McALLEN — With significant fanfare, South Texas College kicked off a new commercial driver’s license program officials say will help meet growing demands in that industry at the institution’s Technology Campus Wednesday morning.
STC says students should begin learning to drive a truck on Jan. 10 through a partnership between the college and Trancasa.
The announcement was met with significant excitement.
Officials spoke in front of the gleaming cab of a red semi-truck. There was a ribbon cutting and confetti cannon and plenty of beaming smiles.
Occasionally, truckers driving down Ware Road sounded their horns after spotting the crowd gathered in front of the 18-wheelers on display.
Those truckers were hailing reinforcements on the way to an industry that, STC says, is desperately in need of reinforcements.
There is, the college says, a vacuum of around 80,000 truck drivers in the industry, the result of an aging workforce and labor shortages.
There is also, STC President Ricardo Solis said Wednesday, a demand from Rio Grande Valley residents for the program. He said the college received over 50 calls from students interested in the program over a 12 hour period following news of the program becoming public, but before the college made an official announcement or advertised it.
“That is incredible,” he said. “This is what we’re here about, about providing opportunity not only for the students but for generations of families in the Valley.”
STC previously relied on a private vendor for a truck driving program, though that contract expired in 2019.
According to the college, the new program will implement two full-time instructors and two trucks leased by Trancasa. It will consist of 200 hours of instruction delivered over a five-week period: 40 hours of classroom and computer lab instruction, along with 160 hours of observation and actual driving.
The curriculum will meet new entry-level driver training regulations and the college is in the process of becoming an approved training provider by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
STC Board Chair Rose Benavidez said the program was conceived and created in about two months, a phenomenally quick timeline.
In one way, she said, the program and the urgency around it is a response to infrastructure snafus caused by the pandemic: piles of cargo ships backed up at seas, empty store shelves, shortages for holiday shoppers.
In another, Benavides said, it’s a response to the business and growth evident all around the Technology Campus in South McAllen Wednesday.
“We’re going to move this program quickly,” she said. “We’re going to be able to produce more qualified drivers, and we’re going to address all the growth in our ports of entry, because there is need. Every day we see new warehouses, we see new lanes and bridges being open. And all that tells us that we have to be prepared.”
Benavidez also said the program is the sort of career-focussed education the college’s leadership has rededicated itself to this year.
“We’ve looked at and surveyed many of our students and communities,” she said. “We know that getting a CDL license gives them an opportunity to be self-sufficient, to be entrepreneurial. But more importantly, to change their lives and their families.”
More information on the CDL course is available at southtexascollege.edu/cdl.
