MyEagleNews.com
Drivers
Continued from Page A1
agricultural producers and exporters
face spiraling transportation costs.
Sara Arsenault, director of federal
policy at the California Farm Bureau,
said exports that once cost $2,500 to
$5,000 per container to ship over-
seas are now $12,000 to $30,000 per
container. Increasingly, agricultural
exports are being left behind as ocean
carriers send empty containers back
to Asia, where they are loaded with
more lucrative U.S. imports.
The setbacks are vexing, Arse-
nault said. In one case, she said a pro-
ducer 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 without
warning.
“Our producers are certainly feel-
ing it,” Arsenault said. “We are having
huge frustrations and huge concerns.”
The truck driver shortage is a
major component of the larger crisis,
Arsenault said. In addition to a short-
age of long-haul truckers traveling
between cities, there is a shortage of
local delivery drivers and even driv-
ers who handle the chassis that shut-
tle containers to and from West Coast
ports.
Driver shortage
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
NEWS
Demand for drivers is so high that
some companies are offering signing
bonuses of up to $20,000 for expe-
rienced 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 Agriculture
and Food Transporters Conference, a
unit of the American Trucking Asso-
ciation that focuses on critical issues
affecting commodities and food.
Now vice president of confer-
ences for the association, he said
approximately 80% of all agricultural
products are transported via trucks.
The rest is moved primarily by rail or
barge.
While the driver shortage is not
new, Samson said it accelerated in
the early days of the pandemic as
states shut down businesses 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 consternation, Samson
said. Though the
Supreme
Court
ultimately blocked
the Biden admin-
istration’s vaccine
requirements for
companies
with
more than 100
Samson
employees, just the
threat was enough
to push some
truckers out of the
industry or into
retirement.
“We’ve been
working extraordi-
Arsenault
narily hard to either
bring people back,
or retain the peo-
ple that we cur-
rently have,” Sam-
son said.
Drivers are also
getting older. The
median age of over-
Paliy
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 participating in inter-
state 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 reach
21, putting the trucking industry at a
competitive disadvantage compared
to other trades.
“It really is crucial, and a lot of
these are rural farm kids that we’re
focused on bringing in as well,” he
said.
Jana Jarvis, president and CEO
of the Oregon Trucking Association,
said one way companies 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, Jar-
vis said. Instead of spending weeks
at a time on the road, drivers 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.
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
Centralia, 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,” Erik-
sen said. “Companies are now scrap-
ing trying to find drivers. They’re
offering big bonuses, and things I’ve
never seen in the industry before.”
Alex Paliy, 23, graduated from the
school in December. Three days later,
he passed his CDL test and got a driv-
ing job with React Logistics, a small
carrier based in Troutdale, Ore.
Paliy, whose background is in
computer science and information
technology, said he was attracted to
trucking by the pay. He has already
made two cross-country trips to Flor-
ida, hauling everything from pallets
of soy protein to Duracell batteries.
There’s more to the snarled sup-
ply chain than just a driver shortage,
Paliy said.
In his few months on the job, he
said he has also seen understaffed
distribution centers and warehouses
with lines of trucks waiting hours
to load and unload, indicating labor
shortages in other links of the supply
chain, too.
“It’s such a complicated industry
with many branches of work,” Paliy
said. “It’s not just drivers. You have
brokers, you have dispatchers, 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 compa-
nies escalate their push to hire drivers.
“In four weeks, you have a
career,” he said. “You could go to col-
lege for four years and not be able to
make the same money you can driv-
ing a truck.”
Calling all truckers
Pilot program
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 students during
their lunch break with promises of a
job once they get their CDL.
“This is the highest (demand) I’ve
In addition to higher pay, legis-
lation included in the $1.2 trillion
federal infrastructure package could
pave the way for younger drivers to
join the industry.
The Drive Safe Act establishes
a two-step pilot apprenticeship pro-
gram for drivers 18-20 years old to
March
26-27
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9:00 am–3:00 pm
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All proceeds to benefit Perfect Balance
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ALL THINGS AGRICULTURE
Clint Johnson Working
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SAT. 11–NOON • SUN. 10–11
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participate in interstate commerce.
Participants must complete 400
hours of additional training, includ-
ing 240 hours supervised by an
experienced driver.
The program also requires trucks
to be fitted with technology includ-
ing active braking collision mitiga-
tion systems, forward-facing 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 significant amount
of training for the younger driver —
including someone who’s also going
to be sitting next to them in the cab,”
said Samson, of the ATA.
He said the program will be over-
seen by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration, and will be
running “in the near future.”
Jarvis, of the state trucking asso-
ciation, said she hopes Oregon carri-
ers will consider participating to fill
some of the program’s 3,000 avail-
able 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 sup-
porting,” Jarvis said. “It’s an essen-
tial job.”
Not everyone is on board with
the program. Opponents argue teen-
age drivers pose a higher risk of
crashing, and the new law would
do nothing to retain drivers who
become burned out due to grueling
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 create
excitement for students looking for
career options,” said Allen Hodges,
the association’s president and CEO.
“If the driver shortage continues, this
will (prevent) everyone from get-
ting 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.
A11
Pool
Continued from Page A1
Magone Lake on the north, almost to
Keeney Fork Road on the east and as
far south as Starr Ridge.
Plans for the aquatic center call for
a six-lane, 25-yard outdoor pool to
replace the 64-year-old Gleason Pool,
which has been closed for two years
and is slated for demolition. The design
could be tweaked to enclose the build-
ing or add features such as a warm-wa-
ter exercise pool at a later date.
There would be an L-shaped build-
ing adjoining the pool, with one wing
housing a lobby and reception area,
office space, locker rooms and a com-
munity room and the other wing hous-
ing plumbing, electrical and mechani-
cal equipment.
City Manager Nick Green said
during the meeting that it might be pos-
sible to include the warm water pool in
the initial construction, depending on
final cost estimates – especially if the
additional grant funding comes through.
“We’re still doing the value engi-
neering,” he said. “We’re calling (the
warm water pool) future, but future
may be present if that grant is awarded.”
One bit of “value engineering”
that has already been worked into
the design is a lower roofline for the
aquatic center building. Nada Maani of
Opsis Architecture, one of two mem-
bers of the project team who joined the
meeting by videoconference, said the
change would save money in material
and energy costs.
Green noted that the design work is
ongoing and that building material and
other construction costs are extremely
fluid right now, making it difficult to
make firm cost estimates this far ahead
of the May 17 election. He said the
team would present a more refined
design, and more solid cost projections,
before ballots go out to voters.
“The intent is, prior to the ballot
measure in May, to have another pre-
sentation,” he said. “The idea is that
before anyone in the district goes to
vote, they would have an idea what they
were voting for.”
A recent survey commissioned by
the city of John Day found district vot-
ers were closely divided on the issue,
with 35% of respondents saying they
would definitely vote for the bond mea-
sure and 34% saying they would defi-
nitely vote against it. When voters who
say they would probably vote a certain
way or are leaning in that direction were
factored in, the breakdown was 51% in
favor to 45% against, with another 4%
undecided.