Much has been written about the shortage of drivers in the trucking industry by mainstream news outlets over the last few years, but often the real causes aren’t mentioned.

Most of these reports end with more questions than answers, and the writers often seem perplexed as to why people are refusing these jobs even though we are experiencing higher-than-average unemployment numbers in the country.

The truth is, there is an even bigger problem in the industry: high driver turnover. The trucking industry has been the top sector when it comes to employee turnover — peaking at over 100% at certain points in the last few years.

However, a new report by New York Time’s writer Neil Irwin, took a deeper look at the industry and came up with a simple solution to help improve the industry’s turnover problem: Pay drivers more.

Currently, many larger companies prefer to use their resources to attract new drivers to replace ones that leave, instead of working on retaining existing employees. However, this model is starting to create problems for certain large carriers. For example, Swift Transportation recently reported less than expected quarterly earnings, not because they didn’t have enough customers — but because they didn’t have enough drivers due to a high turnover.

In his piece for the NY Times, Irwin breaks down the driver shortage into an a logical economic truth:

The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low.

Adjusted for inflation, truck drivers today make less than they did 10 years ago.
driverpay

Perhaps this NY Times article will help shed a mainstream light on some of the issues that we’ve known all along, and hopefully present solutions like this as well.

After all, it’s not just an issue that concerns those in the industry, almost anything and everything that we own have been brought in by trucks — should the industry suffer, it’ll be reflected in the prices we pay.

As the trucking industry goes, so does America.