A tidal wave of demand could be headed to a trucking segment that's the least capable of absorbing it.
A summer travel season that's expected to be defined by "revenge vacations" – people hitting the highways en masse following nearly a year stuck at home under pandemic restrictions – is expected to bring with it a surging demand for fuel, yet liquid bulk haulers already have more to haul than drivers to pull it.
Steve Rush, past-chairman of the National Tank Truck Carriers association and CEO of Whartron, New Jersey-based lubricant base oil petroleum product hauler Carbon Express, said "the driver shortage is not perceived. It is real. Liquid bulk shipments are on average out two weeks right now with no immediate relief in sight."
The age of tank drivers tends to skew on the higher end of industry's average age of 50, and "when COVID hit," Rush said, "the petroleum side of the trucking industry got really smacked hard because they had a lot of older drivers. And they're not coming back."
The Drug Clearinghouse has tagged more than 69,000 drivers with a drug violation since its implementation in January of last year – 14,000 were found through the first three months of this year. But more than 41,000 of those drivers have yet to start their return-to-duty status as of last month.
