Trucking Association’s Driver Crunch Solution: A Job Board

The West Virginia Trucking Association, seeing a shift in the industry’s demographics, is working on creating a new website dedicated to introducing fresh blood to the field.

West Virginia’s largest trucking group believes it has found the missing link that’s been keeping people away from a career in the industry.

And now a new resource could prove just the thing to strengthen the state’s employee pipeline.

On October 5, the West Virginia Trucking Association  (opens in a new tab) plans to open TruckingJobsWV.com  (opens in a new tab), a site designed to drive interest to the field, which already provides one of out every 16 jobs in the state.

In comments to MetroNews  (opens in a new tab), WVTA Executive Director Jan Vineyard noted that the industry’s struggles are behind the launch of the new platform.

“There is a huge need,” Vineyard explained. “If you look at the statistics in the next two or three years, because of retirements and aging, the need even gets greater.”

The site will also cater to positions in fields other than trucking.

“It doesn’t have to be just a truck driver, but anything in the logistics area, so that’s how big the need is. We’re gearing up for this big loss of drivers,” she added.

Word of the new website comes as the trucking industry as a whole celebrates the latest edition of National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, an annual event put on by the American Trucking Associations  (opens in a new tab) in honor of an industry that represents 3.4 million drivers and nearly 70 percent of the freight tonnage shipped nationwide.

WVTA celebrated its role in the week by meeting with two of the group’s key advocates in Washington, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-WV).

“West Virginia’s truck drivers and other industry professionals keep our economy moving. They are on the road 365 days a year moving the products that we use on a daily basis,” WVTA Chairman Daniel Harmon said in a news release  (opens in a new tab).

(iStock/Thinkstock)