In a trucking environment suppressed at least partially by too many drivers scrambling to haul not enough freight, Monday at the American Trucking Associations Chief Economist Bob Costello contended that a driver shortage remains: one of quality, not quantity.
"What we have in the United States is a quality problem around drivers, much more so than an absolute number," he said during his economic update at ATA's 2025 Management Conference & Exhibition in San Diego on Monday. "It's the quality of the labor. Drug and alcohol testing. Accidents. That is what an ATA is talking about when we talk about this issue."
Most of the industry is waiting for trucking capacity to work its way out of the market, as Costello noted that is the only viable path to rate improvement in the near-term. While that is indeed underway – Costello said more than 39,000 interstate carriers and 49,800 drivers have left the industry from 2022 highs – it has been slower and taken far longer than anyone, including Costello, ever imagined.
"We're not out there advocating for massive amounts of new drivers in this industry. We're not doing that, but we're talking about enforcing the rules so that everybody's safe on the roads," Costello added. "And if you can't abide by those rules, you shouldn't be on the roads."
ATA in 2021 estimated the industry was short upward of 80,000 drivers and was trending toward a shortfall of 160,000 drivers by 2030.
Driver Shortage ranked as the No. 1 overall issue in the American Transportation Research Institute's annual Top Industry Issues report for five straight years from 2017-2021 before falling to No. 2 in 2022, No. 4 in 2023, and No. 9 in 2024.
Driver Shortage fell out of the top 10 in this year's report for the first time in the survey’s 21-year history, settling in at No. 12. Motor carriers still rank the need to find and retain qualified drivers as their Nos. 5 and 6 concerns, respectively.
"I just told you we had way too much supply for the amount of demand, yet riddle me this: if fleets still have no problem finding qualified drivers, then why the heck did you continue to increase pay during one of the worst freight recessions we've ever seen?" Costello asked. "You're nice. You're not that nice."
A study commissioned by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) looking into the impacts on safety and driver retention of various methods of truck driver compensation called into question last year a long-held belief among motor carriers that the trucking industry is plagued with a persistent driver shortage.
Conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), the study concluded that the truckload sector's long-asserted "persistent shortages of drivers" simply can't be supported. ATA challenged the findings, noting that the study’s authors ignored certain aspects of the trucking industry.
