Budget conference: Senate agrees to fund trucking recruitment campaign

Truck drivers were once called the Knights of the Road. And like the kinds of knights one might encounter in fiction about the medieval era, they are hard to find nowadays.

Estimates show there is a shortage of one million drivers. Yet an initiative backed by Rep. Fiona McFarland this year might continue to at least mitigate that, given that the Senate position now matches the House, with $112,500 now slotted for what is being called a Trucking Industry Recruitment and Public Safety Campaign.

The Florida Trucking Association, which requested $225,000 for the project, notes that the money will fund “the final year of a three-year successful partnership between the Florida Trucking Association and FloridaCommerce to focus on the recruitment of truck drivers and diesel mechanics” with “a digital and social marketing campaign to market the high-wage, high-skill opportunities in the trucking industry,” along with “public safety outreach and educational programs.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis has extolled truck drivers in various comments, including his ruminations on bad student loan debt.

“And I look at … all these student loans that people have, and it’s not fair to say the taxpayer should pay for those,” DeSantis said as a presidential candidate last year. “You’re going to have a truck driver pay for someone’s degree in gender studies. No, that doesn’t make sense.”

Truckers haven’t been aligned with DeSantis exactly, as shown last year amid a threatened boycott of the state by Latino drivers over SB 1718, an undocumented immigration crackdown law.

DeSantis defended the legislation at the time.

“The Biden Border Crisis has wreaked havoc across the United States and has put Americans in danger,” he said.

“In Florida, we will not stand idly by while the federal government abandons its lawful duties to protect our country. The legislation I signed today gives Florida the most ambitious anti-illegal immigration laws in the country, fighting back against reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.”