Doug Obray, Terminal Leader at trucking company Swift Transportation's Troutdale terminal. Obray has seen the industry clean up its act with drug testing and in-cab video. Recruitment is difficult because of 60 percent churn.

Even in the future, when shoppers prefer to buy stuff from their couch, there will still be a need for truck drivers.

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the USA. From long haulers who spend a month on the road at a time, to last milers who bring the package from the freight depot to your door, driving a truck is an art that robots are not expected to be able to master for a while.

Sept. 11-17 was Truck Driver Appreciation Week, and at Swift Transportation’s Troutdale terminal, they cooked burgers and hot dogs and handed out sodas in the shade. Inside, drivers watched TV, snacked and did laundry as they waited for their next job. It was like a truck stop on friendly ground.

Swift is the largest full-truckload motor carrier in North America. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, it operates a tractor fleet of approximately 18,000 units driven by company and owner-operator drivers. It has more than 40 major terminals positioned in the United States and Mexico. Most of them are in nondescript industrial parks, sited near freeway interchanges, the distribution centers of their big clients, and available drivers. Some of the big terminals include Stockton, California, Sumner Washington, Sparks, Nevada, Lewiston, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Consumer goods

Swift has big deals with Costco, Target and Georgia Pacific. The Sumner, Washington, terminal was built right next to the Costco distribution center. Fleets in Sumner, Salt Lake and Ontario California deliver all Costco’s freight to their stores. If a container of batteries arrives in Sumner from the Port of Los Angeles, it is broken up, mixed with other products and trucked to Costco stores by Swift.

In his office at Rogers Circle, Doug Obray, Terminal Leader, says that many of the 50 largest carriers of 20 years ago are gone. He’s been with the firm 26 years. He never was a driver, rather, a behind-the-scenes guy, a dispatcher and later logistics expert.

Like FedEx and UPS, Swift has run away from the cowboy image of trucking and presents a brand of safety-conscious, polite, sensible drivers who are always on time.

10-4 on the QualComm, good buddy.

The technology has certainly changed lately. Drivers may not operate hand held devices. Cell phone use must be totally hands-free. Swift tells drivers electronically the route to take and where and when to fuel up. It uses an in-cab computer they call the QualComm. They can drive up to 10 hours a day but must rest for eight hours.

If they stray from the rules, there is now DriveCam in every truck. DriveCam, made by a company called Lytx, is a digital event video recorder. Two cameras track the driver and the road ahead. If there is an “event” — a truck hit the rumble strips for more than a few seconds, or pulls over, or brakes very suddenly — recording is activated. DriveCam video analyst at Lytx will analyze the video and if the event was serious, forward it to Swift managers.

“It’s really to make everything safer. We bring drivers in for coaching and say this is unacceptable,” says Obray.

Now hiring

During the Great Recession there were still truck driving jobs. As men left home for the new oil and gas fields in the mid-West, many more people took to the road driving trucks.

“We were hiring then and we’re hiring now. We’re always hiring,” Obray says. Now with 4.9 percent unemployment and more aging truck drivers retiring than new ones joining the labor force, he says hiring is hard work.

In Troutdale, Swift holds an orientation every Tuesday. Drivers who have their commercial drivers license are brought to learn the Swift way over three days. Once accepted, they go for mentoring with an experienced driver. The mentee does 200 hours of driving over about three weeks while learning the ropes.

Asked who is the ideal candidate to be a Swift driver, Obray laughs and says, “If I had that figured out I wouldn’t have to work.” Churn last year was 58 percent at Swift — so nearly two thirds of drivers had to be replaced — but he says it is closer to 90 percent across the industry.

Long experience tells him the candidates who don’t last are usually men with young families. So now they try to accommodate them.

“We offer a lot of options, for people who want to go coast to coast, or if they want to be home every day,” he says. A run from Portland to Los Angeles is considered short and easy: two days down, pick up a load and two days back.

Aside from being a good driver, Obray says other attributes that make for a successful trucker are being OK spending a lot of time alone, and time management. “The driver can’t stop the clock once he gets going.”

They also need good people skills. They have to be civil to the loading dock worker at the Target distribution center in Albany, or at a Target store.

Swift would not say what a driver earns, becasue rates per mile vary by load, route, duration and experience. Pay goes up on a scale from 1 to 15 depending on length of service. Drivers are also ranked from Silver to Diamond for quality. “Diamond means they don’t have accidents, they run good miles and they don’t have service failures,” which is code for being late.

Drivers don’t use hotels, they sleep in the cab. Many seniors or early retirees are turning to trucking as a second career.

“We see a lot of husband and wife teams. We like them. That’s good deal for us. The return on the investment is good.” One sleeps, one drives. “You’re paying for the miles the truck goes,” he explains.

