The Driver Shortage Narrative is Fake, and the ATA are Scum; a Group Hug

In this, the fourth episode of my special National Truck Driver Appreciation Week series, I invited some friends of the show on to discuss the biggest lie in the trucking business, the Driver Shortage Narrative. What better way to appreciate someone than to stop pretending they don't exist? Let’s get the government to stop shoveling money at corporations who use this falsehood to suppress our wages. Justin 'Supertrucker' Martin, social media guru over at FreightWaves, joins us to fill us in on his boss, Craig Fuller, the CEO and Big Kahuna, who laid quite a Twitter smackdown on the American Trucking Association; Lee + Lisa Schmitt bring the latest research on the number of drivers, along with interesting truck accident data, from our friends at CDL - Drivers Unlimited, and Mike Lombard joins us later in the show to fill us in on how the shortage narrative does or does not affect the goals of the young people he is assisting move within the industry in Mike's new position as a recruiter. You can read a summary of Craig Fuller’s take on the Driver Shortage Myth over at FreightWaves, and I highly recommend that you do. Even TIME Magazine knows the score, and a newly published study by friend of the show and author of Big Rig - Trucking and The Decline of The American Dream author Steve Viscelli also shows what everyone knows the real problem to be - RETENTION.A short snippet -We looked at a wide range of statistical data from state and federal sources. We talked to drivers, shippers, industry associations, and other stakeholders. We heard about problems facing drivers. Some of these concerns, like congestion and poor driving behavior, are perennial. For other problems, like the state’s truck speed limit and limited truck parking, the state has options to consider ready at hand. We did not find evidence of a shortage of people interested in becoming truck drivers, but we did find strong evidence of a retention problem. That problem is concentrated in the long-haul segment of the industry—the segment that caused shippers the most pain in 2021. Because of this high turnover, long-haul trucking is the primary gateway to the industry for new truckers. Drivers argued that the job was challenging because of long hours and time away from home, but poor-quality training and bad initial jobs discouraged many would-be drivers. In this area, the state has some unique opportunities to foster partnerships that will better utilize state training monies. These options include funding and fostering an alternative pipeline to trucking careers built on local training and local jobs that lead directly to agricultural trucking jobs. You can find Justin often appearing on his FreightWaves colleague Timothy Dooner's show, What The Truck?, dropping the dankest memes on Twitter, or going hard on TikTok. Lee and Lisa Schmitt are a husband and wife trucking duo from Wisconsin, and are founding members of CDL - Drivers Unlimited, a trucker advocacy organization making gains inside the Machine in D.C.You can find The Schmitts on Facecrack, Twitter, and TikTok. Mike Lombard is testing the limits of human endurance in his capacity as a personal trainer, and has moved on from trucking to recruiting, all while continuing his project of improving the industry over at The Lombard Trucking Show. You can find Mike on Twitter, making inspirational videos on TikTok, and catch his podcast in all the usual places, especially on Spotify; his latest episode with colleague and friend of the show James Year is a real banger, and you should listen.