Friday, February 25, 2022
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Drivers: Vaccine mandates were a source of consternation
Continued from Page 1
loaded with more lucrative U.S.
imports.
The setbacks are vexing, Arse-
nault said. In one case, she said a
producer was forced to make 12
trips delivering a shipment of dried
fruit from the Central Valley to the
Port of Oakland due to scheduling
that can change suddenly and with-
out warning.
“Our producers are certainly
feeling it,” Arsenault said. “We are
having huge frustrations and huge
concerns.”
The truck driver shortage is a
major component of the larger cri-
sis, Arsenault said. In addition to
a shortage of long-haul truckers
traveling between cities, there is a
shortage of local delivery drivers
and even drivers who handle the
chassis that shuttle containers to
and from West Coast ports.
Driver shortage
Demand for drivers is so high
that some companies are offering
signing bonuses of up to $20,000
for experienced operators. The
median pay for drivers in 2020
was $47,130, or $22.66 per hour,
according to the most recent data
from the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
For 10 years, Jon Samson was
executive director of the Agri-
culture and Food Transporters
Conference, a unit of the Amer-
ican Trucking Association that
focuses on critical issues affect-
ing commodities and food.
Now vice president of confer-
ences for the association, he said
approximately 80% of all agri-
cultural products are transported
via trucks. The rest is moved pri-
marily by rail or barge.
While the driver shortage is
not new, Samson said it acceler-
ated in the early days of the pan-
demic as states shut down busi-
nesses to slow COVID-19’s
spread. Suddenly, long-haul
truckers couldn’t even find a
place to park and rest or shower
as truck stops and rest areas
closed.
Vaccine
mandates
were
another source of consterna-
tion, Samson said. Though
the Supreme Court ultimately
blocked the Biden administra-
tion’s vaccine requirements for
companies with more than 100
employees, just the threat was
enough to push some truckers out
of the industry or into retirement.
“We’ve been working extraor-
dinarily hard to either bring peo-
ple back, or retain the people that
we currently have,” Samson said.
Drivers are also getting older.
The median age of over-the-road
truckers is now 46. Samson said it
is imperative to recruit new blood,
though federal law prohibits CDL
drivers younger than 21 from par-
ticipating in interstate commerce.
Instead of hiring drivers at 18,
when they are fresh out of high
school, Samson said they lose
those first three years before they
George Plaven/Capital Press
Jason Nord leans his head out the window while backing up during an exercise at Western Pacific Truck School in Portland.
reach 21, putting
the trucking indus-
try at a competi-
tive disadvantage
compared to other
trades.
“It really is
Alex
crucial, and a lot
Paliy
of these are rural
farm kids that
we’re
focused
on bringing in as
well,” he said.
Jana
Jarvis,
president
and
CEO of the Ore-
gon
Trucking
Jon
Association, said
Samson
one way compa-
nies are appeal-
ing to new drivers is by offering
higher pay and benefits — hence
the five-figure signing bonuses.
There is also much more work
available locally, as e-commerce
has changed how consumers shop,
Jarvis said. Instead of spending
weeks at a time on the road, driv-
ers can now make local deliveries
and return home to their families
every night.
”The flavor of our industry has
changed dramatically over the last
decade,” Jarvis said.
Calling all truckers
Willy Eriksen, president of the
Western Pacific Truck School, said
that during any given four-week
class period, recruiters from 16
trucking companies will court stu-
dents during their lunch break with
promises of a job once they get
their CDL.
“This is the highest (demand)
I’ve ever seen,” Eriksen said. “It’s
always been an in-demand job, but
nothing like this.”
Founded in 1977, Western
Pacific Truck School is a 160-hour
program that combines classroom
and on-the-road training to get
drivers ready for their CDL test.
The school has two locations, in
northeast Portland and in Centra-
lia, Wash.
About half of all students now
are sponsored by companies that
pay the $6,000 tuition to get more
drivers, Eriksen said.
“All of a sudden, companies are
realizing there’s just nobody out
there walking around with a CDL,”
Eriksen said. “Companies are now
scraping trying to find drivers.
