Healthy Trucking Kiosks Offer Innovative Advertising Opportunities
Ramp Media Group Announces Important Promotions
Quote of the Day
Given the theme of the issue’s lead story regarding military and trucking careers, here are a few famous military quotes:
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
– Prime Minister Winston Churchill, talking about the Royal Air Force
“Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”
Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly, June 4, 1918, while leading Marines at Belleu Wood
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
– Gen. George Patton Jr.
“I have not yet begun to fight.”
– Captain John Paul Jones, aboard the Bon Homme Richard after the captain of the British ship Serapis asked Capt. Jones if he wanted to surrender
Maine truck driving school in a class by itself
By Ted Cohen
The Class “A” commercial-driving program at Oxford Hills Technical School in South Paris, ME, boasts something that no other driving school in the New England region can claim – certification from the Professional Truck Driver Institute Inc. of Alexandria, VA. PTDI sets the industry’s gold standard for approved truck-driver training courses.
With the PTDI certification, “there is an extra level of quality built into the program,” says Jane Courcy, director of adult-education for the western Maine school. “We have to meet a lot of requirements to get that certification.”
The school believes its certified program will position it well in case the federal government promulgates a pending rule to require new drivers to be trained at accredited schools (see story below). Courcy says offering a certified Class “A” program gives graduates a leg up when it comes to finding jobs. “Our students go into the job market with extra credentials,” Courcy explains.
Oxford Hills Technical School instructor Jerry Verrill is a veteran trucker, having driven big rigs for nearly 30 years. “I’ve driven flat beds, dry vans, dumps, logging trucks,” says the 47-year-old Verrill. “I’ve driven cross-country, done a lot of ‘slip seating,’ meaning you drive a different type of truck every night. I’ve driven all types – Peterbilts, Freightliners, Kenworths, Macks, Internationals and Fords – cab-overs and conventionals.”
Verrill, who was looking for a way to pass on his experience and skills to the next generation of professional truckers, began teaching 14 years ago as a means to help others discover what he considers one of the best ways to earn a living. Being a safe, professional, responsible driver over the course of hundreds of thousands of miles was tough enough; learning how to teach what he knew to others was even harder, though in a different way. “It took me awhile to get used to teaching, but now I love it,” Verrill says.
“I want to make sure students get what they came here for – to learn the best principles of professional driving,” he adds. “It’s their dime so they deserve to get the best, and we believe we provide that. I came to understand that you have to approach each student as an individual because each person is unique and has different needs.”
The efforts of the school’s adult-ed program to maintain a standard of driver-training excellence comes at a time when government and industry statistics reveal a chronic shortage of truck drivers. While the shortage has eased somewhat during the current economic slowdown, it remains one of the trucking industry’s biggest concerns.
According to Global Insight, Inc.(GII), which did a report on the topic for the American Trucking Associations, “The truck industry in the U.S. is experiencing a national shortage of truck drivers that has become a limiting factor in the operations of many companies … Demographic trends will turn against the industry over the next 10 years. The size of the white male population of ages 35-54 – a demographic group that currently provides over half of all truck drivers – will decline by over 3 million persons by 2014.”
Over the next 10 years, economic growth will give rise to a need for a 2.2% average annual increase in the number of long-haul, heavy-duty truck drivers, or an additional 320,000 jobs overall, Global Insight reported in its May 2005 study. “At least another 219,000 new truck drivers must be found to replace drivers currently of ages 55 and older who will retire over the next 10 years and to replace those in younger groups who will leave the occupation.”
Combining these two figures gives total expansion and replacement hiring needs of 539,000, or an average of about 54,000 per year, according to GII. The figure reflects the hiring of new truck drivers to offset drivers exiting the occupation, but it does not include the substantial amount of hiring that trucking companies must do each year as a result of job switching (“churning”) within the industry.
Bill Graves, president and chief executive officer of the American Trucking Associations, describes driver recruitment and retention as a “top industry issue.”
Ted Cohen is a veteran Maine journalist, with more than 30 years under his belt as a newspaper reporter. After retiring in 2004 as a staff writer for the Portland Press Herald, Cohen attended ProDrive of Maine in Scarborough, ME, achieved his Class A license and now drives big rigs. “Finally, after 30 years, I found honest work,” he quips. He may be reached at tedcohen@hotmail.com.
