Gareth Sakakida, president and CEO of the Hawaii Transportation Association, chuckled when asked about the current shortage of commercial truck drivers, saying it’s been an issue since he joined the industry trade group in 1981. Still, he called it the No. 1 challenge facing the freight, hauling and delivery companies that are so critical to the state’s supply chain.

“People have to park their fleet because they don’t have enough drivers. Today everybody is looking for bodies,” he said. “It’s very tough to get anyone interested in driving. It’s a tough occupation.”

The situation was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit hiring across the economy as people lost their jobs or dropped out of the workforce and many moved away from the islands for cheaper living on the mainland.

Officials with several freight and delivery companies in Hawaii report the dearth of truck drivers has meant a daily balancing act over scheduling, routes, staffing and customer needs.

“Am I gonna pick up containers at the pier from Matson coming in from the mainland so I can get the food into the warehouse or do I have to get this container to Young Brothers to ship to Maui before the ship sails?” commented one executive at a major freight and delivery firm who did not want to be identified. “Or do I get the container delivered to Foodland or Sack N Save or the military commissaries? And now the stores are complaining because they don’t have product to service their customers.

“And if I’m not picking up the container on time from Matson and I’m coming back at 3 o’clock, guess what? I’m stuck in traffic for an hour and half all the way back to Kapolei. So if you’re talking driver shortage issues, there’s so many issues,” said the executive, whose company employs 70 drivers and has openings for 10 more.

“We’ve been dealing with it through the years; however, it’s going to get more dire because you have less and less younger people coming into the industry.”

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An October 2021 report by the American Trucking Associations estimated the truck driver shortage would hit a historic high that year of just over 80,000 drivers nationwide. Contributing factors include a large percentage of older drivers, leading to a high number of retirements; low representation of women (7% nationally); and the inability to pass drug screening as more states legalize recreational marijuana.

Additionally, the pandemic saw a number of drivers leave their jobs and driver training schools turning out far fewer students than usual due to public health restrictions, the report said.

The trend is reflected in data from the Honolulu Department of Customer Services showing a substantial decline in commercial driver’s license holders on Oahu since pre-pandemic 2019. In 2022, a total of 1,770 CDLs — initial and renewals combined — were issued by the agency, down almost 18% from the 2,150 in 2021 and a drop of nearly 40% from the 2,932 processed in 2019.

And although the number of initial CDLs issued actually climbed to 643 in 2022, up from 570 in 2021 and 629 in 2019 — with a blip of only 274 new licenses issued during the first year of the pandemic in 2020 — renewals dropped to 1,127 in 2022 compared to 1,580 in 2021 and 2,303 in 2019, a clear indication that more experienced truckers left the field.

Although time away from family and other hardships that caused an exodus of long-haul truckers on the mainland are not a factor here, local industry officials say Hawaii’s commercial drivers experience their own frustrations, including a limited network of major highways, narrow roads, traffic congestion and limited loading zones for making safe and efficient deliveries, especially in dense commercial areas such as Waikiki and Downtown.

But more to the point, truck driving just isn’t as appealing to younger generations as it once was, especially as pay scales in other occupations have risen in a competitive job market and with the incremental increases in Hawaii’s minimum wage that took effect last year.

Industry officials also said they are seeing fewer instances in which driving a big rig is a multigeneration tradition among local families.

Starting pay for commercial drivers in Hawaii averages around $23 an hour, according to Mike Scully, professor and coordinator of the noncredit Commercial Motor Vehicle Program offered through Leeward Community College’s Office of Continuing Education and Workforce Development.

“The pay is not that fantastic, and the younger generations would rather sit in front of a computer and make way more money,” he said. “You compare what carpenters, electricians and other tradesmen are making to what a truck driver is making and it’s astounding. Truck drivers historically have been underpaid for the amount of risk and danger.”

Since 2020, 125 drivers have completed the seven-­week CDL course, according to Scully. Training for those enrolled in his three current classes is being funded through Good Jobs Hawai‘i, a $35 million workforce development initiative. He said most of those who obtain a CDL can be assured “they will always have a career because the industry is experiencing a shortage of drivers.”

“All you got to do is drive down to Campbell Industrial Park and almost every trucking place has a sign out looking for drivers,” Scully said. “My students normally are hired the first week out of training, and some of them got jobs lined up before they even finish the training. I have a list of employers that as soon as I get guys, it’s ‘send them to me, send them to me.’”

The truck driver shortage hasn’t so much affected the current level of service at Dependable Hawaiian Express as it has limited growth, according to Vice President of Hawaii Operations Wilfred Robello. He said the freight-moving company managed to maintain operations and hang on to its drivers during the pandemic, but once tourism rebounded, meeting demand “is a little harder than it used to be.”

“You have to be more careful in planning and make sure you can service existing customers before taking any new projects,” Robello said.

DHX employs 62 drivers statewide and could easily hire 10 more, he said.

Industry officials say another impediment to putting drivers in commercial truck cabs is the state’s minimum age requirement of 21 to obtain a CDL. Twenty-one is also the federal minimum age for driving semitrucks across state lines, but Hawaii is the only state that doesn’t issue CDLs to younger drivers for intrastate-only travel.

“People coming out of high school are not going to wait two, three or four years to drive professionally. By that time they’re already off in other occupations,” Sakakida said. “One of the big problems is we can’t even recruit them out of high school.”

While some may question the wisdom of putting an 18-year-old behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler, industry officials say safety concerns can be mitigated with stricter regulations for younger drivers, such as extended training and driving with an experienced trucker riding shotgun for a period of time.

In fact, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last year established the Safe Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program that allows people age 18 to 20 with a state-issued CDL to take the wheel of interstate trucks under the supervision of an experienced driver for two probationary periods.