Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/661432
Over Think it 4 www.studentdriverplacement.com March '16 By Todd Dills W ith the excep on of 2014-15, pay evidence of a supply/demand imbal- ance in OTR truckload drivers' favor is not found during 2005-15, during which a driver shortage was docu- mented for nearly every year by one analyst or another, excep ng during the worst part of the recession. Even with strong increases in 2014-15, pay is only now returning to infl a on- adjusted 2005 levels. The top line in the graph: Infl ation- adjusted mean U.S. household income SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau. These averages skew higher than trucking pay because of dual-income households and because of a small but relatively high set of outsize earn- ers at the top. The median income (the midpoint between the group of top and bottom earners) ranges over this same time period between $58,000 and $53,000. Data is unavail- able for 2015. The middle line: Infl ation-adjusted owner-operator income SOURCE: Averages of ATBS owner-operator clients, most of whom are leased. Over this period, their annual miles fell slightly more than 20 percent, refl ecting long-term down- ward trends in length of haul and other operational factors. The bottom line: Infl ation-adjusted company driver pay SOURCE: National Transportation Institute, averaged based on driver pay packages in NTI's long-running survey of medium-to-large truckload fl eets, converted to an hourly rate and based on a 40-hour week A driver shortage timeline 2005 – Amid a years-long wave of "labor shortage" studies from other industries, release of the ATA-commis- sioned driver shortage report spawned other trucking shortage estimates. 2006 – "I call it the 'driver shortage hype,' like the Y2K hype." –Shipper GEA's Traffi c Manager Ron Hazel, on the period following the fi rst "driver A decade just to rebound: Pay and the driver shortage