Specter of CSA-led driver shortage holds reward potential for truly safe drivers
By Todd Dills
After talk of a 2011 driver shortage of “unprecedented levels” began to rear its head last year, Truckers News “Marathon Trucker” columnist Jeff Clark remarked that the term “driver shortage” is inaccurate. “If someone cannot find a driver to deliver a load at the rate they want it delivered at they whine ‘driver shortage,’” he said, it’s analogous to this: “I want to buy a new Cadillac for $10,000. They would not sell it to me. Hmmm, must be a Cadillac shortage.”
The real shortage was in driver pay, he suggested, and he’s backed up by a near-majority of respondents to an eTrucker.com poll conducted in November who said that pay was the biggest factor in carriers’ difficulties attracting and retaining quality drivers. At the November “Perfect Storm” conference of recruiting staff and management, put on in Nashville, Tenn., by the Truckload Carriers Association with Affiliated Computer Services and sponsored by Truckers News publisher Randall-Reilly, the mood was hopeful that, with a safety enforcement program soon to be in place putting teeth into carriers’ demands of higher rates from shippers, a new era could be coming for driver pay.
Combined with a significant freight rebound, CSA 2010 (recently rebranded “CSA” for “Compliance, Safety, Accountability” by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) could be expected to “drive rates up,” said current TCA chairman John Kaburick, president of Earl L. Henderson Trucking, in his introduction of the program. “We’ll see drivers making $70,000-90,000 a year. I think we’ll become a lot more attractive industry with a lot more qualified, skilled people.”