They’re offering big bonuses, and
things I’ve never seen in the indus-
try before.”
Alex Paliy, 23, graduated from
the school in December. Three
days later, he passed his CDL test
and got a driving job with React
Logistics, a small carrier based in
Troutdale, Ore.
Paliy, whose background is
in computer science and infor-
mation technology, said he was
attracted to trucking by the pay. He
has already made two cross-coun-
try trips to Florida, hauling every-
thing from pallets of soy protein to
Duracell batteries.
There’s more to the snarled sup-
ply chain than just a driver short-
age, Paliy said.
In his few months on the job, he
said he has also seen understaffed
distribution centers and ware-
houses with lines of trucks waiting
hours to load and unload, indicat-
ing labor shortages in other links
of the supply chain, too.
“It’s such a complicated indus-
try with many branches of work,”
Paliy said. “It’s not just drivers.
You have brokers, you have dis-
patchers, you have warehouses,
you have ports, you have cross-
docks and distribution centers. All
of that ties in together.”
Eriksen said the school is
booked several months in advance
as companies escalate their push to
hire drivers.
“In four weeks, you have a
career,” he said. “You could go to
college for four years and not be
able to make the same money you
can driving a truck.”
Pilot program
In addition to higher pay, leg-
islation included in the $1.2 tril-
lion federal infrastructure package
could pave the way for younger
drivers to join the industry.
The Drive Safe Act estab-
lishes a two-step pilot apprentice-
ship program for drivers 18-20
years old to participate in inter-
state commerce. Participants must
complete 400 hours of additional
training, including 240 hours
supervised by an experienced
driver.
The program also requires
trucks to be fitted with technology
including active braking collision
mitigation systems, forward-fac-
ing event recording cameras, speed
limiters set at 65 mph or lower and
automatic or automatic-manual
transmissions.
“It has a significant amount
of both technology requirements
on the trailer itself, and a signif-
icant amount of training for the
younger driver — including some-
one who’s also going to be sitting
next to them in the cab,” said Sam-
son, of the ATA.
He said the program will be
overseen by the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration,
and will be running “in the near
future.”
Jarvis, of the state trucking
association, said she hopes Oregon
carriers will consider participating
to fill some of the program’s 3,000
available slots.
“It’s a heavy financial invest-
ment on the part of trucking com-
panies to take two drivers on one
delivery, but it was something our
industry was very interested in
supporting,” Jarvis said. “It’s an
essential job.”
Not everyone is on board with
the program. Opponents argue
teenage drivers pose a higher risk
of crashing, and the new law would
do nothing to retain drivers who
become burned out due to gruel-
ing schedules and long stretches of
time away from home.
To recruit more drivers, the
Idaho Trucking Association has a
new $175,000 truck simulator that
it takes to high schools around the
state. The idea is to get students
thinking about a career as a truck
driver. The first stop was Jan. 26 at
Middleton High School.
“The hands-on experience
may ease some concerns and cre-
ate excitement for students look-
ing for career options,” said Allen
Hodges, the association’s presi-
dent and CEO. “If the driver short-
age continues, this will (prevent)
everyone from getting the goods
they want in a timely fashion.”
Until the supply chain regains
its footing, Samson, of the trucking
association, said agricultural com-
modities risk having a shorter shelf
life and higher production costs.
“It’s a complicated web, but
none of it ends up being a positive
for the farmer or the consumer,” he
said.
Diesel: Farmers would be hindered in delivering goods or using on-road farm vehicles
Continued from Page 1
Similarly, the state’s
farmers would be hindered
in delivering goods or using
on-road farm vehicles, said
Lauren Smith, government
affairs director for the Ore-
gon Farm Bureau.
Though farm machin-
ery would still be able to
use petroleum diesel under
the bill, in reality it would
still restrict the availabil-
ity of such off-road “dyed
diesel,” according to the
organization.
“On- and off-road fuel
are not delivered separately.
A ban like this would defi-
nitely affect supply and the
ability to get off-road diesel
into Oregon,” Smith said.
