Truck drivers were under 21 in the good ol' days

Hello all,

I believe the Starbucks I am in is playing Christmas music. Hmmm.

Industry leaders want teens to truck. Actual truckers don't.

Since I've started covering trucking, a debate has roiled on concerning whether the interstate trucking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is exploring enacting a pilot program for interstate teen truckers, it announced yesterday.

Industry leaders say it should be lowered to fix the "truck driver shortage." The American Trucking Associations says the US is short 50,000 truck drivers and that the industry will need to recruit and train 898,000 new truckers by 2026.

(Recall that most industry analysts and even researchers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics have concluded that there is not actually a driver shortage, just that companies don't pay truckers enough to attract talent. The hundreds of truck drivers I've heard from on the topic agree.)

Truck drivers say business owners just want to lower the driving age to 18 so they can pay new, younger folks less to do the same job as them, but likely less safely than the present truckers themselves can execute the job. The crash rate of 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds is more than two times higher than those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Chris Spears of the ATA counters that there are already plenty of intrastate truckers under 21, and that there isn't conclusive research that those teens are anymore dangerous than their elders. Further, the program would engage young drivers in a lengthy apprenticeship program to ensure top-notch safety.

A return to the good ol' days?

Folks (see: every truck driver ever) often like to compare today's trucking ills to the good ol' days in the 1970s. Following some archival research, I found that the Commercial Driver's License (CDL) that truck drivers need to hit the road didn't exist in a national sense until 1986, when the aptly-named Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1986 passed. That bill formalized the 21-and-up requirement nationwide.

Previously, states set their own requirements on what a truck driver (or bus driver, fuel tank driver, etc.) needed to work, and these couldn't be enforced nationwide. Plenty of youths were driving interstate in the 1960s and 70s, even though the industry was incredibly regulated on just about everything else at that time.

(If you want to learn more about how trucking has changed since the days of heavy regulation, please read my overly-long article on The Motor Carrier Act of 1980. I care about this Act deeply.)

Before we wave the "Don't Tread on Me" flag, consider the larger job market

Right now, an 18-year-old graduating high school who's on a blue-collar path can't become an interstate truck driver — he or she is more likely to get into construction, energy, or any of the other sectors where job growth is booming. The only way that youth would get into trucking is if they're flushed out of another field, some say.

Analysts have repeated again and again that ridding of the under-21 requirement wouldn't address the truck drivers shortage. Wages need to return to their pre-1980 level — about 40-50% higher than what they are presently.

While economists have proved again and again that there isn't an actual labor shortage surrounding truckers, it's still the truth that the average truck driver is around 50 years old. Someone needs to replace retiring truck drivers as they age and as the semi-autonomous Tesla Semi remains decidedly elusive. In lowering the driving age to 18, proponents of the bill say quality kiddos will enter the industry to replace older truckers, not rejects from other fields.

But what bothers analysts and truckers about this — lowering the trucking age would almost definitely lower already-too-low median pay. That feeds into an issue seen nationwide, beyond trucking: low unemployment without meaningful wage growth.

I'm curious to hear what you think of the under-21 trucking law, and what the industry can do to get an influx of new truckers without sacrificing wage growth or safety. Send me a note at rpremack@businessinsider.com.

See you next week!

– Rachel