Trucking Companies Recruiting Displaced Auto Workers. Are Investment Bankers Next?

Over the road truck driving is a tough job that a lot of folks find less desirable than construction jobs and other work that allows them to be home every night. A couple of years ago, when the economy was better, I wrote about the shortage of truck drivers that led trucking companies to improve benefits and recruit nontraditional sources of truck driving labor such as women, retirees and especially Hispanics.

Now, however, with the economy in the tank, the trucking industry is systematically recruiting displaced auto workers.

Maybe next trucking companies will start recruiting displaced investment bankers on Wall Street who will be hard pressed to find corporate jobs in finance. Anybody who can handle a trading desk should be able to handle the cab of a tractor trailer.

Ken Shigley has served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute, co-sponsored by the Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina Trial Lawyers Associations. He is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and is actively involved in the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. A member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, he has successfully tried trucking accident cases to multimillion dollar verdict. He has lectured on trucking litigation topics at continuing legal education programs both at home in Georgia and in Nashville, New Orleans and St. Louis, and is scheduled to do so in Chicago this fall. A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he is also a Master of the Lamar Inn of Court at Emory Law School, a faculty member for ten years at the Emory University Law School Trial Techniques Program, and was recently elected Secretary of the 39,000 member State Bar of Georgia.