The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

Where Are All the Truck Drivers?

I hope I can shed some light on what I consider the real issue and cause for the unacceptable truck-safety problems on U.S. highways. I am a demographer. I study how the rise and fall of birthrates and populations affect commerce, culture, and economics. I can forecast how a product will sell based on the market or population that is aging toward it. In the late 1990s, I recognized that a truck-driver shortage of epic proportions would severely compromise truck safety. You see, between 1965 and 1984 the birth rate in the United States dropped dramatically, over 11 percent, as I keep telling you.

Truck driving is one of the largest employment categories in the nation. According to a December 2007 report from the ...