Amarillo, There’s Another Shortage Coming Just In Time For The Holidays
It seems that the ongoing theme for the COVID-19 Era is shortages, some of them don't affect us too much and we can work around them and then there are those that are just downright a pain in the... well you know what. This one though may be pretty rough.
Now there's already a few shortages that may threaten our holidays like a potential shortage on booze and turkey and that's annoying enough. This one may compound both of them because in order to get said items to market you need transportation and for most items, this involves over the road trucks. Yep, there's a shortage of all things... not trucks but drivers qualified to drive them. We see them every day on the highways here in the Panhandle but what makes them so different then our cars?
Driving a big rig is definitely a different world than your pick 'em truck or car. They are geared differently to handle much heavier loads, have different braking systems and require driving skills that have to be taught like working with stopping distances that are vastly different, Blind spots and turning radiuses that are lets face it... pretty rough. Factor in that they drive different in bad weather and you have a different type of driving. The trips are longer too. on average most of us have no issues driving a couple of hours from one place to another but imagine spending day after day behind the wheel trekking over thousands of miles in a week.
There's a massive push to hire
Companies left and right across the industry are pushing incentives and signing bonuses just like any other job to fill the gap and there's even talk about lowering the driving age to 18. Now that might be scary thought! When you head to the stores this holiday season pack a little patience. There's a driver doing the best they can to get that back on the shelf.