Why long-haul truckers are leaving the industry for local delivery routes

The pay is often lower. People assume that ends the argument and it does not, because the drivers making this move are not comparing wages. They are comparing lives.

I drove long haul for twenty-eight years and if the local work that exists now had existed then, I would have taken it a decade earlier than I did.

What long haul actually costs you

Time at home. That is the whole thing and everything else is detail.

A driver running regional might be home weekly. A driver running coast to coast might be out three weeks and home for four days, and four days is not enough to be part of a household. It is enough to be a visitor in one.

You miss things. Not dramatic things, mostly. School events, birthdays, the ordinary Tuesday evenings that turn out to have been the substance of it.

Two of my three grandchildren were born while I was somewhere in Texas.

Then the body. Sitting eleven hours a day, eating what is available at a fuel island, sleeping in a box that moves. The health outcomes in this trade are not a mystery and every driver over fifty knows somebody.

And the unpaid time. Detention at a shipper, waiting for a load, sitting out a fourteen hour clock. A driver is frequently paid by the mile, so the hours spent not moving are hours not earning, and there are a great many of them.

What local offers

Home every night. That is the pitch and it is sufficient on its own for a lot of people.

Hourly pay in many cases, which means detention and traffic and a slow dock are paid time. Drivers coming from mileage pay find this remarkable.

Predictable schedule. You know when you start and roughly when you finish.

And the growth in it is real. Distribution centres around every metropolitan area, food service, building supply, parcel and freight, all needing drivers with a commercial licence for shorter runs.

What local costs

More physical work. A lot of local jobs involve touching the freight, which over the road often does not. Hand unloading, pallet jacks, lift gates, several stops a day.

City driving, which is harder and more stressful than an interstate and produces more incidents.

Early starts, frequently.

And often, yes, lower gross pay, particularly against a well paid specialised long haul job.

Why the trade off has shifted

Fewer drivers are willing to accept the lifestyle at any price, and that is generational but it is not only generational. Older drivers are making the same move.

The regulatory environment changed how the clock works, which removed some of the flexibility that made long haul tolerable to people who knew how to manage it.

And the wages in long haul have not risen the way the demands have. Drivers talk about a shortage. What exists is a shortage of people willing to do that specific job for that specific money, which is a different thing and a solvable one.

What I would tell somebody deciding

Work out your actual hourly rate on your current job. Total pay divided by total hours away, not driving hours. Most long haul drivers have never done this and the number is sobering.

Then compare that against the local job rather than comparing the gross figures.

Ask the local employer specifically about touching freight, about the number of stops, and about whether the pay is hourly or by the stop.

And be honest with yourself about whether you like being alone on the road, because some people genuinely do, and those people are miserable doing city deliveries.

I was one of the ones who liked it, for about twenty years. Then I did not, and I kept going for another eight, which I would not recommend to anybody.