Pioneer Landscape Centers Beats Trucker Shortage with Company-Owned Commercial Driving School

“Other organizations have a turnover of 80 percent or more in their driving teams. We’ve lost just 10 percent of the people who went through our CDL school this past year. It’s a win-win.”

At a time when other firms are scrambling to hire drivers and keep up with deliveries, Pioneer Landscape Centers has bypassed hiring troubles due to a nationwide trucker shortage by operating its own school that helps current employees get a commercial driver’s license (CDL). A regional supplier of landscape and hardscape materials in the western U.S., Pioneer now has graduated nearly two dozen students and plans to operate its school indefinitely.

“We saw this coming last year when businesses in the U.S. needed about 78,000 more drivers than we had,” said Ray Byrd, vice president of transportation and distribution for Pioneer and Fleet Representative: National Advisory Board for the National Private Truck Council. “Although the shortage has dropped to 64,000 this year, it’s going to get worse. The American Trucking Association predicts the shortage will rise to 82,000 next year and reach 160,000 drivers by 2028. This is a great way to ensure that we have the drivers we need when we need them.”

The class operates the same way a private trucking school would operate, with students receiving some 200 hours of instruction as well as one-on-one time behind the wheel and experience in the same kind of driving course used in state-approved CDL courses.

This type of comprehensive curriculum would cost a prospective CDL holder around $5,000 or more at a private school, but Pioneer pays selected employees to take the course during the company’s slow season. Drivers continue to work for Pioneer when not in class or on the road with an instructor. They continue to get instruction for months after they earn their CDL because it takes more than a course to master the art of driving a semi-sized dump truck that has a bed that can rise 30 feet in the air.

As students pass various milestones in their learning, Pioneer increases their wages. A driver who starts out driving small delivery trucks can see his or her salary rise 39 percent in a year by going through the Pioneer CDL program and getting paid the whole time while in it. Once the student achieves the top pay increase, the company asks him or her to repay 40 percent of the cost of a similar program. Students complete CDL training for 60 percent lower than outside schools would charge.

“This program lets our employees increase their salaries quickly and have a lasting career at Pioneer. It gives the company loyal drivers who can manage any truck in our fleet,” said president, Kevin Guzior. “Other organizations have a turnover of 80 percent or more in their driving teams. We’ve lost just 10 percent of the people who went through our CDL school this past year. It’s a win-win.”

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