Driver shortage tops OTA agenda

TORONTO (Nov. 17, 1999) — The immediate need for qualified truck drivers will be the industry’s most pressing concern in the coming year, according to the president of the Ontario Trucking Association.

In an interview with Today’s Trucking editors prior to the association’s annual convention, which begins today, OTA president David Bradley said the lack of qualified drivers is limiting carriers’ ability to take advantage of an economy that is performing beyond expectations.

The industry needs to add at least 50,000 new truck drivers to complement Canada’s existing pool of 225,000 drivers, Bradley said. He added that the OTA plans to convene a task force of industry stakeholders to study the industry’s labor shortage and develop a more aggressive campaign to address it.

Such an effort likely would address how carriers manage driver pay, recruiting programs, and retention. He hoped for a broad-based approach, explaining that the labor issue is too often focused on wages and training standards.

“We’re competing with other industries for potential workers,” he said. “We have to do a better job of recognizing what it is those people are looking for in their professional lives. We need to develop a plan that breaks the industry’s reputation as the ‘job of last resort’ among young people entering the workforce. This is what the task force would explore.”

Feel-good public-image campaigns are not enough to raise awareness of the benefits of the profession. “We need to be more active at understanding the problem and then attacking it,” he said.

“At the end of the day, carriers will have to solve the problem,” Bradley said, adding that “the market will decide” whether their efforts are successful or not.