Trucks haul more than 70% of domestic cargo shipments. Yet many fleets say they can’t hire enough drivers to meet booming consumer demand as the U.S. economy emerges from the pandemic. The freight backup has intensified longstanding strains in the industry over hours, pay, working conditions, and retention. Some operators say the biggest problem isn’t a shortage of drivers but a lack of efficiency in a model that hasn’t changed much in several decades.
Here are facts that tell a more complete story than you are reading elsewhere (mostly a headline that implies more drivers = problem fixed):
Drivers are often forced to wait at the port for 2.5 hours to load/unload. Port employees sometimes have to wake up drivers to pull their trucks up at the port - you want more drivers to join this queue? Drivers are not paid for this waiting time or are paid a portion of their per-mile rate. Some companies don’t kick in this paid wait time until you have waited for 2 hours. Truck drivers only make money by getting miles - so, many drivers have left the ports for traditional over-the-road trips that provide more miles ($) every day.
And….due to lack of employees at the warehouse/yards where they take or pickup the containers, they can wait an additional 2 hours on the other end of a port delivery/pickup. Doing nothing but waiting for 4 hours/day….
Covid forced many drivers to switch to local driving jobs or other manufacturing, etc. - home every night!
Action Plan
Track and Penalize ports and warehouses for wait time - make them accountable to improve efficiency. Even the local hamburger joint tracks how long customers have to wait!
Pay drivers equivalent per-mile rate for waiting. Yes, the freight cost will go up until efficiency is improved. But, with fair compensation, many experienced, licensed drivers may return to service the port.
California regulations have effectively eliminated owner-operated drivers (drivers who own their tractor) from the state because of their independent designation (or is it because they are non-union?) - the same issue as uber drivers faced. They have also limited the age of trucks allowed in the state and even more aggressively, which ones are allowed in the port to cut emissions.
Action Plan
CA or Federal Government to temporarily remove both regulations - it is an emergency.
Drivers can’t find enough available chassis (the ‘trailer’ that the container sits on). While some companies have their own chassis, others use from a pool. There are currently 3,200 chassis in need of repair at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports!
Action Plan
A sizable cash incentive for every chassis fixed or found and returned to service. The independents will be all over this. This is much quicker than waiting for new chassis to be built. I bet that there are thousands of chassis sitting in yards around the country with no incentive to return - make it very profitable - capitalism works.
Fix the issue where a chassis is stuck under an empty container that no one wants right now (and the yard has no means to unload empties - cranes, etc.). Provide an alternative site for empties and pay drivers $100 cash for each container and a chassis brought in. Stack the empties and put chassis back in service. Let the ports decide how to get the empties back on ships returning to China, etc.
Put GPS locators on all chassis - let’s not be looking for these again!
Drivers require costly permits (~2K$ first time, plus yearly fee)) to use the port. If security-focused, interesting that drivers are seldom allowed out of their cab.
Action Plan
Accept another form of ID temporarily to get drivers a low-cost entry into driving to the port again. Add regulations back in when trucks are more available, and new drivers trust that they can make money serving the ports.
Too many containers are in the port, not being picked up. The US's lack of warehouse/lot space has resulted in an unintended consequence - the cheapest warehouse space may be leaving the container at the port!
Action Plan
Heavier Daily penalties for containers left for over ‘5’ days - make it an undesirable place for companies to park their goods. I understand that this may already be in the works, due mid-Nov?
A speedy lane for best customers - these are the local freight companies that just transfer containers to a local yard a few miles away. They should be able to remove 4-6 containers per day but are usually limited to two due to waiting time. These drivers can clear four or more times as many containers a day as the regular driver.
Over 468K people in California hold a commercial driver’s license (Class A), but less than half are currently working in the industry.
Action Plan
Forget the driving schools and training new drivers - you already have them, but they are unwilling to put up with current pay/conditions. Why keep hiring (churn) new drivers who will last six months? Fix the driver’s issues and then give them a large bonus to start driving again.
Government regulations (enforced by Electronic logging) to combat fatigue for drivers needs to be updated. The time tracking system the government applied to truck drivers has no common sense applied to it. Currently, as I understand it, if a driver is out of hours for that day, they can’t even drive across a parking lot to back into a loading dock - they must stay in the parking lot all night and hopefully load/unload in the morning. If they violate this, the electronic system will report it. The announcement of an eventual opening of the port 24 hours a day highlighted this issue. If a driver was waiting on the street outside the port sleeping, he/she could not in the middle of the night take 30 minutes to go into the port and load a container and then go back to sleep till the morning.
Action Plan
Give the drivers some grace period - treat them like professionals and punish the outliers.
Just interesting….
Close to a third of drivers now on the road are over age 55, and women make up only 7% of all truckers. Last year, the median annual pay for heavy truck and tractor-trailer drivers was $47,000 and had increased by about 3% to 4% annually since 2016. Don’t believe the 75K$ average salary that some in the media are quoting - it may be true if you work six days/week, two weeks on the road, and get lots of miles driving - and not waiting.
Trucking companies can’t get new trucks - the backlog of new trucks ordered but not built nearly tripled from the same month a year ago to 262,100. The chip issue has hurt this industry too.
Summary - stolen but very good:
“The economic dysfunction of trucking is there’s no value placed on a driver’s time,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represents drivers that own or operate individual heavy-duty trucks and small truck fleets. This is a typical process problem where the inefficiencies are elsewhere, but those entities are not being held responsible - easy to default to the quick fix - we need more drivers. Lazy Journalism….
and, yes the ports have their in-efficiencies too (some are union-related) - but these are for another post…. I would hope that Longshoreman contracts this year include some significant efficiency gains but I am not holding my breath. We will continue to berate $47K per year truck drivers while paying high union wages to people who don’t give a damn about truckers waiting in their cabs.
Union’s protecting their people at everyone’s expense, supported by the liberal left. Implement a performance, incentive based approach across the entire shipping industry.
The Economic Dysfunction of Trucking
Why buy a new truck if it must be replaced in the near future when CA requires all electric?
Union’s protecting their people at everyone’s expense, supported by the liberal left. Implement a performance, incentive based approach across the entire shipping industry.