The Wall Street Journal recently reported that there is a need for forty eight thousand additional truck drivers in America. Presently, eight hundred thousand people make their living driving a truck. It’s hardly shocking that the nation faces a trucker shortage. Days are long – that makes family life difficult with truckers often required to stare at the road for hours at a time.
Perhaps an even more important factor is that truck driver compensation has failed to keep up with inflation since two thousand, meaning that truck driver salaries have effectively been lower than they were fifteen years ago. But with the economy improving, trucker pay has been on the rise recently.
Average pay for long haul truckers surged seventeen percent between the end of twenty thirteen and 2015 to approximately fifty seven thousand dollars according to the National Transportation Institute. During the same period, overall wages rose less than four percent. One potential solution to the truck driver shortage is to change eligibility.
Some in the trucking industry are asking Congress to reduce the age at which drivers are allowed to move freight across state lines. Currently, a person can acquire a commercial driver’s license at the age of 18, but has to wait until 21 to drive commercially between states.
