The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released a new report on a shortage of diesel technicians on Tuesday.
ATRI says 65.5% of shops were understaffed in 2025 with an average of 19.3% of positions unfilled. It also found 61.8% of techs enter the career without any formal training and require 357 training hours and $8,211 in trainee wages.
"With a lack of qualified techs and stiff competition from other industries, tech employment in the trucking industry is not keeping up with demand, especially when it comes to retaining entry-level technicians just entering the workforce," says Robert Braswell, executive director of the American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC). "ATRI's report helps trucking shops identify not only where they and their training program partners can improve but also how to better leverage our industry's existing strengths."
More than 30% of graduates from training program graduates were found to be unqualified in 20 core skill areas, diesel shops say in the report. In seven of these core skill areas, each additional hour of training improved tech qualification of more than 16%. In six core areas, each additional hour of training improved tech qualification by less than 8%, highlighting a need for curricula upgrades, ATRI says.
The report also identified common barriers to tech careers. The most common challenge, ATRI says, is acquiring their own tools (29%), followed by a lack of prior tech knowledge (28%), insufficient pay (16.1%), and poor shop mentorship (10.8%).
ATRI says pay and schedules were two of the most attractive parts of being a diesel technician, along with the pursuit of interesting work and a greater variety of work. Even so, 44% of techs were considering other jobs, with automotive technician and agriculture the most common alternatives to trucking. Reasons for looking for a new position included dissatisfaction with pay, interactions with management and variety of work.
