On the roads where the economy moves , where the country moves forward smoothly and the engine of commerce never stops, there is more to it than just hands on the wheel; there is a lack of someone to teach how to steer that movement.
Because the operator shortage doesn’t start when the engine is started, but long before, with insufficient training rooms, delayed licensing, and training that fails to keep pace with the industry.
“The reality is that it’s a beautiful, exciting industry. And it’s very noble,” says Einar Palomino, CEO of VI Human and president of Drive Is Great, the certification of best practices with operators promoted by Grupo T21 and VI Human.
Palomino acknowledges that fewer and fewer young people are attracted to professional driving. “This also has a part to do with why there’s a shortage of operators , because driving is no longer attractive to young people,” he explains.
The problem is structural. While freight transport is consolidating as the backbone of the economy, contributing 5.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and generating more than 2.3 million direct jobs, according to the 2024 Basic Statistics on Federal Trucking published by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transportation (SICT) , the pace of training new operators continues to fall far short of the sector’s demands.
According to the same document, more than 222,000 general and specialized cargo trucking permit holders were registered in 2024. However, the issuance of licenses has not grown at the same pace. “The sector is growing tremendously. It’s growing very strongly. But there are no operators because there’s no one to train them,” warns Palomino.
This highlights a gap between the sector’s operational demand and the institutional capacity to incorporate new drivers.
“One company in every 200 has a unique training project,” he warns. The rest compete for the same available operators, without investing in training new profiles.
In some isolated cases, companies have begun to adopt and sponsor Industrial Work Training Centers (Cecatis), allowing students to access practical classes and graduate with guaranteed formal employment. However, these efforts remain the exception rather than the norm nationwide.
“There are training centers that take an operator with 30 years of experience and appoint him as an instructor, even if he doesn’t have teaching skills,” warns Miguel Guzmán Negrete, general director of PISVI Mobility , a center for comprehensive road safety planning studies.
“Not every excellent driver is a good teacher,” he adds. Most training programs continue to teach using traditional approaches, failing to adapt to changes in mobility or integrate approaches to road safety, risks, and new technologies.
If you wish to continue reading this text, we invite you to consult the July 2025 edition of T21 magazine, clicking here to review the electronic version .
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