- Class A CDL drivers,
we are hiring for regional positions in your area,
and we're giving away the largest sign-on bonus
that we've ever given, $10,000, that's right, $10,000.
- [Narrator] This might seem extreme,
but offers like these are becoming more common
for truck driving jobs,
that's because amid a global supply chain crunch
with mounting shipping delays,
the US trucking industry needs drivers,
and it needs them now.
- For truck drivers, demand is high.
People are desperate to get them,
because there's this big volume of stuff
that needs to get moved,
and trucks move about 70%, maybe a bit more,
of the freight in the US.
- [Narrator] Current estimates
from the American Trucking Associations
show there is a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers
on the road, which is a 30% increase from 2019,
and a record high for the industry.
If the trend continues, that number could grow
to 160,000 by 2028.
- The market that we're in today is requiring,
and I think will continue to require for a period of time,
very strategic move is relative to incentives,
and to ways that we are attracting and retaining drivers.
- [Narrator] Knight-Swift Transportation,
the largest truckload carrier in North America,
is among the companies that have boosted pay
to try to attract drivers.
The company said it's driving school graduates
are on track to earn more than $60,000 a year
in their first year after training,
and as high as a 100,000 in some markets,
that's more than double the median pay
for truck drivers in the US earned in 2020.
And industry-wide, the average weekly earnings
for long haul truckload drivers
are up more than 25% since the beginning of 2019.
- It's always a little bit of a challenge hiring drivers,
particularly for these long distance trucking jobs
where people are away from home,
the conditions can be kind of grueling.
- [Narrator] One incentive some trucking companies
are offering to attract new drivers, sign-on bonuses.
84% of truck driver jobs on employment marketplace,
ZipRecruiter, have included some mention of bonus this year.
- There's always a market effect
where if you need people, you start to pay more,
you offer bonuses, you do onboard,
you also have to get them trained up,
and that can take some time
if you're trying to recruit people
who weren't in the industry before.
- [Narrator] One of the biggest US trucking companies,
Yellow Corporation, said they have hosted
at least 145 recruiting events this year,
and enrollment numbers at each driver academies
are up 500 percent compared with pre-pandemic numbers.
Knight-Swift plans to more than double
its number of company training locations
to meet the increased demand for drivers.
- I think it's fair to say that there is more pressure today
than we've seen in a long time, perhaps ever,
even as we think through the driver dynamic,
the pandemic had impact in the drivers sourcing.
- [Narrator] The trucking industry's challenges
have come into focus recently
as a crush of imports overwhelms ports,
and US retailers struggled to restock inventories
that emptied out during the pandemic,
but the driver shortage is not new.
- Depending on who you've talked to in the trucking sector,
there's been a driver shortage
for something like two or three decades.
It does have a lot of churn, there's a lot of turnover,
it's a tough job,
and it can pay fairly well for blue collar work,
but you put in a lot of hours.
- [Narrator] The American Trucking Associations
say there is a 90% annual turnover rate
at large truckload carriers,
and the average age of drivers is 47.
According to the Labor Department,
women account for less than 8% of truck drivers in the US,
and the industry skews predominantly white.
- The trucking industry has been concerned for a while,
they really wanna get younger people in the pipeline,
they wanna get more women,
they wanna try and get other people
excited about these driving jobs,
but it's been a little bit of an uphill battle.
- From a driver sourcing perspective,
we're seeing recovery in that,
relative to schools and training programs
and those kinds of things, but there's just a gap to fill.
- [Narrator] Even with these new incentives,
and an uptick in driver training enrollment,
there could still be a long road ahead
to remedying the truck driver shortage
and unclogging the supply chain gridlock.
- [Jennifer] The thing to remember
is that we are still in the middle of a global pandemic,
so a lot of factors in the supply chain
rest on what's happening in a factory overseas,
or how much capacity there is on a ship,
but you just sort of have to take it as it comes,
and hope that the different kinks in the chain
unkink themselves.
(upbeat music)