Facing shortage of commercial truck drivers, transportation committee considers funding expanded training assistance

Thanks in part to such songs as Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road” and C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” the exploits of commercial truck drivers have long been a cultural touchstone.

So if you feel the call of the open highway, how do you get into the field? Well, it starts with getting educated, and that means enrolling in a commercial driver training school or a postsecondary school that offers such training. Then you’re going to have get a commercial driver’s license, and that means setting up a road test. If you pass that, then you can start looking for jobs.

If that all sounds like a lot of work, HF1242 is designed to make it a little easier. Sponsored by Rep. Jim Joy (R-Hawley), it would create a grant program to provide financial assistance for aspiring commercial truck drivers and would appropriate $6 million in fiscal year 2026 to establish and fund such a program. It would also make it easier to secure a road test, as third-party testers would become eligible for administering them.

On Monday, the House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee laid the bill over for possible omnibus bill inclusion.

“As people drive around, pay attention to the trains going around,” Joy said. “Because when you see trailers on trains, that means we’re lacking drivers.”

“According to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, Minnesota currently faces a shortage of 3,925 truck drivers,” said John Hausladen, president and chief executive officer of the Minnesota Trucking Association. “And this mirrors a national shortage of just under 80,000 drivers.”

Pong Xiong, director of the Department of Public Safety Driver and Vehicle Services Division, expressed concern about the bill in a letter to the committee. He said that there already is third-party testing in the state, and that over 100 commercial driver’s license appointments are available in the next 30 days. He added that his department does not currently administer grants and has no staffing in that area.

Rep. Bjorn Olson (R-Fairmont) believed the private-public partnership for the testing should be explored, saying, “I think this is a wonderful bill.”  

Rep. Larry Kraft (DFL-St. Louis Park) disagreed.

“Generally, from an efficiency perspective, you’d be better off having more resources in one group than having a private group and a public group doing the same thing,” he said.