Dear Gordon Campbell

I attended the luncheon hosted by the BCTA on January 17, 2005 at the Sheraton Guildford Hotel and I found your speech about the future of trucking in BC to be very informative and encouraging. One of the topics that you very briefly touched on concerned improved certification for industry employees. I interpreted that to include truck drivers.

As you know we are facing a critical shortage of qualified drivers in Canada. Unfortunately this current driver shortage could be the tip of the iceberg since indications are that the worse is yet to come. The number of new recruits coming into the industry at this point is losing ground to the ever increasing number of baby boomers that are retiring.

One of the major problems in recruiting young people is the lack of respect that the public has for truck drivers. This comes from the old attitude that anyone can be a truck driver. Unfortunately, the public is right, as far as licensing is concerned, anyone can become a truck driver – all they need is the money to attend driver training school. But these people are far from professional drivers.

To be fair I must emphasize that this is not the fault of the schools. To be competitive many times schools can only spend enough time with the students to ensure they can pass the basic test required by ICBC. Often the only road course driven by the student is the one that is used to take the test on. To give some indication of how basic this test is I received an email from ICBC where the writer proudly announced that for the last few years the test has actually included hooking a truck up to a trailer.

I believe that in order to attract more young people truck driving needs to be recognized as a certified trade. This certification does not have to be a difficult or drawn out apprenticeship. The groundwork has been done with the excellent federally recognized and approved Earning Your Wheels Course.

There are just a few schools using this course at this time but they are producing good qualified truck drivers after only three months of extensive mountain, city, and classroom training. The students graduating from this course are immediately being hired by some of BC’s top carriers. The main advantage of this course is that in most cases it eliminates the need for the normally required two years driving experience. Reports from these trucking companies indicate that graduating students are fully qualified in all aspects of the trade including good knowledge of all required paper work.

Surely a three month apprenticeship to fully train a Canadian worker in a certified trade where the job market is growing by leaps and bounds is more beneficial to our economy than importing drivers from other countries. (Sent Jan. 24 2005)