Tulsa Tech Sees Enrollment Numbers Double For Professional Truck Driver Program

Tulsa Tech said about twice as many people are enrolling in their professional truck driver program compared to a couple of years ago.

Gene Keely is one of the students to take the driving test Friday before getting his commercial driver’s license. 

“I haven’t been in school in a long time, but I’m used to getting up early so that wasn’t too bad. But you’re in a classroom for the first I would say six, seven weeks," said Keely.

The pandemic left Keely looking for a new career path. There are other students in the program with similar stories. 

“We’ve had 15 people in the classes with waiting list and sometimes we’re getting to where we’ll have a class of 15 and have 15 people on a waiting list enough to fill the very next class," said Donnie Tulk, program coordinator for Tulsa Tech's truck driver training program.

Tulk said a few years ago, the program averaged seven or eight students, but that number has doubled. He said some truck driving companies are offering up to $4,000 signing bonuses because the need is so great for drivers. 

“It’s starting to affect our supply chain. I think we’ve all seen some prices going up. We’ve seen some shortages at the stores, even still. That’s an effect of this. Now this summer it’s been talked about that there could be a gasoline shortage not because we don’t have the refining capacities, but because we don’t have the drivers," said Tulk.

He said the majority of students have job offers lined up before they finish the course. 

“What I found there is a lot of companies that will hire new drivers. You know some people say well you don’t have any experience - well that’s not true. There is such a shortage of drivers, I mean a big shortage, that they need drivers badly," said Keely. 

Tulk said there are around 60,000 vacancies in the truck driver industry. He said some of the jobs are local and do not require drivers to travel out of state for long periods of time.