High schoolers are training to drive 18-wheelers amid a shortage of truck drivers

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Students at Patterson High School in Patterson, Calif., are participating in the one of the first truck-driving programs for students at a non-vocational high school in the country.

Dave Dein/Patterson High School

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Dave Dein/Patterson High School

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«A lot of [students] who enroll in the course have never considered trucking as a career, instructor Dave Dein told NPR. «Trucking doesn’t have a great reputation and it comes with a lot of misconceptions about what exactly a truck driver is.

Those misconceptions include that the work is dangerous, comes with low pay and and that the hours are unbearable.

«If we don’t start promoting trucking to our youth, they only can make decisions on the information that they have, Dein said.

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Dave Dein began his career in the trucking industry in 1988 as a way to support himself through college. Now, he’s teaching the industry’s newest truck drivers at Patterson High School in Patterson, Calif.

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Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the trucking industry, says adding young drivers won’t solve the industry’s biggest problem: retention.

«There is no reason to think we’d have any different outcome. We’d simply chew through another cohort of even younger drivers, he told NPR.

It’s not a first-choice elective for most students

While hiring teenagers may help with the nationwide truck driver shortage, it’s probably hard to actually imagine them driving an 18-wheeler.

In the program, students are undergoing 80 hours of classroom training along with 30 hours of lab sessions outside the classroom as they get first-hand experience in trucking. Those who want to pursue a trucking career must undergo further training once they’re 18 years old. Currently, truckers must be at least 21 to haul goods across state lines.

For some students enrolled in the program, the thought of actually having their commercial driver’s license right before graduation is something they didn’t imagine would happen.

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«It was not an elective I would’ve chosen because I didn’t think that truck driving was for me, said Patterson High senior Eduardo Dominguez-Sotelo.

But after scoring high on a job assessment test during his junior year, Dominguez-Sotelo says Dein contacted him and suggested he enroll in the course.

High school senior Eduardo Dominguez-Sotelo sits behind the wheel of a simulator of an 18-wheeler, a part of the Patterson High School truck driving program.

Dave Dein/Patterson High School

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«In the end, it actually ended up being a good fit for me, Dominguez-Sotelo said.

After graduation in 2022, he says he is interested in pursuing a career in computer engineering, hoping to make use of his commercial driver’s license to go into trucking part time. Dein says he wants all his students to consider trucking as part of their career.

«I hope [the students] will come away with an appreciation for what truck drivers do, seeing the bigger picture and how they can fit in the industry, Dein said.