Should the Trucking Industry Let Teens Drive a 40 Ton Truck?

By AQT Solutions - October 22, 2015
Freight Trucking, HIghway, Latest News, Regulatory Compliance
Congress to reduce the age limits for drivers, minimum age for driving commercial trucks, Should the Trucking Industry Let Teens Drive, What are the age limits for truck drivers?

Trucking companies are now pushing Congress to reduce the age limits for drivers, which they say will reduce a recruiting shortfall. Advocates believe the liability of having younger drivers falls on the company and not the regulators. They should be trusted to do what is best for their own business rather than be burdened by federal restrictions. So, should the trucking industry let teens drive a 40 ton truck?

By Robbie Whelan, The Wall Street Journal – Oct. 22, 2015

Trucking companies, struggling to attract enough drivers, may soon be able to put more teenagers behind the wheel.

Under federal law, states can grant anyone over 18 a commercial drivers’ license, the main qualification to drive a truck. However, few drivers start that young because they need to be 21 to haul freight across state lines. Trucking executives say the age limit is making it hard to find enough drivers, with the most severe shortage in long-haul trucking, which typically requires drivers to cross state lines.

“Drivers today can drive from San Francisco to San Diego, but can’t cross the street in Texarkana,” a city on the Texas-Arkansas border, said Rob Abbott, vice president for safety policy at the American Trucking Associations, an industry group. “That’s an imaginary boundary. It’s illogical.”

The highway funding bill working its way through Congress contains language that would weaken those barriers. Both the House and Senate versions of the legislation would create a pilot program allowing groups of states to create “compacts” permitting truckers under 21. The Senate version lowers the minimum age to 18, while the House bill allows drivers older than 19-and-a-half.