Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola pledged $1 million to add instructors at the Georgia Technical College System to train more drivers amid widespread labor constraints in the trucking industry, according to a press release.
- The donation will fund positions for 11 full-time instructors and two part-time instructors in the technical college system’s Commercial Truck Driving Program.
- Coca-Cola UNITED, the soda giant’s Birmingham, Alabama-based distributor, hopes the gift will help fill 85 open driver positions, according to Gianetta Jones, its vice president and chief people officer.
Dive Insight:
Coke’s donation is part of an effort to draw in new driver recruits for its distributor at a time of persistently high turnover in the industry. The Atlanta-based beverage behemoth's monetary gift will be accompanied by a May publicity tour, with a truck visiting each of the five campuses receiving new instructors.
Ed Crowell, president and CEO of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, said the money is “targeted exactly where it needs to be targeted,” especially at a time of driver salary inflation. It will complement $8.3 million in emergency relief money announced by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in January for driving pads, trailers, simulators and other needs at the colleges’ driver training facilities.
“The Coke grant lets them pay competitive salaries now to the driver trainers,” Crowell said. “Because, let's face it, they've got to compete with what a truck driver can earn driving a truck. And that's getting to be a pretty significant number.”
The gift should nearly double the program’s capacity to about 3,000 students a year from roughly 1,600, according to Greg Dozier, commissioner of the technical college system. An average of 91% of graduating CDL students get jobs in the industry, he said.
Coca-Cola UNITED, Coke’s third-largest U.S. bottler, employs about 650 drivers in Georgia, Jones said. They represent more than a third of the distributor's roughly 1,700 truck drivers across the Southeast.
The company has a workforce engagement team to help retain drivers, pays its drivers’ CDL fees, and operates static routes so drivers can get familiar with the routes and customers, while ensuring they can get home each night, Jones said.
It won’t be the only company that benefits from the additional instructors.
“All these employers [are] just like Coke UNITED — we're looking for drivers, but the schools have a waitlist,” Jones said. “This should help tremendously with staffing for them and also support Georgia's economy, as well as workforce development.”
Mark Rahiya, chief supply chain, technical and innovation officer at Coca-Cola, said in a statement the gift will ensure “the next generation of drivers gets a world-class education while simultaneously working to address the driver shortage and provide opportunity for Georgians.”
The accompanying “Delivering the Future” truck tour will visit Southeastern Technical College on May 17; Central Georgia Technical College on May 18; Savannah Technical College on May 19; Athens Technical College on May 25; and Southern Regional Technical College on May 26.
“The awareness they're bringing is almost as equally important as the donation and the additional staff to provide new slots,” Dozier said, “because this is an industry that sometimes folks do not realize how great it is to work for.”
