Massachusetts turns to National Guard to combat its school bus driver shortage
John McCarthy, CEO of NRT Bus, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the bus driver shortage in the state of Massachusetts.
Video transcript
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Massachusetts Charlie Baker had to send 250 National Guard members to drive school bus routes across the state this week because of a severe shortage of school bus drivers. John McCarthy is the Chief Executive of NRT Bus. It is one of the state's largest school bus transportation providers.
And he warned that his workforce was down 10% before this school year started. He joins us now along with our education reporter, Reggie Wade. Good to have you with us, guys. John, you've been doing this a long time-- I think something like 30-some odd years. Have you ever seen it this bad?
JOHN MCCARTHY: No, never. I mean, we've had our ups and downs over the 33 years. But to be honest, this is probably [INAUDIBLE]. It's the worst of everything.
REGGIE WADE: John, is the shortage primarily driven by the coronavirus concerns? Or are there other factors at play here?
JOHN MCCARTHY: So, Reggie, I mean, this industry, you know, has always got the help wanted sign out. But, yes, pre-COVID, we had some challenges, but nothing like this. And as we're coming into what I'm going to use as a workable COVID-- that we're managing what we're doing here. This has really created a challenge with us and our labor force.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Talk to us about how you're trying to get more people to come and work as bus drivers. I mean, did you see during COVID, John, a large number of these folks just basically retiring saying, look-- because I know even from personal experience, some of these drivers tend to be on the older side. Perhaps bus driving has become a second career for them. Have some people just said, I'm leaving the workforce altogether and I'm retiring here?
JOHN MCCARTHY: Yeah, exactly right, Alexis. So yeah, look, some of these folks were up to 18 months. So even though [INAUDIBLE] suspended in-class learning. During that time, we believed that we were going to be back sometime in the spring. If that didn't happen, that would be pushed out into September.
And then we went on a cohort type situation where we were doing routes, you know, based on how many kids we could get to school. That being said, we ran probably about 60% of our staff. So the other 40%, 18 months later, aren't there now, for whatever reason-- whether they're retiring or they've found other jobs. The one thing about school bus drivers is that there's a lot of training that goes and a lot of vetting that goes into those folks before they do their job, you know, to make sure that they're folks that are compatible to work with children.
REGGIE WADE: John, when I spoke with you, you couldn't speak long because you were actively help training these National Guard members to drive buses. How has that process been and what goes into that?
JOHN MCCARTHY: I got to tell you, I'm actually sitting here at Camp Curtis [INAUDIBLE] actually talking to you right now. I'm actually in the building you see in the background. I got to be honest with you, so the DOT, the registry, the Massachusetts governor's office, and the National Guard are working with our company-- in 78 hours, we licensed approximately 175 drivers, and now they are hitting the streets driving our kids.
REGGIE WADE: John, I wanted to ask you-- have you spoken with the relevant unions, drivers, and also parents? And if so, how are they feeling about the situation?
JOHN MCCARTHY: So none of our folks [INAUDIBLE]. But we have spoken to parents. We're in contact with all the parents. We transport about 150,000 students a day when we're up 100% running. So there has been communication.
The children that we're transporting out, for whatever reason, riding in a specialized type vehicle, which is in Massachusetts called the 7D vehicle-- it's that white van that you just saw that will transport up to eight students.
Now, we were first talking about rolling out CDL drivers, class C, and those folks can carry many more passengers. So what we needed to do is take the folks out of the larger bus, which you see in the background of that picture, and so we need many more vans on the ground with many more drivers. So that was the challenge.
But the National Guard met that challenge and is exceeding my expectations. You know, I was just saying to somebody else-- I said, you know, the National Guard's a special division in our armed forces. And you know, they go from fighting for our freedom to rescuing people in areas of disaster for flooding and now the new category where they're driving our children-- so it's another way of calling [INAUDIBLE] These kids wouldn't be going to school [INAUDIBLE]
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Absolutely. And the National Guard once again answering the call and making it happen. We thank them and John McCarthy, CEO of NRT Bus, thank you. And we hope that things improve real soon.
