(USNewsMag.com) – On December 16, President Joe Biden announced a plan to help reduce the trucking shortage. The administration plans to put a number of short-term and long-term policies in place to ease the crisis, including $8 million for trucking apprenticeship programs and $30 million to speed up the process to obtain a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL). However, trucking experts don’t believe his plans go far enough.
Collin Long, with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), spoke to Fox Business about the trucking crisis gripping the nation and adding to shortages across the country. He said Biden’s plan to end the shortage puts too much emphasis on hiring new drivers and not enough on retention. He explained the biggest problem in the industry is convincing drivers to stay in the field by making the job safe and prosperous.
A representative for an independent truck driver association told @FoxBusiness that the Biden administration’s plan to fix the #Truckers shortage fails to adequately address the key problem of driver retention. https://t.co/TjIK1g1lzh
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) December 17, 2021
There’s currently a shortage of more than 80,000 truck drivers across the nation. The long-haul trucking industry — drivers who travel long distances across states to deliver goods — is being hit the hardest. The need for drivers is contributing to the bottleneck at ports which has led to a shortage of goods around the country and is making inflation worse.
Fox Business reached out to the Biden admin about Long’s concerns but received no response.
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