Posted on 01/26/2022 5:36:01 AM PST by Kaslin
Editor's note: This piece was authored by Andrew Donaldson
Stereotyped slogans and lazy data analysis are nothing new, but when rhetorical tropes become the foundation for regulatory policy, real world consequences quickly happen. Add this mix of laziness and bias to something as impactful to the overall economy as the commercial truck driver shortage, and you have preventable folly inevitably turning into full blown disaster.
The push back against a pilot apprenticeship program in resident Biden’s recently passed infrastructure package has all those factors converging into a frustrating mess where a policy solution ought to be. Signed into law in November of 2021, the program would allow commercial drivers license (CDL) holders under the age of 21 to drive across state lines after completing additional training. The stated goal is to get more commercial drivers into the interstate trucking ranks at a younger age and alleviate the truck driver shortage in an industry with serious retention issues. Issues that are projected to get much worse if no action is taken.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s quinquennial Commodity Flow Survey, calculated in partnership with the Department of Transportation, 71.6% or $10.4 trillion of the $14.5 trillion of the value of all goods moved in America did so on commercial trucks in the last year the report was taken. Commercial trucking and the freight it carries is the working end of the United States economy that makes all other commerce possible. Every one of those commercial trucks must be driven by one of the 3.5 million truck operators who must hold a CDL.
Yet, for years, warnings about an impending commercial truck driver shortage have gone unheeded. Some of the reasons for alarm were obvious; like many other sectors of the economy, large numbers of the Baby Boomer generation were set to retire around the same time. Other reasons, like the COVID-19 pandemic and domestic labor shortage that accompanied it, were not as predictable, but further exposed already existing issues.
Then there are the self-inflicted issues of regulation, gatekeeping, and poor policy. While 49 states allow CDLs for anyone over 18 who otherwise meets the requirements, federal statute restricts them from crossing state lines in most cases unless they are 21 years of age. “Letting younger people just go all over the country, it’s unsafe, it’s crazy,” Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh expressed in opposition to the pilot apprentice program. “We all know that younger people crash more. They have more accidents.”
But the data for young drivers in general is not accurately or fairly representative of those over 18 years of age who are properly trained and certified commercial drivers. Those who cite such figures use data sets that lump 16-19 year olds together as one block of teenagers, and only as general population drivers. The 16-17 year old cohort has by far the highest accident risk factors. Lumping the adult 18-20 year olds in with the teenage beginner drivers skews the data. We are not letting 16-17 year olds drive commercial trucks, so while it sounds good that “young drivers have more accidents” the line doesn’t apply to young adult commercial drivers.
And the data proves it.
Research from The National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence at Virginia Tech shows that experience, not age, is the deciding factor in most accidents involving commercial trucks. Not only that, but inexperienced older commercial drivers have a far higher rate of accident than any other age group, due to factors such as overconfidence and having more difficulty learning to safely operate a commercial truck than younger counterparts. Further, despite the rhetoric from some, just because 18-20 year olds are young people doesn’t make them kids. The age of 18 has been a long-standing legal recognition of adulthood. 18-21 year olds make up the backbone of the enlisted ranks of the United States military, another example demonstrating experience and training are far more important factors of ability than age alone. It is important to note that the pilot apprenticeship program is predicated on training requirements over and above the basic CDL training. Skills younger drivers don’t magically lose the minute they cross into a new state.
he pilot apprenticeship program is not a perfect plan by any means: Some of the equipment limitations are superfluous, the program sunsets in three years unless renewed by legislative act, and it is limited to only 3,000 participants. Even with these flaws and shortcomings, however, it is a positive step that would show young adult drivers capable of starting to fill the gap if given the opportunity.
Too often, the voices that complain about young adults not taking their place in society are the same voices that insist on infantilization by arbitrary and unnecessary age-biased regulation. 18-21 year old truck drivers who already hold a CDL are not kids; they are certified, skilled, and trained adults who are vital to the economy. Ignore the lazy rhetoric and stereotypes about young drivers, believe the data and the pressing need of the crisis at hand, and let the young adults take the commercial driving wheel.
Driving instruction has one purpose, to obtain your CDL. I did mine in 7 days. 3 days later I was OTR with a finishing instructor from my employer.
This is a problem in the saw milling industry too. Being around large band saws, planers, debarkers, and other heavy machinery can be dangerous. People occasionally die. If you can not pass a drug test, they do not want you working in their sawmill.
This is also why many sawmills no longer allow you to tarp a truck on their property, even with a tarping station. This is because drivers have fallen off of the top of a loaded flatbed truck when they were trying to tarp a load. Again, this has resulted in deaths. FYI, a tarping station is where you put on a harness and hook into an over head arm that keeps you from hitting the ground if you fall off the trailer.
