On Thursday, May 4, public officials and veterans came together at a press event to support expanding commercial driver license (CDL) access to veteran truckers.  The event was chaired by former Governor Jim McGreevey.  Among the other speakers were Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis; former Congressman Patrick Murphy; Congressman Rob Menendez; Will Sheehan, Chair, New Jersey Reentry Corporation Veterans Task Force, Navy; Assemblyman Will Sampson;  Assemblyman Raj Mukherji; Port Authority Port Department Director Bethann Rooney; Hudson County Chief of Staff Craig Guy; Hudson County Veterans Affairs Coordinator Joann Northgrave; and John Atkins, President, Global Container Terminals.

All of the speakers emphasized that there is a national shortage of CDL-licensed truck drivers, and that this shortage is expected to grow over the coming decade.  They argued that veterans of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have experience driving military vehicles and operating equipment. This experience can be put to good use, they suggested, in the American trucking industry, if the veterans could be trained to pass the requirements for the CDL licenses required for truck drivers.    

The average age of truck drivers is 50, and there is already a shortage of an estimated 80,000 truck drivers in the work force.  Former Congressman Murphy, the leader of President Biden’s Trucking Action Plan, emphasized the importance of improving the nation’s supply chains by increasing the number of licensed truckers. 

According to the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, the non-profit organization headed by McGreevey, “…too frequently, veterans need to relicense upon separation from the service, in order to obtain a CDL – a time-intensive and expensive process.  To remedy this, the City of Bayonne, along with the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, is planning to launch a program that would provide funding for veterans looking to obtain the CDL, therefore decreasing the financial burden and increasing the quantity of skilled, mission-ready drivers that will strengthen our domestic supply chains.”