As Merle Haggard sings in Moving On, “The white line is the life line to a nation. And men like Will and Sonny make it move.” Today, over 70% of all freight tonnage in the US is transported over our nation’s highways making the ‘white line’ more important than ever. According to the American Trucking Association (ATA) (trucking.org), overall freight tonnage in the US is projected to grow to 20.6 billion tons in 2030, up 25.6% from 2019.
With the current average age of a long-haul driver now at 46, however, ‘Will and Sonny’, are aging out of the workforce and their seats are proving hard to fill. The ATA reports the average age of newly trained drivers is 35 and just 6.6% of all truck drivers in 2018 were women. The industry has some recruiting challenges.
Ways to overcome those challenges, according to ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello, include “increasing pay and improving conditions on the job like reducing wait times at shipper facilities.”
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