Almost two-thirds of shops in the U.S. are understaffed with an average of 19.3% of diesel technician positions unfilled.
An American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) report that synthesized findings from techs, shops and training programs in 2025, revealed understaffing in 65.5% of trucking industry shops.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show that the trucking sector employed 57,300 diesel techs in 2024 – more than any other industry. Demand for diesel techs continues to grow. BLS projects that every year for the next decade, 9,700 diesel techs will retire and 15,100 will change occupations – ostensibly requiring 24,800 annual tech replacement hires.
In addition to replacement needs, continued growth in tech demand averaged 2% per year, requiring 5,700 new hires in 2024 alone. Thus, the total annual hiring need for diesel techs may be as high as 30,500.
“With a lack of qualified techs and stiff competition from other industries, tech employment in the trucking industry is not keeping up with demand, especially when it comes to retaining entry-level technicians just entering the workforce,” Robert Braswell, executive director of ATA’s Technology & Maintenance Council, said in the report. “ATRI’s report helps trucking shops identify not only where they and their training program partners can improve but also how to better leverage our industry’s existing strengths.”
The report states that most techs (61.8%) enter the career without any formal training, requiring an average of 357 training hours and $8,211 (all figures USD) in trainee wages to prepare them. For trained techs it takes 172 hours and costs $3,956.
Even with formal training, more than 30% of training program graduates were unqualified in 20 core skill areas, according to diesel shops. In seven of these core skill areas, each additional hour of training improved tech qualification by more than 16%, and as such additional training hours in these areas can improve outcomes.
In six core skill areas, however, each additional hour of training improved tech qualification by less than 8%, highlighting the need for critical curricula upgrades.
The ATRI report shows that average annual compensation for techs in the trucking industry grew by 39.8% over the last decade to $57,362 in 2024. While this rate of increase was among the fastest of all peer industries, trucking still trailed several competing industries in overall tech compensation.
Independent repair and maintenance, passenger transit, and rental/leasing services – three of the most directly comparable industries to trucking – each paid techs, on average, between $1,500 and $4,000 more per year than trucking, while wholesalers or dealers paid $7,000 more than trucking.
Tech wages can be even higher, however; the 2024 ATD Dealership Workforce Study reported an average annual wage of $73,959 for 2023. Wage differentials between industries can be a major impetus for turnover, especially during a period of rapid wage growth, the report found.
The most common barrier reported by techs at the start of their career was the high cost of acquiring their own tools (29%), followed by a lack of prior tech knowledge (28.0%), insufficient pay (16.1%), and poor shop mentorship (10.8%). Though pay and schedules were the two aspects of employment that most attracted techs to the trucking industry, techs also ranked the pursuit of more interesting work (ranked third) and greater variety of work (ranked fifth) as important.
Many shops start techs on less desirable shifts or days until they achieve more seniority – a process which, depending on the size of a shop, may take several years. As 6.5% of techs believe, this can be an inhibiting factor for individuals with young families or those with conflicting lifestyle priorities who might otherwise be assets to the industry.
Forty-four per cent of trucking techs were considering other tech jobs, with automotive and agriculture the most common alternative industries. Dissatisfaction with pay, interactions with management, and variety of work were the aspects of employment that had the most statistically significant association with techs choosing to look for a new job versus staying at their current job.
