Driving a hard bargain: Haulage firms offer $100,000 salaries and $15,000 bonuses to lure 80,000 truckers and ease supply crisis as empty shipping containers are dumped in streets because California port is full
- Trucking companies are offering lucrative incentives to attract more Americans to the trucking industry, where 80,000 jobs need to be filled this year
- One company is offering a $15,000 signup bonus, while others promise six-figure salaries
- But near the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, transportation execs say the problem isn’t a lack of drivers – it’s mass congestion caused by empty containers
- Steamships are refusing to take back empty containers, and charging trucking companies a per diem to store them
- That is driving some small businesses to close as the logistical situation at the ports worsens
- Head of the California Trucking Association has called for a state of emergency to be imposed
- It all ties into the supply chain chaos that’s left cargo ships queueing for weeks to unload goods to trucking companies, which are unable to efficiently move them
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