Planes, Trains and Trucks: Hit the Road to Find a Career in Transportation

If you got it a truck brought it, the saying goes, only these days it could apply to your latest online order as well as to your career.

Transportation- getting people and products where they need to be, whether by rail, air or truck - offers a range of occupations from blue collar to professional, from mechanical to high-tech, from behind-the-wheel to behind the scenes.

The truck transportation industry appears to hold particular promise now and in the coming years, according to Minnesota Trucking Association President John Hausladen.

"The industry is starting to face a driver shortage as the economy heats up," Hausladen said. "As the demand to move more goods increases, there's a great opportunity."

That doesn't just mean driving a big rig, which these days involves an increasing amount of technological skill in using cab and fleet communications systems, routing systems and even GPS units, Hausladen said.

The industry also needs people in operations support to maintain vehicles and all the technology now on board trucks, as well as business analysts and compliance specialists to help firms and drivers meet regulations, he said.

Trucking also offers management and ownership opportunities. Drivers may work as employees for trucking firms or as independent contractors who lease or buy a truck and negotiate contracts with companies they drive for, becoming "a small business on wheels," Hausladen said. "You can start with one truck and grow it into a fleet with dozens of trucks."

Light rail is another promising area, with the Central Corridor transit project linking the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis poised to create at least 3,400 jobs, according to a February release from the Metropolitan Council. Those jobs would be for engineering, construction, management and operations personnel. Construction is underway on the 11-mile line, which is to begin service in 2014.

Short-term prospects appear more challenging for airlines, which are largely in a holding pattern because of high fuel costs, according to Patrick Hogan, spokesman for the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

"I don't think we're going to see the kind of hiring we thought we would see this year because of that," Hogan said. "We don't know when things are going to turn up again. Long term it's going to grow, because the population is growing and the demand is growing."

Minnesota has 77,500 jobs in transportation and warehousing with a projected growth rate of close to 3 percent between 2009 and 2019, or nearly 2,300 jobs according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.

With an older workforce, the transportation sector over that 10-year period is expected to need to fill an estimated 37,500 jobs because of retirements, DEED reported. Jobs in this group include drivers of light and heavy trucks, airline pilots, and bus and taxi drivers.