In 2021, the United States saw a record shortage of 80,000 truck drivers, according to the American Trucking Associations. A recent New York Times article noted that 72% of U.S. freight is moved by truck, underscoring the article’s conclusion that a shortage of drivers is linked to “substantial disruption.”
ATA also reports that though there were only 3.7 million reported trucks being driven that required a driver with a CDL, a total of 10 million Americans had a CDL.
The question has become: Why are 63% of those with CDLs not putting them to use behind the wheel of a truck?
“Initially you think that there’s just not enough people willing to drive,” said Danny Gomez, managing director of financial and emerging markets at FreightWaves. “What I’ve learned by looking at the data is that there are a lot of people able to drive, but maybe this job isn’t made for everyone.”
With this career comes stressful and lonely living conditions. And financially, truckers are burdened by empty miles. Reducing the number of empty miles would put more money in drivers’ pockets, improving their livelihood. Digital freight networks like Convoy are actively working to address this by providing several options for drivers to batch multiple shipments together, increasing their utilization and maximizing their earning potential.
“There’s obviously opportunities to make the job more sustainable for people and to make the supply chain more efficient in an effort to reduce empty miles,” Gomez said.
Effectively combating the problem of empty miles achieves another goal as well: reducing carbon emissions.
A lot of carriers see an annual turnover rate of 90%, so it’s vital to bring in more drivers in order to keep trucks on the road. Gomez hopes to become more collaborative in solving issues like driver shortages, carbon emissions and turnover rates by talking directly with those on the front lines. He and Tyler Cole, director of carbon intelligence at FreightWaves, have started this conversation through emissions working groups that include representatives from shippers, carriers and rail.
“When we started the journey of building a carbon product at FreightWaves, we wanted to start by asking a lot of questions,” Gomez said.
Decreasing turnover rates and making companies more efficient requires job transparency to pull in the right people and maintaining a constant state of innovation to attract more people.
“I think this is a way for us to be honest about the job and how hard it is to attract the right people, but also to create more jobs,” Gomez said. “We need to be creating more jobs across the board, and I think this is an opportunity for us to do two things at once.”