A Closer Look At Truckers and Driver Shortages

The Atlantic had an excellent article written by Dariusz Matejko as told to Sonya Matejko about what one long term veteran of the trucking industry thinks the problem is with the current driver shortage. We encourage you to read the whole article but one quote stood out:

Now the country faces a significant shortage of truck drivers, and I have a few theories as to why. One of the biggest reasons is that drivers are older than workers in general. At the company I work for, the average age of drivers is 60 years old, and many are starting to retire. And you just don’t see younger people on the road. For the young folks I do see, they try it for a short time and then quit. And I get it; it’s hard work, and it’s hard not to be home every night.

The Atlantic

In 2019, prior to Covid-19, the Census.gov had a long detailed article discussing how the trucking industry was booming. We encourage you to read this link in its entirety too if you want to learn more about what the trucking industry looked like before the pandemic. One particular chart that caught our eye was the one with the trucker demographic breakdown:

The reason this chart caught our eye was because of the huge disparity between drivers in the white categories in the 45 to 54 and 55 to 64 age ranges. A large percentage of these drivers will likely retire over the next decade creating a huge void in truckers because the next younger cohort drops by over 100,000 drivers and the other demographic categories won’t make up for the shortfall.

The problem isn’t unique to the United States, Spain and the UK have similar problems.

There are many questions that need answering:

1. Where will these new drivers come from?
2. If we don’t get new drivers, how will goods get from point to point?
3. If robotic self-driving trucks are the answer, which companies will be positioned to profit from this?
4. If robotic self-driving trucks aren’t ready or isn’t the answer then what will be?
5. Which companies are positioned to profit and which are in a position to lose?

As always, we’ll be conducting more research to adjust our investment portfolio.

Stay tuned and stay solvent.