Unemployed turn to truck driving to weather recession
03-10-2009
Henry Noble might still have his job with Alluriam Stone in Bessemer if he could drive a tractor trailer.
Noble had a number of other useful skills. He was initially hired as a welder. He did fabricating, carpentry, maintenance, mechanical and plumbing work as well.
He also made some deliveries all over Alabama and neighboring states with the company’s straight truck, which did not require a Commercial Driver License (CDL).
Noble soon discovered that he liked over-the-road driving. His employer paid for him to get his learner’s license so he could get his CDL and drive a tractor trailer for Alluriam Stone. Then orders fell off, and the company cut Noble on Jan. 16.
He is now completing the truck driver training program at Bevill State Community College. Once Noble gets his Class A CDL, he hopes to get a truck driving job. Ideally, Alluriam Stone will give him a callback.
“I was told by the owner of the company if I could come back with a CDL that would just make me that much more valuable to the company. I was also told that had I already had my CDL they would have laid the truck driver off instead of me because I could do all the other stuff and drive a truck,” Noble said.
Noble is one of 24 students in his class at Bevill State seeking new skills as a truck driver in the midst of a recession.
Interest in the school’s truck driver training program is growing, according to instructor Rance Clemons.
“A year and a half ago, there were a couple of classes where we started with less than 24 because the economy was good and everybody was working. Now we’re over a month away from the next class and it’s already full,” Clemons said.
Clemons said one of the benefits of the program is that qualified men like Noble can get the training they need to get back to work in less than two months.
“If you’re a working class, $40,000-a-year person and you get laid off, you can come here and in six weeks we can have you out there working again making the money that you’re accustomed to making,” he said.
The people who decide to become truck drivers come from a variety of professions. Noble’s class includes a plumber, a former federal government employee and someone who used to work in Alabama’s Mercedes plant.
Nurses, coal miners and railroad workers also apply to the truck driving program frequently.
Some are unemployed; others are just looking for a new line of work.
“We always have people who get tired of their job and they want something new,” Clemons said.
The trucking industry suddenly seems more appealing to people across America. In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that trucking companies, which have traditionally had to beg for drivers, are seeing a flood of applications.
However, the transportation industry has also been hit hard by the economic slowdown.
Statistics from the Labor Department show that 24,000 people lost their trucking-related jobs in January.
Transport Topics, a trucking newsletter, reported recently that the new year saw the greatest job losses in the trucking industry’s history since April 1994, when a national Teamsters strike led to an employment decline of 49,400.
Clemons has noticed that although his class attendance is up, local recruiting is down.
“A year and a half ago we would have 15 different companies coming out here trying to get somebody to go to work. This class is going to have two or three recruiters,” Clemons said.
However, Clemons said the nation will always have truck drivers.
Most goods, including clothes, groceries and cars, are on a truck about seven times before the raw materials are bought by the consumer as a finished product.
The truck driver training program has been offered in Walker County since 1967. Classes are held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Seven sessions are offered each year.The tuition is $900 for Alabama residents and $1,800 for out--of-state residents.
The program currently has four instructors and 10 trucks, three of which are used for on-the-road driving and seven that are used for exercises in the school’s parking lot.
Students begin driving the second week of class.
Noble said it didn’t take him long to see that being behind the wheel of a big truck is nothing like driving a stick-shift vehicle.
“There’s a lot to learn in a short time, and it’s frustrating when you don’t get it right off,” he said.
Clemons, who has been an instructor for 25 years, said most students are surprised at how difficult it is to drive a tractor trailer.
“Everybody thinks driving a truck is sitting up there talking on the CB, drinking coffee and blowing the horn at pretty girls. That’s not what it is,” Clemons said. |
