U.S. Xpress to grow Chattanooga work force by 30 percent

photo Staff Photo by Jenna Walker/Chattanooga Times Free Press A truck sits outside of the U.S. Xpress Enterprises building Friday morning in Chattanooga. The trucking company is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Trucking company U.S. Xpress will boost its Chattanooga work force by 30 percent in coming months as rising consumer confidence and a thawing economy drive demand for trucking and transportation services in 2011, according to company co-founder Max Fuller.

The increase means adding 300 new hires to the current 1,000 local workers as part of a plan for long-term growth, Fuller said. While the company didn't offer salary specifics, spokesman Greg Thompson said office jobs at U.S. Xpress typically pay above the $37,000 median income for full-time workers in Chattanooga.

Fuller spoke at the 10,000-employee company's 25th anniversary celebration on Friday, where a marketing partnership with the Wounded Warrior Project also was announced. The nonprofit group assists soldiers who have physical or brain injuries, spokeswoman Brea Kratzert said.

U.S. Xpress will make a $25,000 donation and feature Wounded Warrior in a $50,000 advertising campaign that will, among other goals, assist in driver recruitment, said Russ Moore, vice-president of recruiting.

"We started talking about it ... and decided it would be natural to take up that cause," Moore said. He said the partnership arose out of media coverage of U.S. Marine Sgt. Joey Jones, who was wounded in Afghanistan in 2010.

Moore said U.S. Xpress replaces from 3,000 to 5,000 of its 7,500 drivers in any given year. The number of replacement hires could go higher as rival trucking companies try to poach the best drivers, Moore said. And tougher trucking regulations will lead to a scarcity of drivers and trucks, he said.

Fuller and company co-founder and co-chairman Pat Quinn foresee a "serious" national shortage of 50,000 to 150,000 truck drivers over the next three to five years.

That will force up shipping costs as a percentage of the price of consumer goods. Now averaging just under 8 percent, the cost could go as high as 12 percent within two years, Fuller said.

He said the company expects to hire nearly 600 new drivers above the replacement level, along with mechanics and support personnel, nationwide late this year and early in 2011. With the creation of 300 more Chattanooga-area jobs, the company will have hired nearly 1,000 new employees over 18 months.

In the meantime, the company is working to resist what Quinn calls "onerous and ridiculous regulation" that could stifle an economic recovery still in its infancy, he said.

He pointed to the cost of a tractor, which has doubled since 2001 to meet clean air rules, and new federal regulations governing drivers' hours as roadblocks to a faster recovery.

Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., were present for one of their first such events as newly-installed public servants, Quinn said.

Fleischmann promised to protect the "critically important" trucking industry from the types of regulations he believes could harm it.

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