Your Trucker Shortage: Resolved by Humans or Technology?

Who’d want be an interstate trucker?  Not many are attracted to a lifestyle that demands you spend long stretches away from family and friends, sleep  – or try to sleep – in the back of a cab and shower at huge truck stops on rural highways.

That’s why the American trucking industry is suffering from a driver shortage that’s only going to deepen.

The American Trucking Associations, the industry’s trade organization, reports that the sector closed 2018 short by some 61,000 drivers to meet growing demands for hauling freight cross country.

The ATAOpens a new window suggests that the shortfall could amount to more than 100,000 drivers in five years’ time, rising to 160,000 by 2028. The industry will need to hire an estimated 1.1 million drivers over the next 10 years.

Tackling The Problem Head-On

One obvious way of filling that quota is to raise wages to make trucking more alluring, which happened in 2018 as long-haul firms plumped up paychecks to lure more people behind the wheel.

The consequences of that strategy, of course, are higher operating costs and more expensive shipping rates. That’s not great at a time when rail lines are busy taking advantage of trucking firms’ shortages to capture business.

Clearly, the sector must pull multiple levers to drop more drivers in cabs.

One big issue is the current age floor of 21 for interstate truckers. This means that potential recruits leaving high school at 18 have no immediate route into the industry, leading them to careers elsewhere, the military or even a community college.

Hence, it makes sense for the ATA to back the DRIVE-Safe ActOpens a new window , introduced into Congress early this year, that would allow 18 year-olds to drive 18-wheel long-haul trucks across state lines after an intensive training program.

There’s the Teen Driver Thing

Naturally, there are problems with this proposed legislation — the issue of young drivers first among them. Opponents argue that as teen-agers are statistically more likely to be involved in car crashes, so too would under-21 truckers.

The size of the 80-foot behemoths likely means that a collision would be more serious, perhaps deadly, at highway speeds. Plus there’s the cost element, potentially prohibitive of higher insurance premiums for younger drivers.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, responsible for regulating trucking in the United States, is looking for a feasible workaround.

In June, the agency opened up an interstate pilot programOpens a new window to under-21s with heavy-vehicle driver experience acquired during military service. Under the scheme, the agency will compare safety records of participating drivers to a control group of 21- to 24-year-olds with comparable training and experience driving commercial trucks.

So, Is There A Tech Fix?

However, tech boosters argue that the human resource-supply problem will fade. The technology solution, they say, is a fully -automated truck that carries cargo from point A to point B without time-consuming, government-mandated personal breaks.

A reportOpens a new window from trucking experts at the University of California at Berkeley finds that the most likely scenario would eventually mean the disappearance of 294,000 long-distance trucking jobs. The economic argument: As with automation solutions across other industries, take away the person, drop the wage and lower operating costs. Then you can offer more competitive rates.

Yet, fully autonomous trucks are still in the distance. The technology remains unproven and the regulatory environment underdeveloped.

In fact, a recent McKinsey & Co reportOpens a new window forecasts fully driverless trucks won’t be ready for the road until at least 2027. And we should consider the consumer disquiet at the thought of 80,000-pound vehicles racking up thousands of zombie miles on our highways.

A Near-Term Answer

Instead, look for a near-term, autonomous solution in “platooning.” As the military terminology suggests, it involves a series of trucks advancing in very close order, with the wirelessly linked vehicles in the convoy following the leader in accelerating and braking.

Platooning cuts aerodynamic drag, delivering fuel efficiencies and cost savings. And some solutions put a driver in the front truck only, with the rest of the convoy fully automated.

Testing is underway. In America, platooning specialist Peloton Technology is running a trial with a half-dozen commercial truck fleets. In Europe, the truck-builder MAN Truck & Bus partnered earlier this year with the DB Schenker logistics group to conduct platooning trials carrying actual cargo on public roads in Germany

This is not a long-haul wait. Expect commercial platooning to be with us in the early 2020s.