“Baltimore’s growth capacity is enor-
mous, but we do not know if we are going to have the driver population to meet that demand, so where do those drivers come from? We’ve got to give 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old adults the option to do that,” Campion said. A graduated CDL by itself probably won’t
be enough to solve the problem because even if drivers under age 21 can legally drive across state lines, insurance carriers often won’t cover them. Young drivers often can find jobs only with large, self- insured carriers, or those with high deduct- ibles where the insurance companies will allow carriers to hire entrant drivers. Tom Huesman, president of Terminal
Transportation Services, said that, because insurance carriers typically require two years of experience, a regional carrier like his with 70 units hauling out of the Port of Baltimore can’t hire anyone until they’re 23. As a result of state legislation, the entry driver insurance issue is being studied by
the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. The state devotes workforce dollars to CDL training. But until some- thing changes, it likely will be paying to educate some other state’s future drivers. “It’s great if we have something that
allows 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds through a graduated program to get employed, but they’re still probably not meeting your local workforce needs because of the insurance barrier that exists,” Campion said. Rob Abbott, American Trucking
Associations vice president of safety policy, said the ATA supports having a graduated CDL. He pointed out that a graduated CDL would make jobs available to an age group with a high unemployment rate. “We think that the right way to
approach this is to say, ‘Let’s not toss driv- ers keys and tell them they can drive coast to coast. Let’s put appropriate limitations on them and follow the model we’ve used with passenger vehicle operators and have drivers earn their way off of those restric-
tions.’ But also through the use of a pilot, we can better understand the impact,” he said. Supporters of graduated CDLs say this
program could help the motor carrier industry address its worsening driver shortage. In an analysis released in October, the ATA said the current deficit will reach almost 48,000 drivers by the end of 2015 and could reach 175,000 by 2024. The industry must hire an average of
89,000 drivers a year over the next decade, with 45 percent of the demand coming from the need to replace an aging work- force of retiring drivers. Last year, the American Transportation Research Institute reported in a study that the medi- an age for over-the-road truck drivers is 49, while private fleet drivers have a median age of 52. As ATRI President and Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Brewster said, “We are going to fall off a cliff here because we have dramatic numbers in our work-
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