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A 1,000-mile journey through the middle of America reveals the fundamental reason for truck driver shortages: It is a job full of stress, physical deprivation and loneliness.
Stephen Graves at a rest stop in Oklahoma, where he slept for the night.Credit...
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By Peter S. Goodman
Photographs by George Etheredge
Peter S. Goodman has written widely on the supply chain disruption. In reporting this article, he spent three days riding shotgun, from Kansas City, Mo., to Fort Worth and back.
A faint winter sun slides toward the frozen scrub as Stephen Graves guides his tractor-trailer across the cracked pavement of a truck stop parking lot in southern Oklahoma. Exhausted from another 400 miles behind the wheel, he needs the restroom. But mostly he needs an answer to the same question that dogs him nearly every day as darkness falls: Where can he park his rig for the night?
Mr. Graves is nearing the 11-hour limit on driving before he is legally required to rest for 10 hours. He could push on for another hour, creep closer to the Texas border and shorten the distance to his drop-off the next morning — a warehouse alongside the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
The calculus is tricky. The next truck stop down the interstate is notoriously short on parking. He might get there and have to settle for the shoulder of a highway on-ramp. This stop outside the minuscule town of Springer is unappealing — its bathrooms rank and its dining options minimal. But it has parking in abundance. So he pulls in for the night and climbs into the bunk at the back of his cab for a few hours of fitful sleep.
Mr. Graves, 65, has been driving a truck for more than two decades. He is prone to rhapsodizing about the open road. But he does not struggle to explain why his industry is perpetually bemoaning a shortage of drivers.
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5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
The supply chain disruption has reminded the world of the economic centrality of long-haul trucking. But the life of a driver, hauling 53-foot trailers alone on open highways thousands of miles a month, isn’t for everyone.
Here are the facts →
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
The typical long-haul tractor-trailer driver registers 400 to 700 miles a day, or about 125,000 miles a year. That’s enough to circumnavigate the globe five times.
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
The typical driver works 60 to 70 hours a week, including time waiting to load and unload, while spending 300 days a year on the road.
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
Only 7 percent of the 300,000 to 500,000 so-called over-the-road truck drivers in the United States are women.
Companies have sought to recruit more women, whose numbers have increased in local driving jobs. But efforts to expand their ranks in long-haul driving have confronted persistent sexism and sexual harassment.
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
The median annual pay for tractor-trailer drivers, who are usually paid by the mile, was about $47,000 as of May 2020. Since then, firms have raised pay while dispensing bonuses of up to $10,000 for new hires.
5 Things You Might Not Know About Truckers
Trucks haul more than $10 trillion of American goods a year, or more than 70 percent of all products shipped in the United States by value.
Without long-haul trucking and the people behind the wheel, huge enterprises like Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot simply could not function.
When will the supply chain disruption end? Read Peter S. Goodman’s latest analysis.
- ‘It’s Not Sustainable’: What America’s Port Crisis Looks Like Up Close
- How the World Ran Out of Everything
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