Trucker Life · Minnesota · November 15, 2026

Trucker Turned Economist Stephen Burks, Licensed in 1976 With a Five-Question Test and $5, Is Retiring

By Big Rig Daily Staff

When Stephen Burks got his first license to drive trucks in 1976, it took three things: showing his regular license to drive a car, passing a five-question test and paying $5.

Fifty years later, the former trucker turned economics professor is retiring, and his study of truck drivers, one of the longest-running research programs in the country devoted to a single profession, is ending with him, The Minnesota Star Tribune reports in a column by Evan Ramstad.

Learning on the job

"I learned the job by doing the job because there was no formal training in those days," Burks told the Star Tribune.

Burks drove semis full-time for a decade and part-time for another couple of years. He met his wife when she signed the freight bill on one of his deliveries.

Getting a commercial license looks very different today, with required entry-level training and longer knowledge tests. The CDL general knowledge test study guide shows what that first test looks like now.

From the cab to the classroom

Burks became an economics professor at the University of Minnesota Morris in 1999. In 2002 he started the Truckers & Turnover Project with Jon Anderson, a professor of statistics and data science at Morris. The project studied why so many people try truck driving and then quit, which the industry calls turnover.

Over the years, Burks and Anderson brought in hundreds of students to study how employers keep truck drivers, how truck drivers make decisions, why truck drivers are more prone to sleep apnea and whether pay affects safety.

Now 76, Burks is about to retire. Anderson is retiring too, and the program will end, the Star Tribune reported.

What he saw change

Burks said he first saw the effects of trucking deregulation around 1981, when he watched two truck drivers in Cleveland unloading their own trailer. They told him they were paid by the mile and did not want to waste time waiting for someone else to unload it. Congress and President Jimmy Carter had deregulated trucking in 1980.

His summary of the industry's approach since then is blunt. "Industry history says the general pattern is run the trucks hard, pay low to start, and raise pay only for those who adapt to this crazy lifestyle, and pay for the turnover," Burks said.

He said only a small share of new truck drivers stay. "For the 10% or 15% who adapt to this lifestyle and love it, it's a good thing and more power to them. But that's not enough to run the industry," he said.

The column notes that private fleets offer pay and benefits that keep truck drivers longer, and that less-than-truckload companies, which haul smaller shipments from many customers, have higher retention.

Looking ahead

Burks also shared a prediction about driverless trucks. He said he expects that once people trust self-driving technology in their own cars, they will want the big rigs around them to be driverless too, and that truck drivers will then be much less in demand. That is his view, not a forecast from the study.

Quick facts

• First truck license: 1976, a five-question test and $5.
• Time behind the wheel: about a decade full-time, plus a couple of years part-time.
• Professor at the University of Minnesota Morris since 1999.
• Truckers & Turnover Project: started in 2002, ending with his retirement.
• Age now: 76.

A question for readers

What did it take to get a first truck license, and how does that compare with what new truck drivers go through today?

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