Hartford Business Journal

12 Hartford Business Journal • September 25, 2017 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com A nsonia trucking-company operator John Pruchnicki uses nearly every tool in his kit to recruit and retain some of Connecticut's 57,000 or so commercially licensed truck drivers to his payroll. Many of the semis in Pruchnicki's Coastal Carriers of Connecticut fleet are equipped with the same safety features and ergonomics found in today's cars — automatic transmissions, power steering, stability and adaptive cruise controls, and anti-lock brakes. His drivers also collect good pay, benefits, even performance incentives, as well as the opportunity to finish their workday and sleep in their own beds — something coveted among haulers forced to drive nights and weekends. Yet, despite relatively good pay and working conditions, finding and keeping truck drivers is back to being as difficult as it has ever been, Pruchnicki and other truck-industry observers say. Tightened state and federal compliance obligations on trucking companies and drivers, plus in- creased competition in a revived economy for talent and consumers' mounting appe- tites for speedy delivery of goods ordered online, have exacerbated the trend. Trucker demographics, too, are a factor. "The truck-driver shortage is real,'' said Joe Sculley, president of the Motor Transport As- sociation of Connecticut (MTAC). "Trucking companies just cannot find candidates.'' Ask any trucking-company operator or driver-training school, and they'll tell you that, even with 3.5 million licensed truckers on U.S. roads, drivers always are in short supply. But the intensity of the shortage oscillates, particularly in tune with the economy, said Robert Costello, economist with the American Trucking Associations (ATA), to which MTAC belongs. Currently the shortages appear to be the worst ever, experts say. "We're short about 50,000 drivers today,'' Costello said, mostly for long-haul, inter- state routes that keep them on the road for days, weeks at a time. The economic impact of a truck-driver shortage is hard to estimate, Costello said, because transportation costs, includ- ing drivers' pay, are a tiny part of the wholesale-retail pricing of goods. However, the shortage may eventually play out in longer delivery times to homes, factories and store shelves, he said. About two out of every three tons of U.S. freight moves by truck on America's roads, ATA says. An acute truck-driver shortage existed up until the start of the Great Recession in late 2008, which helped offset a then truck- driver shortage of some 20,000, according to a 2015 ATA report. By the time the national recovery began in 2011, the deficit was rising again, to around 38,000, ATA said. An uptick in freight-hauling volume in 2014 shrank the driver deficit, but it re-emerged again in 2015, reaching 48,000 at the end of that year, and continues to grow, Costello said. It's not just truckers either. Dattco Inc. in New Britain, one of New England's largest people movers with a fleet of school buses, motor coaches, limousines and livery vehicles, is also seeing a driver shortage. Many of its drivers require a commercial license, similar to truck haulers. Currently, Dattco is training some 100 people to take the state's commercial driver's license, or CDL, exam. "The whole bus industry is experiencing the same issue,'' said Dattco President Don DeVivo. MTAC's Sculley says the aging of America's trucker corps is a problem, with the average age of truckers around 49. The problem is even more acute when you consider the median "mortality'' age for drivers who either retire or die is 61. That means skilled, veteran drivers are disap- pearing faster than they can be replaced. Mandatory drug tests for new drivers, and random sampling of veterans, regularly thins their ranks, truckers say. Moreover, many veteran drivers who have spent years driving long-haul, cross- country routes have grown weary of being away from home and family for extended periods. Also, a mass of new federal rules in the last decade mandating drivers limit — as well as log — time at the wheel frus- trates older haulers, causing them to burn out or retire, driving instructors and other Tough Haul Driver shortage forces haulers to lift pay, perks to woo workers John Pruchnicki, owner of Coastal Carriers of Connecticut, with an electronic log book that federal rules require be installed in eligible commercial vehicles, starting in October. The trucking industry says the time and expense to equip trucks with the device, plus download and catalog the data, is an example of the state and federal rules burdening drivers and truck operators. A bus simulator that New Britain commercial livery operator Dattco Inc. uses to train new motor- coach drivers. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER

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