The first step in solving any problem is to admit that we in fact have a problem. And sadly, I don’t think this industry has yet come to terms with the potential impact of our so-called driver shortage. It’s more than a shortage of drivers — that sort of commoditizes the issue. We’re running out of prospects to keep our businesses afloat.

While out in Edmonton a few weeks ago, I had heard that a few retailers in Fort McMurray had closed because they couldn’t hire help. I was told that chamber maids in that city’s hotels were making better than $25 an hour. Who’d want to work a shop counter for minimum wage when better work was available?

You just can’t build 20 bucks an hour for labour into some businesses. Some in trucking see a parallel to the cost of our labour, but I’d argue that we can afford higher labour rates — indeed we must. Trucking is a commodity too. If the need is great enough, the customer will pay.

But before you dismiss this as another rant about paying drivers more, read on. Trucking is in very tight competition for a limited supply of people, and other industries are getting more creative than we are in attracting new talent.

Last fall, an issue of Maclean’s magazine featured its annual Top 100 Employers survey. (There’s one trucking outfit in there again this year: Saskatoon’s Yanke Group of Companies. Way to go!), and the lead story of the feature describes how a young fellow hooked up with steel-maker, Dofasco Inc., through an apprenticeship program. He earned $40,000 for his first year in the program, and that included three months of study at college. Being paid to learn; what a concept.

Further in, there’s a bit about how Dofasco retained noted demographer David Foote to study its workforce and to measure the pool of potential candidates within the community. Foote’s findings were described as an eye-opener. He found that within 10 years, 50 to 70 percent of the company’s workforce would be eligible for retirement. Sound familiar?

Flashback to my first Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) convention. It was 1995, and I was there as a member of the inaugural OTA’s Knights of the Road team. David Foote was there that year, too, and what did he tell the attendees? Within 10 years, 50-70-percent of the industry’s workforce would be eligible for retirement.

That’s not a Foote mantra to drum up business; it’s a fact of life. So where are we 10 years after Foote issued his warning?

Let’s just say that we’re losing ground to industries like the steel makers. Dofasco, Maclean’s writes, currently spends $15 million a year on training and development. It’s investing about $250,000 on each of about 200 to 250 apprentices that are currently with the company, even though there’s no guarantee that any of them will stay with the company when they’re through with the program. “It’s not just a noble thing to do,” says Brian Mullen, Dofasco’s director of human resources. “There’s a solid business case.”

We need to do more to attract people into trucking, probably absorbing the cost of training, and paying them in the process. But there’s work to do even before that. I would argue that trucking has to get its retention problems under control before taking steps to improve recruitment. New people will respond the same way to the old problems.

Of course, this cycle of disenfranchisement comes back to bite the carrier in another way. Good people avoid trucking as a career because there are more attractive options, leaving trucking stuck with less than ideal drivers. They cost the company a fortune in claims, recruiting costs, etc. It’s a vicious circle, but one that can be broken with imagination and a solid business case for investing in our workforce.

Compare the cost of losing a good driver to the cost of paying them for all their on-duty time. And driver’s hours are billable. Which is a better investment in the long run, spending a little to get a driver home for a previous commitment, or the revenue from load you wanted the driver to wait for?

Other industries are seeing return on their HR investments, while trucking continues to spend money on short-term fixes. We can do better. We have to do better.