The Supply Chain and the Truck Driver Shortage

There is broad agreement that in recent times there has been some serious supply chain challenges within warehousing and ecommerce fulfilment services which have been difficult to overcome. One of these has been the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic – only now are we beginning to return to normal after this event which has been catastrophic within many industries.

Where ecommerce is concerned, Covid-19 had the upside of increasing orders to customers ensconced for months in their homes, but it also reduced the size of the workforce. Shipping and Handling of Texas, offering, among other things, cross dock warehousing in Houston, say that the effect of more orders and less staff put tremendous strain on the industry throughout the most severe months of the pandemic.

Another curious problem has also arisen in recent times, one with many far-reaching consequences and partially related also to the pandemic. This has been a relative shortage of truck drivers. Automation may be making massive strides across all warehousing operations, but self-driving trucks are still something in the – for now – distant future.

Some commentators have even been speaking of a “truck driver supply chain chaos”, which has been responsible for many ecommerce fulfilment problems. However, this chaos has also been related to a trend of declining truck driver numbers – a trend which has been known from since before the pandemic, was accelerated by it, and continues now that the pandemic is abating.

Why So Few Truck Drivers?

However, this poses an important question – why is this happening? For sure, automation has not yet had this effect on truck drivers. As mentioned, self-driving trucks are not a reality and, if anything, the demand for truck drivers has only risen as ecommerce has steadily increased (a trend which has been going on for two decades now and continues today).

Perhaps we need to look elsewhere for the answer. The decline in truck drivers is not caused by automation, but it certainly was exacerbated by the pandemic. Nevertheless, this is far from the only reason. We observed this trend before the pandemic, so that should be obvious. Here follows some of the other reasons for this current supply chain chaos:

Demographics

There are more ageing truck drivers than there are new recruits. Or to put it another way, a lot more people were becoming truck drivers in the older days compared to today. The statistics seem to bear this out, with truck drivers today having an average age of 48.2, which is almost at 50. All the truck drivers currently at this age have perhaps only another ten or fifteen years left before retirement, so the problem could become even worse.

The Working Conditions

It would be inaccurate to say that truck drivers experience poor working conditions. This problem does not arise from neglect or underfunding, but instead because the job itself is necessarily taxing. The above-mentioned Shipping and Handling of Texas say that there is not much that can be done about this – truck driving involves long hours at all points of the clock. That is simply what transporting goods vast distances entails.

Lack of Jobseeker Diversity

Women, for one, remain very underrepresented in trucking. This is a longstanding factor that has never not been the case. Nonetheless, changing things in this department with incentives and job advertisements could be one way out of the crisis.

Ultimately, truck drivers are the absolute backbone of the supply chain. There is a great deal of organization involved in ecommerce and warehousing, but it is the truck drivers who get the goods where they need to be.