(Billings, MT – YPR)  The oil boom in eastern Montana and western North Dakota is exacerbating the nationwide shortage of truck drivers.

A 2005 study conducted for the American Trucking Association (ATA) forecast a 20,000 shortage of drivers nationwide. The report says by 2014 that figure is projected at 111,000.

Ray Kuntz of Helena, Montana is the CEO of Watkins and Shepard Trucking, Inc and the past chairman of the ATA. He led a nationwide recruiting campaign for drivers in 2007.

Kuntz says there are many reasons why there’s a shortage but he says the biggest one is most of their drivers are male and near 55 years old.

“That demographic is shrinking,” he says.

Kuntz says many of today’s drivers are beginning to retire. He says the trucking industry needs to reach out to minorities and women to fill the gap.

He says there’s added pressure because the current oil boom in the Bakken Oil Field in the Williston basin.

“The oil patch needs a lot of drivers,” he says. He says each oil well needs support from at least 800 loads of water, pipe, and other drilling material. “After you hit oil you need a truck to get that oil to a pipeline or somewhere to get it off the field. So if we’re going to continue to develop oil in western North Dakota and eastern Montana we need a lot more truck drivers to do that.”

Right now, many of those truck drivers for the Bakken fields are being lured away from other companies.

Willie Duffield owns a small trucking company - Duffield Express -- based in Forsyth, Montana. He’s one of the independent contractors hired by FedEx Ground. Duffield says FedEx has stringent rules for drivers so he has a hard time finding the right person for that job.

“We get drivers qualified. Put ‘em on a truck for FedEx and with the oil boom going on over there I’ve had 3 of ‘em quit and go to work over in Williston,” he says.

Duffield says he pays on average $1,000 a week but in the oil patch drivers are making 3 to 5 times that. “And we just can’t compete with that,” he says.

He says his other drivers who deliver products to the Williston Basin get courted by companies there and hired away. He calls the experience frustrating. Duffield says it’s hurting the viability of Duffield Express.

He says he had 3 trucks sitting idle for the first four months of this year because he couldn’t find drivers.

“You got a $175,000 rig sitting there and not doing anything, it has a big impact on your bottom line,” he says.

Even a large trucking company like Watkins & Shepard is impacted by the demand for drivers.

CEO Ray Kuntz says he’s having to spend more money to try to keep drivers and paying more for additional training.

“We’re doing fairly well right now, but it’s kinda luck of the draw,” he says. “We’ve had as many as 40 trucks without drivers at times. Today we’re pretty full.”

Kuntz and Duffield say it’s ironic at a time when the trucking industry is so desperate for licensed, qualified drivers there’s record unemployment nationwide. But they add truck driving is not for everyone. They says drivers need training and a commercial driving license to be considered. Then, they say, the driver has to have a spotless driving record, undergo regular drug testing, and comply with growing federal regulations.

Kuntz says addressing the semi-truck driver shortage is critical if the economy is to recover. He says, in Montana alone, over 80 percent of every product that comes in and out of the state comes on a truck.

“So without us, the economy is dead,” he says.

Kuntz says the same is true for the national economy as manufacturing starts to pick up.