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The US truck driver population exceeded 1.8 million in 2018, a 23 percent increase from 2010, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com.

This story appeared in the print edition of the Jan. 6, 2020, Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook.

Discussions about truck drivers often focus on whether there is a driver shortage in the United States, or at least a shortage of qualified truck drivers that carriers can employ, but the sheer number of drivers who have climbed into a truck cab over the past decade is often overlooked.

Absent an economic recession, that number is likely to keep rising. In the new decade, the “truck driver problem” will be how to better utilize existing truck drivers, getting the most out of their miles and ensuring they earn enough money to keep them behind the wheel.

The truck driver population has been expanding since 2010, increasing 3 percent in 2018 to more than 1.8 million, and 23 percent over the previous eight years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and a compound eight-year growth rate of 2.6 percent.

That’s remarkably steady growth compared with the previous decade. BLS data show two peaks — the first in 2000 and the second in 2007 — in the big truck and tractor-trailer driver population, and two periods of decline, both coinciding with economic recessions.

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It took nine years for the number of heavy-truck drivers to rise past its 2007 record of 1.7 million, after the US economy suffered its worst recession in decades. But economic growth since 2009 led to annual increases ranging from 1.6 percent to 3.3 percent.

BLS driver statistics for 2019 weren’t available at the time of writing, but it’s likely to climb by a low single-digit percentage despite an economic slowdown, as happened in 2013 and 2016.

The truck drivers in the BLS count are a subset of the total number of truck drivers, a figure the American Trucking Associations (ATA) estimates at 3.5 million. That number includes light-truck drivers and those driving garbage trucks or other vocational trucks, not hauling freight.

However you add them up, there are more US truck drivers today than ever before. The number would be even higher if all those who wanted to work as drivers were qualified for the job. Carriers say they often have to turn away unqualified applicants.

Sector-specific shortage

The question of whether there are enough drivers out there to satisfy demand depends largely on the market. The ATA claims a shortage of about 59,000 truck drivers, mostly concentrated in the long-haul truckload sector. The shortage could reach 160,000 drivers by 2028, the association warns.

“There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States, but only between 500,000 and 600,000 over-the-road truckload drivers. And that’s where this shortage is,” ATA chief economist Bob Costello said over the summer when releasing the ATA’s latest driver shortage analysis.

“The industry is growing the driver population; it is just not growing fast enough” to keep up with demand and meet future demand, Costello said. But if the shortage is one of new drivers at truckload companies, it hasn’t yet translated into a shortage of drivers at shipper docks.

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Where are the drivers then? An increasing number are at small trucking companies. From 2012 to 2018, carriers with one to 100 trucks added a net 335,000 drivers, according to Jeff Tucker, CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide. “That’s a huge shift going on there in the market,” he said.

For shippers, technology will be part of the future solution to finding truck drivers. “We don’t think there’s a driver problem,” Shelley Simpson, president for highway services at J. B. Hunt Transport Services, said at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference in October. “The problem is really access to information, access to understanding what is available.”

By “what is available,” she means not only freight but drivers and driver hours. Nearly one-third of a driver’s working hours are wasted, Simpson said. Trust Others Driver download. Over time, digital platforms built by asset-based carriers and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) will help reduce that waste, she said.

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That means drivers will have less empty space in their trailers, spend more time driving, and make more money, she said. Giving drivers more miles and more money per mile is a proven recruiting tool, as many truckload carriers discovered when demand and driver pay surged in 2018.

At over-the-road truckload carriers, driver pay increased about 10 percent in 2018, according to the National Transportation Institute. The average pay for all types of truck drivers rose more modestly, with the mean annual wage climbing 2.4 percent to $45,670, BLS data show.

Paying drivers an adequate wage for the work they do has been part of the “truck driver problem” since at least 1914. Perhaps in 2020 the trucking industry will come closer to a solution, as carriers experiment with different compensation models for different types of drivers.

Contact William B. Cassidy at bill.cassidy@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on Twitter: @willbcassidy.

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