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Truck Driver Issues

Coke donates $1 million to help train Georgia truck drivers

Pledge to a state technical college to be used to hire driving instructors

Mark Solomon
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Coke pledged $1 million to help train truck drivers in Georgia (Photo: Coca-Cola Co. USA)

The Coca-Cola Co. said Tuesday it will donate $1 million to help train commercial truck drivers based in the company’s home state of Georgia.

The funds will be donated to the Technical College System of Georgia Foundation’s commercial truck driving program, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) said. The funds will be used to hire 11 full-time and two part-time driving instructors.

There is no requirement that graduates drive for the Coca-Cola system. The donation “aims to insure more drivers are in the pipeline to fill trucking industry jobs,” the company said in a statement.

Coca-Cola and the college will also participate in a five-city tour through Georgia to promote driving opportunities with Coca-Cola Bottling United Inc., the company’s third-largest U.S. bottler and its largest privately held bottler. A Coca-Cola company truck will make stops between May 17 and 26 in Vidalia, Macon, Savannah, Athens and Tifton.


The bottler, founded in 1902 and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, currently has about 85 open driver positions. Driver salaries range from about $43,000 to $70,000 depending on the source of the data and the type of driver.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.