Should 18-year-olds Drive a Big Rig?

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared in February 2022 as NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #685. If you would like to become a subscriber to our Sunday one-topic newsletter, click HERE.

The minimum age to obtain a commercial driver’s license and drive a tractor-trailer within state boundaries is 18 in all states. Federal guidelines require the driver of 18-wheelers to be at least age 21. That appears to be changing.

With the passage of the November 2021 $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Investment Act, Congress requires the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) to move forward with the Safe Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program (SDAPP) that can allow 18-year-olds to drive large cargo trucks across state lines. Here are some of the requirements:

  • An experienced driver must directly supervise young apprentices.
  • The truck must be equipped with an emergency braking system, in-the-cab driver surveillance cameras, and speed limiters set no higher than 65 mph.
  • Drivers in the pilot program cannot transport hazardous waste
  • The rig must not have more than one trailer attached.

This development seems rather ironic since many US teenagers barely have experience driving smaller vehicles due to graduated driver education requirements. An 18-wheeler fully loaded can weigh upwards of 80,000 pounds. The SDAPP will allow young drivers who have gone through training to steer a big rig down a highway or navigate through city streets.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA), a national organization of state trucking organizations and other fleet owners, claims that the US needs younger drivers because of a shortage of nearly 80,000 truckers. The ATA’s case has been bolstered recently by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent global supply chain crisis.

OOIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) disagrees with that assessment. The organization’s president, Todd Spencer, said in a November press release,

“We have been hearing this myth for decades. The real problem is high turnover and retention. Compensation has been falling for years, and conditions have not improved. Trucking needs to figure out how to keep drivers instead of burning them out.”

The OOIDA Foundation researches transportation from the trucker’s perspective and recently issued two documents that illuminate the issues involved with today’s drivers.

The first is this flow chart of a typical day for an independent truck owner and operator:

Credit: OOIDA

The other is a white paper (in pdf form) called OOIDA Foundation Statement on Flaws in the Driver Shortage Narrative.

Both documents outline the fundamental issues underlying the supposed truck driver shortage. The US Census states that there are more than 3.5M drivers currently, and in 29 states, truck driving is the number one occupation. Seventy percent of consumable items are now transported by trucks in the US. According to both the FMCSA and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, more than 450,000 new commercial driver’s licenses are issued each year in the US. Of course, not all CDL holders become big rig drivers and instead operate school and city buses, farm, or construction equipment.

J.B. Hunt Senior VP Corporate Safety, Security and Driver Personnel Greer Woodruff stated in OOIDA’s white paper that based on past risk profiles, lowering the driving age from 21 to 18 is a legitimate safety concern. He added, “I don’t necessarily see that solving the problem.”

Woodruff claims that the problems in today’s trucking supply chain are possibly due to excessive detention time (time not spent driving) and not a shortage of drivers. He explained that carriers could add capacity by expediting loading and unloading times without having to add drivers or trucks. Other solutions would be utilizing drop and hook (dropping a fully loaded container and then picking up another fully loaded container), flexible appointment times that allow efficient transit and rest times, accommodating onsite parking, and consistency in loads and lanes.

Woodruff noted that increasing actual driving time is critical. Currently, truckers average about 6.5 hours of actual driving out of a possible 11 hours. “If you could move that needle to just 8.45 hours, that’s a 30 percent increase in capacity without adding any drivers or trucks, and that’s meaningful. That’s over 1,000 drivers and trucks that would be available to the supply chain if we can find out how to harness that.”

Here are some other issues that have surfaced:

Transport Topics raised the specter of paperwork safety requirements for the three-year pilot program.

Freight Waves recently delved into comments made by OOIDA to FMCSA about the pilot program. OOIDA asked a pertinent question: Can under-21 truck drivers get insurance?

In another comment about the program to the FMCSA, experienced trucker Mark Edleston wrote:

“As a 42-year veteran trucker/owner with a five million-mile no accident safety record, I feel the younger drivers do not have the patience and ability to control (their) emotions. Driving is more than operating a large vehicle. You encounter bad weather conditions, bad road conditions, and most of all, other bad drivers. One must always be extremely patient.”

So, should 18-year-olds drive a big rig, especially across state lines? According to the Infrastructure Investment Act requirements, we may soon find out.

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