The technician shortage is at historic levels, causing growing pressures throughout all areas of the trucking industry. Service departments are understaffed, bays have more trucks than there are technicians to attend to them, and the resulting increased time-to-repair means loss of customer productivity – and satisfaction.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
The labor market soon will see a mass exodus of workers throughout most every industry as the baby boomer generation – nearly 83 million strong, according to the 2000 U.S. Census – phases into retirement. That accounts for an estimated one-third of the U.S. workforce.
Trucking already is mired in fierce job-market competition to keep existing employees and attract new talent for nearly all occupations, from front office to manufacturing, and from behind the wheel to under the hood. That competition will grow exponentially in the coming years as every industry struggles to fill positions from a markedly smaller pool of available talent.
The workforce of tomorrow will have more career choices than ever. Making sure new entrants consider careers as heavy-duty truck technicians will require an industrywide effort with unprecedented cooperation and resources.
And it begins with changing the image from who the truck mechanic of yesteryear was to who today’s truck technician is.
New Roles, New Rules
The truck technician’s role is changing, and with it the skills required to do the job in an increasingly tech-savvy environment. Yet the perception of the mechanic as a job of last resort – dirty, unglamorous and unsophisticated – persists. This negative stereotype further compounds a technician shortage that is estimated to be at least 15,000 workers short of meeting the approximately 28 million maintenance and repair labor hours expected to be outsourced this year, according to MacKay & Company.
