America needs 80,000 truck drivers for supply chain problems
Cargo trucks in Port of Los Angeles.
Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images
America needs 30% more truck drivers of those I needed at the beginning of the pandemic, to solve them problems that have been arising in the supply chain.
Interviewed by CNN, so he considered it Chris Spear, President and CEO of the American Trucking Association, which he encrypted in 80,000 drivers required.
At the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, when the labor shortage, the country needed about 61,500 drivers. These employees move 71% of all goods in the country’s economy, but they hardly represent 4% of vehicles on roads.
In case this demand does not find a solution, by 2030 the driver shortage could reach 160,000, with the need of 1,000,000 workers in the next decade, indicates the association.
The report comes when the country’s ports are experiencing a collapse, precisely due to the lack of trucks and drivers who can pick up and move cargo. This makes it impossible to comply with the order of President Joe Biden, because although it indicated that ports must work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, not enough drivers to meet the schedule.
A hope
As other firms have proposed, Spear sees in younger workers A light at the end of the tunnel. Hiring them “is the best thing that could be done right now to alleviate the problem,” he said.
And is that industry experts argue that the average trucker is currently 54 years old, a trend that would be reversed in the time to come.
Patterson High School in California has gotten down to business by becoming one of the first non-vocational high schools to offer a student truck driving program. This course is open to those in their final year, as part of the Institution’s Technical Career Education Program.
Keep reading:
– Christmas and the supply chain: large retailers work 24/7
– US acknowledges supply chain problems will last until 2022
– Port of Los Angeles is committed to working to ensure the supply chain flows
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