Recently, during one of those tedious afternoons when we were sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, we started talking about trucking songs. We wondered who wrote the first trucking song, and what it was called. Naturally, we turned to the web, and while we were searching for that important piece of information, we ran across this interesting piece of information. It appeared on Forbes.com and caught our attention. We thought we would pass it along.

Help Wanted: Truck Drivers
Robert Malone, 05.04.06, 2:20 PM ET

(New York) – For the want of a truck driver, a great deal can be lost.

Trucks are the core logistics vehicles that bring almost everything to retail establishments across the nation. No truck means no yogurt, no gas and no Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

Of the 3.4 million truck drivers on the U.S. roads in 2002, about 1.3 million were heavy- and tractor-trailer drivers. The American Trucking Association (ATA) estimates that employment will increase at a minimum rate of 1.8% through 2012, when there will need to be 2.1 million heavy haulers.

These estimates offer the country and its transportation industry a not-so-delightful paradox, as there is currently a shortage of 20,000 long-haul drivers--and that number is growing. To this statistic must be added the 219,000 truck drivers who are 55 and over that will need to be replaced in the next decade. When the increased need for drivers is factored along with the attrition, there is a mammoth need to quickly find more truckers.

Indeed, if the impact of more-than-$70 per barrel oil is also factored in, there may well be grim trucking times ahead. "The cost of fuel for long-haul truckers has increased 51 cents per gallon within the last year," says Mike Russell, spokesman for the ATA. "This has exacerbated the shortage-of-drivers problem." Since many truckers are independent owner-drivers, the fuel shortage hits them directly in their wallets.

The ATA has taken the trucker plight to the U.S. Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs, with the goal of building a campaign for careers in truck driving. They need financial resources to develop a program that works with local truckers, banks and schools to prepare drivers by giving them training loans that, in time, they will pay back, according to Russell.

As another step, the ATA has developed an extensive advertising campaign designed to reach those people who have the right "DNA" for being truck drivers. After extensive studies, the association has decided to focus on particular sectors of the population that seem to synch well with the profile of a potentially successful truck driver.

Matt Smith, chief executive at Smith Gifford, of Falls Church, Va., has developed the ads for this ATA campaign, based on the association's extensive demographic research. The campaign is designed to reach new people in order to meet the demand for drivers during this extended shortage period. Some of the groups being targeted are Hispanics who speak English, people over 50 who may be looking for a second career and ex-military personnel (not military career types).

"We interviewed and rode extensively with truckers. What we found was that they did not want to be perceived as macho men," says Smith. "They were there essentially for the 'romance of the road.' We showed them the ads we had developed, and they chose two. One expresses that 'my office has a better view than yours.' The other was 'assembly lines don't give you stories to tell.' "

The trucking industry's perception of the shortage has been influenced by the shift of drivers from one carrier to another. This is referred to within the industry as churning, and the annual turnover rate last year was pegged at 121%. The filling of the shortage will not be made up from within the trucking industry. According to Bill Graves, the ATA's chief executive, "The driver market is the tightest [it has been] in 20 years."

When these facts and opinions are placed within the context of what is actually taking place, the pressure increases. In 2004, trucks hauled a total of 9.8 billion tons. That figure is estimated to rise to 13 billion tons by 2016.

Those ads better work.

__________

We never did find out what the first truck driving song was, but we're pretty sure someone, somewhere, is working on the first driver recruiter song. Playing soon on a radio near you, The Recruiter Blues.

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