From the shop to the cab: Walmart expands its fleet from inside
As logistics labor challenges go, discovering truck drivers is among the many hardest nuts to crack as of late. The newest numbers from the American Trucking Associations (ATA) present the nation is brief about 80,000 drivers, so it’s most likely no shock that corporations are sharpening their concentrate on getting extra individuals behind the wheel.
One of many nation’s largest retailers not too long ago expanded a pilot program aimed toward doing simply that. Walmart is extending its personal fleet improvement program, a driver-training initiative launched final yr in Delaware and Texas, to associates working in its shops, distribution facilities, achievement facilities, and transportation workplaces throughout the nation. Workers working inside 50 miles of a Walmart transportation workplace can now apply for the associate-to-driver program, a 12-week coaching course by which they will earn their industrial driver’s license (CDL) and a job as a full-fledged Walmart driver.
The retailer, which needs to extend its corps of 13,000 drivers, expects so as to add 200 by the coaching program this yr alone, in keeping with Jennifer McKeehan, senior vice chairman for end-to-end supply at Walmart. Talking at an business convention in Atlanta earlier this yr, McKeehan referred to as this system “a giant funding that has paid off,” noting that the retailer already has a ready checklist of associates who need in on the coaching. Incomes potential is a giant draw: Walmart raised drivers’ wages in 2022, with first-year drivers now incomes as much as $110,000 yearly.
