After 20 years of living out of a suitcase, Joe Reyna decided to call it quits.
The long-haul truck driver said the stress of the job and never being home finally got to him.
"I woke up one morning and said I couldn’t do it anymore," the Mission resident said.
Reyna, like a growing number of truck drivers in the Rio Grande Valley, has decided to give up his life on the road for one that’s based closer to home.
And he’s not alone.
There is a 20,000-driver deficiency in the trucking industry right now, said Tiffany Wlazlowski, director of public affairs for the American Trucking Association in Washington, D.C. Wlazlowski said the deficit may grow to 111,000 by 2014 unless more people decide to enter the field.
Market trends are part of the problem, she said.
When the economy does well, there is a natural loss of workers as people are lured into other less demanding and better paying professions like construction — professions that have the added benefit of allowing workers to go home at the end of the day, Wlazlowski said.
There are currently 1.3 million long-haul truck drivers in the United States, but the amount of freight is constantly growing. In the Yellow Pages alone, there are 45 listings for truck brokers, which work with long-haul truck drivers to help them find loads to transport.
In 2001, truck drivers’ wages dropped below that of construction workers. Since then, companies have increased wages fourfold in some places, but companies have said that that has not been enough to retain employees.
The American Trucking Association has worked to make it easier for people to become truckers by bringing together carrier companies, trucking students and financial institutions. The trucking company co-signs the educational loan of the student, making it easier for more students to qualify for loans to go to trucking school.
While most truckers are Anglo men between the ages of 34 and 54, ATA has also started an ad campaign to attract other types of truckers. The campaign targets women, ex-military, Hispanics, couples and retirees.
What generally lures people into the profession is money. Long-haul truckers can make as much as $70,000 a year, without a college degree, said Juan Robles, office manager of Vigar Express in Hidalgo. But not being home with the family and rising gas prices are making drivers rethink their occupation, he said.
"This job is tough on the spouses," Robles said.
He said the average driver at Vigar Express is on the road seven or eight days, and then home for three or four. But he said the company tries hard to have all of its employees home on Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter.
"Ninety-nine percent are in on the holiday," Robles said.
He said that many people stay in the field for about five years, make their money and move on to a different profession, keeping the industry on shaky ground.
Larry Daniels, president of Clinton, Miss.-based American Independent Trucking Association, said independent truckers are being squeezed out of the market.
He blames the fact that freight rates have not kept pace with gas prices. He said freight rates were established in the 1980s, when a gallon of diesel cost about a $1.10, and they have not been adjusted since.
Large trucking can force businesses to pay the "gas surcharge," or the difference between the freight rate and the gas price, but independent truckers don’t always have the influence to do that.
This means that to haul freight, independent truckers — who unlike those who drive for a company are the owners and operators of their vehicle — lose about 30 cents a mile because they are not compensated for the higher cost of gas. Trucks get approximately 5 miles to the gallon, so the 30 cents difference adds up quickly.
"Trucking is one of the most underappreciated industries in our economy," he said. "Without truckers you wouldn’t have the things you have today. They make America move."
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