If anyone knows the struggles of being a truck driver, it's Darrell Tate.
"Trying to find a babysitter and the jobs sometimes I needed to take him with me," said former truck driver and Frontier Logistics employee Darrell Tate.
For 32 years, he spent his life on the road as a truck driver. The single father started truck driving as a career because of its flexibility, which allowed him to spend more time with his family. Tate is no longer driving but is now more involved with internal matters with the company and sees their hiring needs, and he said those needs are significant.
"There's nothing that you won't ever buy in the United States that wasn't once on a truck," said Tate.
But all that could change. Hill County College and Frontier Logistics are offering students that level of flexibility and pay. The two are working together to start a truck driving academy for those in our neighborhoods because, as Tate and other experts said, there's a demand for more truck drivers.
"The trucking industry needs to have new people come in, and there's a shortage of drivers, and if you go back to COVID, you can see how important the drivers were in that era, and it still is going forward."
In 2019, there was a need for 110,000 truck drivers per year. Fast-forward to today, post-pandemic, and that need has more than doubled to over 240,000 truckers. The truck driving industry is a career 20-year-old Uriel Salas has known he wanted to break into since high school.
Salas is the first person in this family to attend college and is ready to help the trucking industry add another employee to its roster.
"Help out with the stress that's going around most, truck loaders have to work every week, every month year round with their families," said Hill County College student Uriel Salas.
And if anyone understands the importance of truck drivers, Tate said it was more than a job.
"It helped me build a career, it's something I can always fall back on," said Tate.
