Truckers speed to front of job line
Let’s start with some honesty.
What comes straight into your mind when you think of truck drivers?
Me, I’m admitting that it might be an 18-wheeler that almost ran me off I-90 and down a ravine in Shoshone County.
But to be fair — which is always our motto here — truck drivers do a hell of a difficult and often dangerous job, and without them we’d be missing an awful lot of life’s necessities.
I’ll bet that most of you would say you’ve never seen any shortage of trucks when you’ve been out on the highway.
You would be wrong, and so was I.
Check this item provided by Bloomberg News …
“The U.S. has about 280,000 fewer truck drivers than it needs, a shortfall that’s grown more than threefold from 78,000 about two years ago, according to estimates by FTR Transportation Intelligence.
“The dearth of available trucks got worse in April as regulators stepped up enforcement of limits on driver hours.”
If you give that nugget of information just a teeny bit of thought, you’re going to guess that truck drivers now can command more money and better conditions from the shippers they serve.
Supply and demand, right?
So listen, if your kid has been a driving freak since the time he or she could walk — and now you hear there’s no desire to spend four years at some university for a philosophy degree — I have a name you should scribble down.
Mitzi Michaud is coordinator for workforce and community education at NIC’s facility in Post Falls.
And yes, one of the school’s many practical job-training programs is aimed at sending students into the world with a CDL (Commercial Driver’s License).
“We work with a small group at a time,” Michaud said. “It’s a rotation where we have someone starting the class, someone finishing and another out in a truck.
“It used to be that companies would only take drivers with two years of experience, but with the need for drivers now, quite a few have dropped that requirement.
“They’ll take our grads who have a CDL and partner them with experienced drivers until they’re prepared to go on their own.”
MICHAUD is thrilled with the program’s expansion on several fronts.
She’s more than happy to see local firms lining up to accept — and continue to train — these newly minted drivers, but she’s also looking at another opportunity that’s in the works.
“There’s also a shortage of drivers for logging trucks,” she said. “It requires some really different types of driving.
“Idaho Forest Group has donated a logging truck for us to use in training, which is a huge help. The chance for students to actually work on a complicated vehicle like that makes a tremendous difference.”
Unlike the stereotype truck driver that older people (like me) incorrectly thought we knew, drivers now need to learn about the increase in technology that comes with the job.
“You should see the computer on the logging truck,” Michaud said. “The future of trucking will be a lot like flying commercial airplanes. Computers can do almost everything, but you always need a qualified human being right there to make sure the technology remains accurate.”
The summary here is that NIC’s workforce program will be putting drivers into a trucking industry that will be paying higher and higher compensation, with trucks that are safer than anything we’ve ever known.
I’d say this is a very, very cool program.
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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.
A Brand New Day appears Wednesday through Saturday each week. Steve’s sports column runs on Tuesday.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com.
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