Raising the bar

Safety key for young truck drivers

We’ve all experienced a few more empty shelves lately. Almost everyone has known the frustration of making a trip or logging online for something we want or need and leaving without it.

We accept the explanations about supply-chain disruptions because they are true and understandable: a winter storm stranding hundreds of vehicles on Interstate 95, the virus changing customer behavior (ahem, toilet paper hoarding) or the pandemic interrupting the workforce available to fulfill orders, stock shelves and deliver freight.

The trucking industry has always been keenly attuned to how one link affects the timing and performance across the whole supply chain. For years, one of the top concerns in the industry has been a driver shortage. The nationwide truck driver shortage grew from 61,500 pre-pandemic to 80,000, despite substantial pay increases over that same time period.

When Congress passed a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in November, it provided the long-term funding for traditional infrastructure. The investment is called the American Jobs Plan because it will take a lot of workers to rebuild the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges, prepare for climate resilience, and increase broadband access to every community.

Also in the plan is another kind of job: apprenticeships for young truck drivers. The American Jobs Plan includes a national pilot program authorizing up to 3,000 18- to 20-year-old drivers to undergo supervised training in vehicles equipped with advanced safety technologies, after which they would be eligible to operate as their older counterparts, with some additional surveillance until they turn 21.

This won’t end a quarantine or stop a blizzard, but it will create a path for more people to become transportation professionals who make the supply chain work.

Critics of the program say it isn’t safe, that this isn’t the way to address workforce issues or solve supply-chain problems. What opponents don’t say is that 18-year-olds are already driving commercial trucks in America, but the barriers that prevent them from developing in their careers and contributing more capacity to the industry don’t make the roads safer.

Currently, in Arkansas, 48 other states and the District of Columbia, 18- to 20-year-olds can earn their commercial driver’s licenses and operate large commercial vehicles. However, federal law prohibits those younger drivers from engaging in interstate commerce. That means, right now, they can transport 80,000 pounds of farm equipment 295 miles from Crossett to Corning on winding rural highways. However, that same driver is prohibited from transporting a 53-foot trailer of packages across the three-mile Hernando De Soto bridge from West Memphis to Memphis, or delivering anything from a terminal in Texarkana, Ark., to a business in Texarkana, Texas.

The federal law prohibits drivers under 21 from touching any freight that did not originate within the state, because that freight is a product of interstate commerce.

What the apprenticeship offers is a path that leads an 18-year-old man or woman with a commercial driver’s license to experience. It puts an older driver in the passenger seat to give a personalized education. They learn how to use the most progressive safety technology available, like active braking collision mitigation, video event capture, and speed governors that set the truck at 65 miles per hour or less. It’s an additional 400 hours of advanced training.

The 18-year-old drivers today aren’t equipped with this advanced training or technology. They are provided with the same license as their older colleagues.

Opponents will tell you that teen drivers carrying 80,000 pounds down the highway is a bad idea. However, waking up on your 21st birthday and blowing out numerated candles was not what made you or I suddenly responsible and mature. It was experiences, all the little challenges we tackled that scaffolded to create confidence and readiness to succeed.

Driving a truck is complex, and everyone should be invested in making sure that the people who get behind the wheel are ready for the responsibility. The apprenticeship program creates that scaffolding for 3,000 drivers who want to start taking on those challenges a little earlier.

All around the state, teenagers are being asked by well-meaning adults what they are going to do next. This program paves the way to bridging a critical gap between high school and workforce readiness, creating a seamless pipeline of talent from high school to a career in the transportation industry.

Trucking is a great next step, one that doesn’t require an expensive fouryear college degree, and provides an opportunity to earn a comfortable living.

The trucking industry is ready to welcome to these new apprentices and give them a strong foundation for their future professional and personal lives, for the routes they will discover, the families for which they’ll provide, communities they’ll serve and, yes, the shelves they’ll fill.