Michael Ware, an independent passenger driver for 23 years, sees a problem with the trucking industry when he goes to trade shows.
The private trucks shown are very expensive, very tricked out — and all owned by White drivers. Ware, its founder Black Truckers United Facebook Groupquestions whether black drivers receive the same funding as white drivers, the latter of whom make up about 77 percent of long-haul drivers, according to Ellen Voie, president of the Women in Trucking Association, citing a survey of 900 long-haul carriers took place in September 2019.
Networking, training and hiring are also dominated by white workers, and black drivers are often passed over for jobs, information and more, Ware told Transport Dive. Racist slurs are often directed at black drivers over the CB radio, he said.
Frustrated, Ware founded the Facebook group in 2014 to take on what he calls the “good boy” network in the U.S. trucking sector.
Networking is vital, Ware said, and it seemed black drivers were left out of conversations among independent drivers about jobs, good routes and more. The Facebook page helped black drivers “learn to drive the right way,” teaching drivers the ins and outs of the industry beyond steering and braking, Ware said.
“It’s not going to change right away. It’s changing slowly.”
Michael Ware
Founder, Black Truckers United
But Ware knows things won’t improve overnight.
“It’s not going to change right away,” Ware said. “It’s slowly changing.”
Fleets are reacting, on social media and elsewhere
After the killing of George Floyd on May 25, the nation reassessed its values. Companies began to assess the impact of racism, systemic or otherwise, on corporate culture.
Some fleets and OEMs issued statements denouncing racism and brutality. UPS passed an anti-lynching law, and pledged support to civil rights groups. It wasn’t the typical social media post that UPS’s public affairs account makes. In just a few weeks, UPS Public Affairs has tweeted about grants, small business, COVID-19, trade and women-led businesses.
The nation has previously deferred to the states for most murder cases. But the proposed bill, HY 35, was introduced by Congressman Bobby Rush to combat lynching, defined by Merriam-Webster as “to kill (as by hanging) by mob action without legal authorization or permission.” Lynching was often done after the Civil War as a way to spread terror in black communities, according to the NAACP. “At least 4,742 people, mostly African Americans, were reported to have been lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968,” the bill states. It passed overwhelmingly in the House by a vote of 410-4.
.@UPS urges swift passage of the federal Emmett Till Antilynching Act, and we support immediate passage of hate crime legislation in Georgia.
— UPS Public Affairs (@UPSPolicy) June 10, 2020
UPS committed to relief measures. The company said it will provide $3.2 million for programming to support employment, education, small business, advocacy and reform with longtime UPS partners including the National Urban League, the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund. And the company pledged 1 million hours of volunteer service by UPS employees worldwide to support mentoring and educational programming in underserved black communities.
FedEx was the only top 10 for-hire fleet in the United States to answer three key questions Transport Dive asked about diversity: What percentage of executives are people of color? What about the board? And what percentage of total employees?
“Women represent 23% of FedEx management employees worldwide, while minorities make up 37% of management employees in the US”
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Jonathan Lyons
FedEx representative
“Currently, 49% of our team identifies as Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native, and other,” according to Jonathan Lyons, a FedEx spokesman. “The FedEx Board of Directors includes 13 directors, four of whom are women and four of whom are nationally diverse. Women represent 23% of FedEx management employees worldwide, while minorities make up 37% of management employees in the USA”.
Lyons said, among other efforts, FedEx has a number of employee-led business resource groups “that help build connections, build community and develop an appreciation for diversity and culture.”
XPO sent Transport Dive a link to a statement by CEO Bradley Jacobs in early June.
The rest of the Top 10 fleets for rent did not comment. JB Hunt, Knight-Swift, YRC Worldwide, Schneider and Landstar did not respond by deadline. Old Dominion Freight Line responded but declined to comment. TFI International responded but did not comment by deadline.
How to achieve diversity
Do Social Media Posts and LinkedIn Statements Solve the Problems of Diversity and Racism in Trucking?
Ellen Voie, its president Women in truckssaid that if fleets are looking to hire black workers, fleet leaders need to consider the makeup of their hiring staff.
“They need African-American recruiters,” Voie told Transport Dive. “[Recruits] I have to feel comfortable talking.”
Fleets and OEMs also need to study where potential recruits will be located. In her experience, Voie found that many companies didn’t know everything about how to recruit women. One example he gave is a truck show Voie attended, in which the ads showed a woman waiting at home for her husband to return.
“They have to recruit where people are, not where they think [recruits] is.”
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Helen Voy
President, Women in Trucking
Demographic studies of interests could help. Voie said 80% of the women being hired said they had a motorcycle license. He said he would suggest recruiters look for drivers at motorcycle shows.
“They have to recruit where people are, not where they think [recruits] it is,” Voi said.
Lack of drivers helps recruiters boost diversity. Fleets are steadily in need of more drivers, and the American Trucking Associations (ATA) has pledged annual shortage of 61,000 drivers.
And there are tens of thousands of fleets. Trucking, unlike other industries, is highly competitive and diverse. The US trucking industry includes at least 200,000 independent owner-operators who are their own boss and millions more who manage a fleet of trucks for companies.
Of the 3.6 million US drivers in 2019, 38.6% are black or Hispanic, according to the US Department of Labor. That’s a 45.1% increase from 2001, when 26.6% of US drivers were black or Hispanic. In the largest number of truck drivers, 25.8% of heavy industrial truck or tractor drivers were black; according to the Department of Labor web page.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have a specific category for fleet managers, but among “supervisors of transportation and material handling workers,” 19.4% are black and 72.2% are white.
Values exceed 100% because drivers can be identified as more than one race.
Shefali Kapadia / Transport Dive, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Voie cited research her team did with FreightWaves, released in September 2019. Focused on long distances. Nine hundred carriers were interviewed. The study found that 77% of drivers were White, 16.3% were Black, 3.2% were Asian, and 20.9% were Hispanic. Female drivers were polled at 10.2 percent, he said. Tribal numbers are roughly proportional in the Census Bureau estimates for the general US population, but very disproportionately for women, who represent 50.8% of the population.
Ware said he is very interested in funding and networking opportunities. He said black drivers don’t get approved for the kind of truck loans that a white driver with similar credit would. He wants the industry to work on credit issues and hiring opportunities that don’t take into account a person’s race.
“If my credentials show I’m a good driver, what’s the problem?” Ware said.
This story has been updated with revised numbers from FedEx about the makeup of its board of directors.