The provision in HB
4141 that would allow
enforcement to be sus-
pended would not auto-
matically replenish diesel
supply chains, said Sharla
Moffett, energy, environ-
ment, natural resources and
infrastructure director at the
Oregon Business & Indus-
try organization.
Regulators cannot sim-
ply “flip a switch” and
make petroleum diesel
widely available after it’s
been prohibited, she said.
“Without careful examina-
tion, we could be solving
one problem and causing
many others.”
Proponents of HB 4141
argued that regulations
improving the fuel effi-
ciency of trucks will reduce
carbon emissions eventu-
ally, but that doesn’t affect
the pollution caused by
older vehicles.
“We need renewable die-
sel to bridge us until we
have a larger zero emission
fleet,” said Sorin Garber, a
transportation consultant
who opposed the amend-
ment to study availability
and prices.
“We can only study alter-
native fuels while we effort-
lessly use renewable die-
sel,” he said.
Angus Duncan, chair
emeritus of the Oregon
Global Warming Commis-
sion, said that a shift to
electric vehicles and those
that use hydrogen fuel is a
longer-term solution to cli-
mate change.
“We need an interim
solution that can show
emissions reductions now,”
he said. “Renewable diesel
appears to be that solution.
It’s a drop-in fuel. No adap-
tions needed, no warrantees
voided.”
Aside from climate
change considerations, pro-
ponents argued that petro-
leum diesel poses health
dangers because it contains
heavy metals and other
toxic substances.
Breathing in diesel pol-
lution laced with those
toxic substances causes
inflammation that leads
to heart and lung disease,
as well as certain cancers,
said Sharon Meieran, a doc-
tor and Multnomah County
commissioner.
“Prevention is better
than treatment,” she said.
“Cleaning up diesel pollu-
tion prevents some terrible
consequences.”
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press File
Canola seed is emptied from a combine into a truck
in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Critics worried that a
phase-out of petroleum diesel for motor vehicles in Or-
egon would affect the availability of the fuel for farm
machinery. Lawmakers have scrapped the proposal in
favor of a task force to study the issue.
Marijuana: ‘The only solution is to go back and make hemp illegal’
Continued from Page 1
ijuana grows is largely
a problem in Jackson
and Josephine counties,
so Golden’s committee
scaled back SB 1564’s
scope. Under the new ver-
sion, counties can decide
whether to suspend new
production of the crop for
two seasons.
“Because of the differ-
ent circumstances around
the state, this is especially
important for local con-
trol,” he said before the
Feb. 17 floor vote for the
bill, which passed 23-1.
Golden said he recog-
nized there are hard-work-
ing people who follow the
rules for growing can-
nabis and who’ve been
hurt by illegal marijuana
producers.
“We’re asking for their
indulgence for a cou-
ple years to get a handle
on this organized crime
problem,” he said.
Sen.
Fred
Girod,
R-Stayton, said the bill
was a “baby step” in the
right direction but Ore-
gon needed to go further
to curb illicit marijuana
production.
The state is a major
marijuana exporter to
the nation and “hemp is
largely the reason,” Girod
said. “The only solution
is to go back and make
hemp illegal.”
Similar legislation that
would allow Oregon regu-
lators to stop issuing mar-
ijuana licenses is making
headway in the House,
where
representatives
passed House Bill 4016
by 56-1 on Feb. 22.
Rep.
Brad
Witt,
D-Clatskanie, was the
lone member of the
House to oppose the
bill, arguing that it was
anti-competitive.
The legislation should
have been improved to
“avoid a state-sanctioned
monopoly,”
such
as
those that have hindered
competition
in
other
industries, Witt said.
“Our state is about to
embark on the very same
problems.”
Rep. Kim Wallan,
R-Medford, said she also
opposed monopolies but
said that cannabis is regu-
lated similarly to alcohol.
“It is not a free mar-
ket for marijuana produc-
ers because they cannot
ship their product out-of-
state,” she said.
People have stopped
buying
marijuana
at
retail stores and are again
buying it on the street
because “we are awash in
it,” which requires supply
restrictions, Wallan said.
“There has to be a way
to get a handle on that
illegal market and this is
that way,” she said.