Last year, the nation experienced a slight easing in truck driver shortages – yet it remains an ever-pressing concern for 2023. At the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association annual convention on Jan 19., leading industry professionals voiced their apprehensions about this issue that is continues to affect transportation sectors in the new year.
“From the things we see in 2023, the focus has to be on the workforce. It’s the No. 1 thing we’re hearing in the sector,” said Kirby Wagner, GROWMARK associate manager of government relations.
“We have a tight supply chain on top of that,” he said. “It will continue.”
As the US trucking industry continues revving up, American Trucking Associations are reporting a shortage of 78K drivers this past year – down from last years peak by 2 thousand. Despite this downturn, it looks like demand for experienced motorists is steadily rising again.
“We saw a lot of retirements in the trucking industry and a lot of overworked drivers,” Wagner said.
The industry has seen a number of drivers returning to the road in the past year. This, combined with a decreased fright demand in recent months has eased some of the strain. These changes can be evidenced by ATA’s tonnage index decrease. Notably, transportation of housing-related goods saw weakened activity in November following October’s dip and overall slowing of the economy.
With the truck driver pool shrinking in the agricultural industry, GROWMARK and IFCA are working together to find creative solutions. Through expanded training and regulatory environments as well as a possible extension of restricted Class B licenses allowing transport of up to 3,000 pounds of farm products other than liquid fertilizer, these organizations hope that this action could help expand their current workforce.
“There’ll be more collaboration across all sectors to make sure farmers get all the products they need on time,” Wagner said.
According to Peter Skosey, executive director, state government affairs for BNSF Railway, workforce constraints elsewhere played a big role in efficiency concerns for the railroad industry in the past year.
“Our workforce is strained,” said Skosey, who hopes to see new hires after the industry narrowly avoided a labor strike. “We just finished a difficult round of labor negotiations. The December agreement gives workers a 24% pay increase.”
Issues that arose over paid sick leave for workers became a key sticking point in the railroad negotiations, though often misunderstood outside the industry, said the BNSF representative.
“We don’t have paid sick leave, but we have time off. The average employee gets 27 to 33 days off a year,” Skosey said. “And, we do have long-term sick leave.”
Now that a new labor agreement is in place, Skosey expects rail services disruptions to ease this year, and notes the benefits of this type of work, as the company is currently offering sign-on bonuses as high as $25,000 for conductors and engineers.
“I think we’ll still see some ripple effects (from recent service disruptions), but our network is back to fluidity,” he said.
In addition, BNSF spends more than $3 billion annually to maintain its network as they understand the importance of a full pipeline of potential employees, allowing them to quickly and efficiently fill necessary gaps without interruptions – an important practice for all vital transportation and freight sectors.
“We are concerned about efficiency, but we also have the luxury of investing in infrastructure,” Skosey added. “We’ve been able to decrease rail service disruptions by 30% the last 10 years.
“Further opportunities for technological upgrades in the railroad industry and operational improvements will also reduce service disruptions.”
Source: Daily Journal – Kankakee, Illinois
