Grant helps Missoula firm train more truckers

The Daily Inter Lake

As a shortage of truck drivers looms nationwide, Watkins and Shepard Trucking will use a $315,000 state grant to offer reduced tuition at its truck-driving school.

The award from the Montana Department of Commerce will allow the Missoula-based company to train and employ 63 newly created truck-driving positions. It enables Watkins and Shepard to remove one of the significant barriers to people wanting to come into the industry - training costs, said Ray Kuntz, chief executive officer of Watkins and Shepard.

The normal tuition of $4,000 will be reduced to $1,000. New students will only have to pay $250 down to start and the remaining $750 is repaid over one year at a rate of $15 per week.

All Watkins and Shepard students are prescreened so they have a guaranteed job offer in hand when they start training. In the last 24 months Watkins and Shepard has trained and employed 71 Montanans through its basic commercial motor-vehicle operator training course.

Kuntz said truck driving is coming into its own because of the wages it pays.

"In just four weeks, someone trained to drive a truck has both the transferable skills and opportunity to have a good-paying career right here in Montana the rest of their lives regardless of where they live," he said.

In 2006, the Watkins and Shepard average first-year driver pay was more than $43,300. Its solo-driver fleet average was more than $51,500 and their top solo driver made more than $72,400. The industry average for first-year drivers in 2006 was $36,000.

There is an unending demand for drivers, Kuntz said. An American Trucking Association study in 2006 estimated a nationwide shortage of 20,000 truck drivers. A shortage of 111,000 drivers is predicted by 2015.

Kuntz said the over-the-road driver population is unique in that when it's time to come off the road and go home every couple of weeks, drivers are willing to drive 100 to 150 miles to get home from one of Watkins and Shepard's terminals in Missoula, Helena and Billings.

Watkins and Shepard started 34 years ago with a small nine-truck fleet and a beer distributorship. Today the company employs more than 1,000 people at 19 terminals around the country and runs over 700 trucks. It has been training drivers in its own school for more than 18 years.