-adjusted 2005 levels.
The top line in the graph: Inflation-adjusted mean U.S. household income
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau. These averages skew higher than trucking pay because of dual-income households and because of a small but relatively high set of outsize earners at the top. The median income (the midpoint between the group of top and bottom earners) ranges over this same time period between $58,000 and $53,000. Data is unavailable for 2015.
The middle line: Inflation-adjusted owner-operator income
SOURCE: Averages of ATBS owner-operator clients, most of whom are leased. Over this period, their annual miles fell slightly more than 20 percent, reflecting long-term downward trends in length of haul and other operational factors.
The bottom line: Inflation-adjusted company driver pay
SOURCE: National Transportation Institute, averaged based on driver pay packages in NTI’s long-running survey of medium-to-large truckload fleets, converted to an hourly rate and based on a 40-hour week
2005 – Amid a years-long wave of “labor shortage” studies from other industries, release of the ATA-commissioned driver shortage report spawned other trucking shortage estimates.
2006 – “I call it the ‘driver shortage hype,’ like the Y2K hype.” – Shipper GEA’s Traffic Manager Ron Hazel, on the period following the first “driver shortage” supply/demand quantification
