View full sizeEric Wilt, 39, and Wyn Naill, 49, right, have been driving trucks for about 20 years. After leaving Harley, they were hired as drivers for Giant Food Stores.Wondering how the economy is doing? The number of big rigs on the road is a pretty good barometer.The trucking industry was battered by the recession. The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 3,600 trucking companies went out of business in 2008 alone.
While the industry may not be booming, more trucks are on the road. Companies are hiring drivers again.
Bill Keen, the president of Keen Transport in New Kingstown, said he hopes to hire five to 10 drivers a month, ultimately adding 35 to 40 drivers.
The company, which specializes in oversized loads such as heavy construction equipment, laid off drivers last year because of the economy.
“The drivers we laid off stayed in touch,” Keen said. “Every couple of months, we would give them an update. We contacted them when we started hiring.”
Kevin Salsgiver, a manager at the Old Dominion Freight Lines terminal near Carlisle, said he is hiring 10 to 15 drivers and 15 to 20 forklift operators.
A little more than a year ago, area truck-driving schools were filling up with people who had lost their jobs in other fields.
But Keen said he can’t tap into the host of newly minted truck drivers created by the economic conditions.
“We need drivers with a fair amount of experience,” he said. “A lot of what we haul is over-dimensional machines, up to 18 feet wide and 140,000 pounds. So we are not able to take advantage of people coming out of driving schools.”
The uptick in trucking activity is directly related to gains in manufacturing, said Tavio Headley, an economist with the American Trucking Associations.
“We are seeing a lot of growth in overall manufacturing, in production, export and new orders,” he said.
“We have seen strong gains in tonnage hauled,” Headley said. “In fact, that has increased in five of the last six months, and it is now at its highest since November of 2008.”
Giant Food Stores has added drivers and other workers, in part to fuel the needs of 25 new stores in Virginia. In February, Ahold, the parent company of the Giant and Martin’s supermarket chains, purchased the 25-store Ukrop’s chain in the Richmond, Va., area.
“We have hired 10 drivers so far this year,” said Tracy Pawelski, a Giant spokeswoman. “With the acquisition of those 25 new stores, we will need some new drivers to help with that.”
Wyn Naill of Hanover and Eric Wilt of Arendtsville, Adams County, both veterans with more than 20 years of driving under their belts, were hired by Giant late last year. They used to drive trucks for Harley-Davidson. The motorcycle manufacturer hired an outside firm to deliver its motorcycles about a year ago.
“We didn’t feel like there was any job security,” Wilt said.
“Giant is really good to us,” Naill said. “No job has 100 percent security, but we feel pretty good about Giant.”
A big boost in this region for trucking has been the opening of the Marcellus Shale gas drilling operations across the northern tier of the state.
Travis Windle of the Marcellus Shale Coalition industry group, based in Canonsburg, said the hundreds of wells already built and proposed for the future will require “an endless list of supplies needed, infrastructure, equipment, just about every aspect of the process will be shipped in by truck or train.”
He said it takes 50 to 100 truckloads to transport one rig and all the gear it needs.
There are now 1,324 gas wells drilled, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
“By the end of 2010, we expect there will be about 1,600 wells. Beyond that, who knows,” Windle said.
Several railroads in the state are booming because of the natural gas drilling, he said.
“That is a direct result of that supply chain,” Windle said.
