What's Hot

By Brian Milligan, News and Transportation Editor -- Purchasing, 1/25/2001

Driver pay is going to be one of the hot buttons for the trucking industry this year. It's an issue that comes directly back to haunt shippers who depend upon trucks to move supplies directly to their manufacturing facilities, just in time for production.

This is an industry that should hire 80,000 drivers each year. By the end of 2000, it was only hiring 50,000 per year. Drivers, in a continuously tight labor market, are hard to come by. Something needs to be done to attract them.

But pressures-not the least of which are profit pressures-continue to put the blocks to driver pay raises. The National Survey of Driver Wages reports that only 14.7% of carriers surveyed from July through September changed driver wages. Other surveys say companies are raising health care deductibles and eliminating bonuses.

These tactics won't bring drivers in, and it's a problem that needs to be given a serious eye this year by the industry. If the drivers aren't there, the trucks can't arrive.