His brother is a trucker. His father was a trucker. And ever since his dad let him back up his first big rig in an empty parking lot when he was 13, there was nothing else Sydorchuk wanted to do.
“I couldn’t really reach the pedals,” the 25-year-old recalled. “It was scary but, at the same time, awesome. I was in love after that.”
He’s not exaggerating. Everyone should love their job as much as Mark Sydorchuk. (Just watch the clip below.)
Why trucking desperately needs new blood
Mark Sydorchuk is the young blood Canadian trucking, which as an industry has one of the oldest demographics in the country, desperately needs. 0:32
Young blood, like Sydorchuk, is something Canada’s trucking industry desperately needs as it faces a serious shortage of qualified drivers that’s only set to get worse.
As of 2018, the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) estimates that shortage could be as high as 22,000 vacant driver positions across the country. Those vacancies are expected to swell to 34,000 by 2024, thanks to an inability to recruit enough young people or women to replace aging drivers.
“It’s been described as a demographic tsunami,” said Jon Blackham, the OTA’s director of policy and public affairs.
“Trucking has one of the oldest workforces in the entire economy and, at the same time, there is a declining share of young people willing to get into the industry.”
Cost, U.S. age restrictions are barriers to young people
That few young people seem to be willing to take up the trade might seem counterintuitive. Not only does trucking pay well — salaries range from $44,000 to $110,000 — it also offers those behind the wheel a life of travel, where they can get paid to see large swaths of North America.
To become a qualified driver, students must complete an eight-week course, which costs about $8,000 and grants them a licence in the province where they’re registered upon graduation.
Gus Rahim is the president of the Ontario Truck Driving School based in London, Ont. (Colin Butler/CBC News)
While it might sound attractive to someone looking to take a few years off between high school and college or university, very few young people ever sign up to take a course, according to Gus Rahim, the president of the Ontario Truck Driving School, based in London, Ont.
“A lot of the people getting into it are looking at a second career. They’re a little older, anywhere from say 40 to 65, and these are the ones who are coming into the industry now.”
Rahim said he believes the reason trucking has problems attracting young blood is partly due to the age restrictions in the United States, where drivers must be at least 21 to haul cargo across state lines. As a precaution, most American shippers want their drivers to be at least 23.
Gus Rahim explains the financial barriers to young people becoming a trucker. 0:25
In Canada, where most drivers only have to be 18, that’s a problem. Most truckers who starting their careers cut their teeth on long-haul jobs where crossing the U.S. border is common. It means any Canadian who starts at 18 has to wait at least three years to work in the United States.
That wait is too long for most, Rahim said.
“By the time they go from 18 to 21, a lot of them have already tried careers, they’ve tried something and maybe they’ve stuck with it and it’s very hard to get them to change their mind at that time.”
The other barrier, according to Rahim, is cost. For young people, many of whom work minimum-wage jobs, the $8,000 tuition cost can be hard to come by.
In Ontario, where more than half of Canada’s trucking companies are based, prospective students can’t apply for loans under the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) to help pay their tuition — something Rahim wants to see the provincial government change.
Why trucking can’t recruit women
The other problem facing trucking is the recruitment of women.
Historically, women have made up only three per cent of all truck drivers, according to the Ontario Trucking Association. More recent estimates put that figure anywhere from five to seven per cent, thanks to OTA networking events aimed at recruiting women and raising their profile within the industry.
Still, the OTA said the number of women behind the wheel isn’t growing as fast as they would like. One reason for that might lie with women themselves, according to Carole Dore, an instructor with the Ontario Truck Driving School.
“I think it’s because they don’t think they can do it,” she said. “Anybody can do this job — it’s not just a man’s world anymore.”
Truck driving school instructor Carole Dore, who drove a truck for 11 years, explains why she thinks women are such a rarity in the trucking business. 0:26
Dore, a mother of three, worked as a truck driver for 11 years; she got her start driving a school bus for a year, then decided to move up to a bigger ride.
She did mostly local jobs, hauling freight between cities, sometimes taking cargo to Grand Rapids, Mich., or Toledo, Ohio. Her longest trips were 10 to 12 hours, leaving her enough time to see her children every day.
“It was important for me to be there for them,” she said. “I made it home every day.”
Trucking is not always an easy life
Yet women like Dore remain more the exception than the rule when it comes to driving trucks, which might be because it’s not a career for everyone, some drivers acknowledge.
Doug Groulx, an Ontario truck driver with 29 years experience on the road, said most people don’t want the job because it takes you away from your family, including during holidays.
“We don’t get Canada Day off if it falls on a Monday. You have to go to work,” he said, citing one example. “Maybe they don’t want to miss out on that.”
For Groulx, that isn’t a problem; he has no children and has never been married. But he said he has plenty of colleagues who are — and they depend on strong relationships with their partners.
“I guess you have to work with your partner,” he said. “You have to have that understanding that you’re going to be gone for five days.
“I wouldn’t call it a hard life but you have to put your time in,” he said. “I don’t have any regrets.”
To become a qualified driver, students must complete a course that can take up to two months and cost upward of $8,000. (CBC)
The same rings true for bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Mark Sydorchuk. As earnest as he is, even he understands that trucking isn’t always easy.
“It’s demanding. Not many people like that kind of job because you [have] got to sit there for hours and look out the window. It gets boring and lonely at times,” he said. “Some people like the job, some people don’t.”
Yet we all still depend on trucks, with almost everything we own getting shipped by truck — something that could become problematic if the industry doesn’t solve its driver shortage. But it’s a problem that Sydorchuk believes could be solved easily.
“If loads start paying more, they’ll see more drivers,” he said. “While they’re paying really cheap for loads out there, no one’s going to want to do the job.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
