When I was a kid I had to walk 10 miles to school. Barefoot. In winter. Uphill. Against the wind. Both ways.

At least, that’s how I remember it. But when I was a kid starting out in trucking. I know for a fact that I pulled A-train tankers on air suspensions with a 166-inch-wheelbase Freightliner cabover (on air, too) with a 290-horsepower engine but no power steering, loaded with 90,000 pounds of liquid asphalt at 300 degrees F. The trailers were short in length but 12-1/2 feet tall. Imagine what an adventure that would be.

I managed to do it for two years–through snowstorms, along narrow highways, and up Northern Ontario logging roads–without ever tipping over. And when I started, I had less than a year’s experience.

So what’s all this about a shortage of qualified drivers? What’s a qualified driver but one who somebody else has paid to train?

Call me cynical, but when someone starts moaning about a shortage of qualified drivers, I hear someone who is unwilling to invest in safeguarding the industry’s future labour supply. Those people would rather have a road-ready driver come knocking at the door–trained at someone else’s expense–than spend a little money to develop a new driver, building on what was learned in school.

It’s like a farm team in professional sports. That’s where the young players go to hone their skills and learn how to get into the corners with elbows in the air. Their development is watched and charted and evaluated by scouts and coaches.

The only flaw in the argument is that trucking doesn’t have a B team. Every load on a public highway is the “big leagues.” Before new drivers are turned loose on unsuspecting motorists–even the ones from good solid training schools–they need some time under the supervision of a competent coach.

As one of my colleagues, Victor Goertzen, put it: “School can’t teach you everything, and I found out real quick that preparation is no substitute for experience.”
The $64,000 question is, who pays for that experience?

Back when I learned to drive, things were different. Half as much traffic, half as many lawyers, and twice as much latitude to learn. Looking back, I’d have to say fleets expected drivers to know enough to stay out of trouble, or maybe they were prepared to mop up a mess or two, chalking it up to experience.

Maybe that was as much a cost of doing business as today’s churning and turnover costs. I can say with some certainty that if I had known what a challenge the above-mentioned tanker combo was going to be I’d never have climbed into the thing.

But my mentor at the time, a wonderful old-school guy named Lyle Stevens, told me to keep my foot in it and don’t look in the mirrors. What he meant was keep pulling to keep it straight, and don’t even try to counter-steer to correct the wiggling pup. It never seemed to stray too far over the lines, and I realized pretty quickly that I was better off near the centre of the lane than to the right. The crown on the road made the pup trail slightly to the right, and as long as I kept the left front wheel on my side of the centreline, I wouldn’t drop the rear wheels onto the gravel.

And I wouldn’t whack anything coming from the opposite direction.
How much would you pay for advice like that today? Probably not more than a couple of thousand bucks in a fleet-managed, in-cab mentor/coach situation. But that’s a small investment compared to an accident, or the cost of finding another person to fill the driver’s seat. Over and over again.