Local ingredients are trendy among upscale restaurants. Now, with surging shipping costs, sandwich and salad shops are following along.

A labor crunch in the trucking industry is making it more expensive to deliver everything from apples to zucchini. U.S. shipping rates jumped 14 percent in the year ended June 30, sending truck use to nearly 100 percent capacity, according to Freight Transportation Research Associates. Restaurants are facing higher prices, and to avoid passing them along to customers, they’re shopping closer to home.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how do you get more stuff locally,” said Nick Marsh, chief executive officer of Chopt Creative Salad Co., a chain with more than 50 outlets, mostly on the East Coast. “It for sure becomes even more economically beneficial.”

Marsh said Chopt’s shipping costs jumped 20 percent versus last year. He blamed the spike on the driver shortage, along with new electronic monitoring that tracks truckers’ hours put in place by the Department of Transportation in December. Chopt already gets more than 50 percent of its food from local vendors during summer. It’s recently started buying more baby kale, spinach and arugula from Florida instead of California, and is looking into greens grown indoors in New York, Marsh said.

Restaurants have been touting the merits of local goods for years. Chefs that use food from nearby say it tastes and looks better due to shorter shipping times, and they like to tell diners they support local farmers. And fewer hours on the road means less gas – a boon for the environment, too.

The scarcity of truck drivers is part of the broader U.S. labor shortage, with the jobless rate in May matching the 48-year-low of 3.8 percent. Competition for drivers is increasing, with a stronger economy and more Americans turning to online delivery for groceries and consumables.

In June, members of the National Restaurant Association and other retail trade groups said they supported getting younger drivers on the road to help alleviate the crunch. While most U.S. states allow 18-year-olds to get a commercial driver’s license, they’re not allowed on the interstate until they’re 21.

“Congress should support this effort to help fill desperately needed jobs,” the groups said in the June 18 letter. “Companies are being forced to increase prices to account for higher transportation costs. This will ultimately result in higher prices for consumers.”

It’s particularly hard to find drivers to drive thousands of miles across the U.S., said Jon Eisen, senior vice president of government relations at the International Foodservice Distributors Association, whose members include restaurant suppliers like Sysco. Earlier this month, Sysco CEO Tom Bene said the company is struggling to attract truckers, and has started offering bonuses to lure them.

“It’s harder to find drivers that are willing to spend three or four days on the road,” Eisen said. “That sector has been harder hit than local drivers – drivers that will deliver and then go home that night.”

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