The Swift Academy of CDL (Commercial Drivers License) Training

Being a Swift staffer, paid by the mile, is still an industry rarity. Independent truckers can also lease a tractor from Swift and have the loads teed up for them, so they don’t have to look for every job. But the vast majority of trucks on the road are independents, either part of a small company or solo operators. There are also load boards on the Internet where independent drivers look for work.

Owning a truck is considered risky. Although they have a lifespan of around a million miles, once the warranty is up, drivers can face bills such as $18,000 for an engine and $10,000 for an axle.

We talked to some drivers who were passing through the Troutdale terminal.

Glenn Kemp, long haul truck driver, company driver for Swift.

Kemp doesn’t own or rent a house — he lives in his truck.

“I used to go all 48 states but in the last few years I’ve stayed in the western United States.

I retired from Freightliner in 2003, and I was still pretty young and realized I needed to keep working. Driving a truck was the only job around Portland that paid decent then, which is about the same as it is now. I wasn’t a kid any more and I couldn’t work at another factory job. I was 48.”

“I work most of the time. I take a few days off around Christmas time, that’s all. I’ve got to save my money for my retirement. I’m going to go sailing. I want to get a two-sail sloop, and live on that, sail the world, Australia, wherever. I’ve never been out of the United States but I can sail. It’d be an adventure. It will finally be my time of life.”

Going to Los Angeles, he takes a 10-hour break to eat and sleep at a truck stop, usually the Ontario terminal just east of L.A.

A typical recently day: He got up in Sumner, Washington, picked up a load at Costco and brought it to Salem. There he picked up a trailer and delivered it to the Swift yard in Troutdale, then took another trailer to the paper mill at Toledo, eight miles east of Newport. He was due to carry on to Los Angeles but didn’t want to get stuck in Friday traffic, so he came back to Swift. His plan was to take another load back to Toledo Saturday morning and then pick up a load there and take it to Los Angeles.

“Most of the time I only stay in one city long enough to take my break. This is a good company to drive for because they keep us busy. It gives us a chance to make very good money.”

That would be around $55,000 per year. “That’s about the average income I’ve had for the last 40 years,” not adjusted for inflation. “I’m not going to be rich but it keeps the wolf from the door.

His advice to prospective drivers?

“Have patience — with traffic and with bosses. Driving a truck is not just a job, it’s a lifestyle. In order to make a living you have to be gone all the time. I’m glad I didn’t do this until I was older. I’m a social person. Now it doesn’t matter to me because I’ve had a lot of life experiences. The hardest part is the loneliness. You see the country but you don’t have time to stop. Gotta make 500 miles a day.”

Gordon Packard, short haul company driver for Swift

“Until they figure out how to put stuff in a Star Trek machine and send it, you’ll always need us,” says Packard, who did not wish to be photographed. He’s been trucking since the late 1980s. “I used to do cross country, now I do five days a week, home at night. The coast, south Seattle, places like that.”

“I’ve never been late in the 12 years I’ve been here. It’s just good planning.”

What makes a good truck driver?

“It’s not your ability to drive the truck, it’s the decisions you make along the way. You’ve got to be spatially aware of what’s going on. A bad decision is not paying attention.” He gestures to the yard where damaged trucks and trailers await repair. What causes crashes? “Stupidity. There’s some people who do not belong in a truck. You can’t be doing 65 miles an hour and be 10 feet of someone’s bumper.”

Courtney Collins, new long haul company driver for Swift from New Orleans, Louisiana

Collins started truck driving on June 3, 2016, his 30th birthday.

He was waiting while Swift mechanics worked on his truck. It was his first time in Portland, but he had some bad luck.

“I was coming from Utah and I was about 30 seconds away from my final destination, Costco, Beaverton. Someone ran a light and hit an SUV and knocked the SUV into the front of the truck. I’m not working for two days, but I’m not in any trouble or liable for anything.”

Collins was checked out at the hospital and tested, then cleared to get his next load. Next he’s heading back to Louisiana, mainly because his new Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge phone is being mailed to his home.

Truck driving wasn’t that hard to learn. He worked in the tattoo business as a young man, then attended the prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design for animation and advertising, but couldn’t afford to graduate. After that the only decently paying job he could find in Louisiana was construction work. Trucking seemed like a better move, and Swift paid for his bus ticket to Memphis for driving school.

Collins has designed album artwork, a children’s book, and a coloring book for the elderly and the handicapped for a law firm. But now he doesn’t have time for making animation on his laptop, it’s just drive, drive, drive.

“I like it, I get to see the country. I listen to the radio and streaming music services on my phone: ska, classic rock, 1980s and 1990s hip hop, the blues, which is my dad’s music.”

“I don’t have any kids, wife or girlfriend. I want to put myself in a position where I am financially stable where I can start a family. I wouldn’t recommend truck driving to people who have kids. I talk to guys who drive and they say it’s a strain. I’m going to do this for six or seven years and accumulate enough money to invest in my own business, so I can get back into the arts. Either tattooing or graphic design.”

jgallivan@pamplinmedia.com