USA Truck announced the company is offering up to $2,000 as a bonus to newly-hired drivers with over-the-road experience. “We know that good, safe drivers are our greatest assets,” says Steve Brantley, manager of driver resources for the Van Buren, Ark.-based company. “We want to show that we’re willing to go the extra mile to help our drivers succeed in this current economy.”
Clifton R. Beckham, president and chief executive officer, said industry conditions presently are characterized by a considerable shortage of capacity. “This tight capacity environment has been growing steadily tighter since mid-February when we believe freight demand experienced a systemic improvement as businesses began to restock inventory in response to unsustainably low inventory levels,” said Beckham, who believes this incremental improvement has revealed the dramatic exodus of trucking capacity over the past several years.
“The result is a tight capacity environment that we expect may only grow tighter when the world economy returns to normal growth rates and when new government regulations – such as the Department of Transportation’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, a wide-ranging performance based safety initiative – reduce the number of employable truck drivers,” Beckham said. “We believe those eventualities coupled with long-term demographic trends reducing the population of qualified truck drivers and lack of Class 8 tractor builds over the past few years will converge to create an extended period of tight capacity in the industry.”
