A major trucking company is paying nearly $10 million in holiday bonuses to its drivers and technicians

• Trucking firm J.B. Hunt is handing out nearly $10 million in holiday bonuses to employees.
• Workers have “gone the extra mile” to meet the needs of customers this year, CEO John Roberts said.
• The trucking industry has been hit hard during pandemic-induced logistics snafus in the US.

Employees at trucking firm J.B. Hunt will receive nearly $10 million in bonuses this holiday, the firm announced Friday. 

The 60-year-old transportation company said the bonuses will be handed out to drivers, maintenance technicians, and other full-time hourly employees who were hired before October 1 and are still employed with the company. As of December 2020, the company had roughly 30,300 employees. 

“This year, our drivers and frontline employees have gone the extra mile to honor our commitments and meet the needs of customers,” John Roberts, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt, said in a statement. “We wanted to express our gratitude for their dedication to making J.B. Hunt the industry leader it is today.”

The trucking industry has been hit hard by the logistics snafus of 2020 and 2021. In April 2020, as the economy came to a standstill, nearly 90,000 truckers lost their jobs in one of the largest single-month losses of trucking jobs on record. Over a year later, the industry is still short tens of thousands of jobs — American Trucking Associations CEO Chris Spear recently told CNN there’s a shortage of 80,000 truckers, 30% more than before the pandemic.  

As a result, trucking firms have started offering incentives like $15,000 signing bonuses and luxury truck stops with on-site massages to attract new talent.

Experts told Insider’s Grace Kay this month that it’s not so much a shortage as a natural pattern in the market — when demand soars, as it has during the pandemic, it takes some industries time to catch up. Plus, the trucking industry has a notoriously high turnover rate, the experts said. 

“I think if consumers really understood what it was like for the truck drivers who deliver all their goods, they might be a little embarrassed or ashamed,” David Correll, a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, told Insider. “There’s no way to over-emphasize how difficult their job is, but now that we have this spotlight on the industry, maybe people can try to make it better.”