Please explain to the board the impact of the “Electronic Log book” law that went into effect a year or so ago to the people not in the logistics industry.
This Federal law limited the hours a truck driver could be behind the wheel. Even if the driver was sitting in the truck waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
Right. So who will fuel long hauls? Who will pay for mechanical breakdowns, towing, PMs? Al these require a human driver.
His was through a college and was about 6 weeks.
Several years ago, I had a Class B with Passenger endorsement. Drove coach buses as a volunteer.
Many years before that, I had a chauffer license as a church youth group leader to drive the church van. When CDL came on, I read the book, took the test then did my road test in a fifteen passenger van. Suddenly, I’m licensed to drive a 49 passenger bus.
The hourly pay only applies to local and short-haul drivers. Long-haul drivers are typically paid by the MILE, not the hour. When you account for all the time a long-haul driver spends away from home when he's not moving (parked at a loading dock, sleeping at a truck stop, etc.) and yet still does not have control of his own life, you'll probably find that driving a truck is effectively a minimum wage job.
That’s a great post. It offers a good look at how the economies of scale have changed the rail industry in a way that makes it impractical for railroads to serve many customers directly anymore.
This was the early 70’s. All bus drivers in North Carolina were HS students, making a big $2 an hour back then. I had been driving for about a year at that point, and among other things, I learned that busses don’t stop well in snow — even with chains on. And you were responsible for putting your chains on. Unlike many schools today, classes were not called at the first flake - you just had to man up and do it.
Good times, good times. I even put a radio in mine for in-flight entertainment.
“The railroads really do not like making the milk run to fill up a train before it heads south or east. “They much prefer picking up 100 cars loaded with coal in WY and bring the entire train to the port of Tacoma. Same thing with tankers full of oil. The entire train goes from ND to the refinery without stopping. This is the type of business the BNSF, UP, CN, CPRS all love.”
I wonder if that was a singularly one-way decision by the railroads, just to increase profits without a negative-cost basis for doing so, and no other reason, or if it was a combination of increased costs for the smaller load-pickups/drop offs against growing competition from the trucking industry. You’d know better than I if that is off the mark.
Maybe, just another guess, the folks needing/liking the rail option at/near their facility, needed to become the owner operators of those shorter rail haul means (or a consortium of such related companies doing it together), and maybe doing so at no greater cost per unit than the rail freight outfits had been charging. At one point in the auto industry the automakers began buying up some of their suppliers, integrating them directly into their business line - it was cheaper to require Delco to make radios for GM cars than competing with other car makers willing to bid more for Delco equipment. Maybe the lumber industry in the 1980s needed to get into the short haul rail business themselves?? Maybe I am wrong.
Thanks for your service. I couldn’t do it.
My only familiarity with the lumber industry and the saw mill industry was during the summer after high school graduation when I worked as a seasonal forestry fire fighter out of northern California fire station. One of our controlled burns was working together with a lumber outfit and once we had to go and put out a blaze in the long and tall heaps of sawdust and debris on land next to the mill. The latter incident was suspicious to me and my fellows, because just the evening before, after dinner, our boss had us all ride in one of our fire trucks into the nearby town where he stopped and chatted for awhile with some man at that same lumber mill. This was near the very end of the fire season and some of us figured our boss was corrupt and just found a way to keep the season extended, because once the fire season would be declared officially over for our area he would be laid off until the start of the next fire season. That was the second time in the last two weeks of the fire season when we had gone out during the day in one of the fire trucks on some nearby country road and within 24 hours were called out to the same area on a fire. Hmmmmm.
The abandoning of rail spurs is solely based on ROI.
If it costs $60000 to bring a spur up to railroad current standards and they only receive $2000/month revenue from delivering to that spur they may abandon it. Especially when you consider the costs of operation.
This is the same reason why entire rail lines were abandoned in places like north central Idaho. The cost to rebuild old tressels/bridges/crossings was too much in comparison to the revenue generated by that 50 miles of track.
This was the case with the Camus Prairie railroad that went from Lewiston, ID up along the Clearwater River all the way to Orifino, ID. It served several sawmills in that area. The CMPR would pick up from about 5 different mills and bring the cars down to Lewiston, ID where they would transfer to the BNSF or UP. Two of the sawmills eventually went out of business.
The person who ended up buying the railroad purchased it for the actual rail(iron) scrap value. He continued to operate it for another five years or so. Until, so many bridges needed to be rebuilt that it was abandoned. I suppose eventually it will become a rail trail.
“Don’t they wear turbans these days?”
Sombreros.
I will bet you an ice cream bar that you could NOT find an insurance company that would cover THAT driver.
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