Thinking Out Loud With Tim Brady

Canada working on its driver shortage

2006-10-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Look north. Look familiar? Canada’s truckers are nearing retirement age, and their next generation really isn’t interested in trucking. Like ours, most Canadian trucking jobs offer few benefits, with drivers working irregular schedules and longer hours than many other occupations. But the biggest drawback to trucking, according to surveys, is the time away from home.

Canadian trucking companies are doing a lot of advertising and the Canadian trucking human resources council is surveying new hires. They’re trying to figure out where new recruits are likely to come from, and how well-prepared trucking school graduates are to actually taking to the road. Their research has also shown it costs much less to retain drivers than find new ones.

Canadian journalists argue that trucking companies could attract more and better people if the companies paid student drivers tuition and wages while they are in school.

Therefore, what is our industry doing down here in the states? Lots of advertising and surveys. Hmmmm.

This is where we come in. What do you as a driver want and need? Sure, more money and time at home would always be welcome, but this isn’t the panacea for everyone. What about a must have list of your personal requirements? Do you have one? You should, and are you sharing it with the recruiter? Are there better ways to calculate ones pay other than by the mile? What are some creative solutions? What is it going take to bring quality drivers into trucking? What’s it going to take to keep you driving?

Something to think about …

Fuel Surcharges Continue

2006-10-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

How important is knowing your costs?

Apparently very important according to Todd Spencer of Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. Who said “we’re telling truckers that you have to know your costs, and don’t agree to take loads that won’t compensate you for the increased costs,”

But independent haulers lack the bargaining power of the larger trucking companies. The majority of fuel surcharges are figured on previous week’s or in some cases previous month’s fuel prices. Because, fuel costs are going up at such dizzying rates. Fuel surcharges, don’t currently keep up with the cost increases, so most owner/operators don’t see enough of a rise in revenue from the fuel surcharges going into their own pockets.

And with the price of diesel more than doubling in six years, some of the smaller companies are losing drivers because the Owner/Operators can’t afford current fuel prices. Some companies are cutting office staff and even trimming phone and air conditioning costs, to keep their trucks rolling and pay their drivers.

The big companies with hundreds of trucks are better able to absorb fuel cost increases, but they are the heavyweights when it comes to dealing with shippers. The American Trucking Association’s chief economist Bob Costello summed it up. “We no longer see that correlation where a 10-cent rise in diesel prices translates into 1,000 carriers going out of business. Fuel cost doesn’t have anywhere close to the impact it used to because fuel surcharges are helping defray those costs tremendously.”

Costello figures Owner/Operators should be able to leverage the driver shortage to their advantage because shippers need every truck right now. He said, “If you can’t make money trucking under today’s conditions, then you can’t make money in trucking, period.”

In my opinion, this is only partly true, in order to leverage the driver shortage you had n have to be able to negotiate your rate with shippers, brokers, or your carrier.

Are you able to leverage more money on your loads?
Are you receiving the entire fuel surcharge being billed to shippers?
Combined with the current hauling rates are you receiving enough for your efforts?
Would you make more money if you negotiated your own rates with
shippers or carriers?

Something to think about …

WHERE HAVE ALL THE TRUCKERS GONE?

2006-10-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Where have all the truckers gone?
I remember when I would sit in a drivers’ room and the drivers would tell stories about their trucking experiences. They'd laugh, cut-up, and make a joy out of the wait. Today, it’s just guys complaining about how they aren’t making any money.

Maybe there's a reason.

Consider: customers want their shipments there yesterday. However, the uncertainty of the new hours of service rules still hangs over everyone’s head.

Another point: total tonnage per year has been increasing. But so has the average number of days truckers are spending on the road, from two hundred seventy to over three hundred days per year, and more. But at the same time revenue to owner/operators is decreasing. If owner/operators can’t earn a reasonable income for their time and effort,--they leave.

Trucking companies’ profits increased from twenty to ninety-two percent for the first quarter of two thousand six. When these high profit companies offer a nickel to a dime more per mile to owner/operators, it’s like offering a hungry grizzly a tablespoon of meat with an entire side of beef hanging behind the company door.

So, owner/operators, are you feeling hungry?
How’s your bottom line? Got your bills paid?

What’s it going to take for you to stay? Is this being communicated to the trucking company executives? Or are they even listening?

Something to think about.

SafeStat

2006-10-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

The DOT offers a free online service called SafeStat. It’s a rating system which tracks all u-s roadside inspections, vehicle collisions, moving violations, hours-of-service violations and fleet audits.

All of that information collected by the DOT produces one of three ratings, telling each DOT officer what he needs to do when he sees your truck entering the scale. The carrier you’re driving for could have a ‘pass’ rating, an ‘optional’ rating, or an ‘inspect’ rating.

Carriers with ‘pass’ ratings have a total score of less than forty-nine points, and their trucks are waved through at check points because of the carrier’s excellent safety performance, as tracked by the computer system.

A score of fifty to seventy-four, however, means the DOT officer can decide whether or not to take a look at your truck. If traffic is slow that day, your truck is likely to get the once-over.

And finally, if your carrier has a score of over seventy-five, get ready to stop at every scale for about an hour. Guaranteed. Your carrier’s safety performance means you get that nice DOT officer’s full attention.

So is this a lose-lose situation for you, the driver? Not if you do your homework! You can go on line and check out carriers before you ever sign with one. Safe-stat will show you what kind of company and drivers you’ll be working with, whether they speed a lot, cheat hours of service rules, or drive responsibly.

Check out the SafeStat site. Go to www.ai.volpe.dot.gov and enter your company name. The SafeStat site will give you…

Something to think about….

Looking after each other.

2006-10-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

How many calls did you get on your CB the last time you were pulled over beside the road with your four-ways on? Did you call the last truck you saw pulled over? When was the last time you bought another trucker’s meal when you figured he was having a hard time? We’re all up against the same things out here.

We have to remember it’s up to us to look after each other. Kinda like Brian Platt.

A semi-retired, twenty year trucker, Brian Platt buys a trucker a hot meal, rescues another from a roadside breakdown, drives his nineteen eighty six pickup truck to get a trucker to the hospital or to town. And that’s just an ordinary list of good deeds for Platt.

Platt says he’s just passing on the help he got a long time ago.

Years ago, he and his wife were homeless and hitchhiking when Greencastle, Pennsylvania residents Barry and Ruth Keefer stopped and picked them up.

The Keefers gave the two young adults a place to live while they got jobs and turned their lives around.

Now Platt estimates he helps between ten to fifteen people each week and more than that during bad weather. He worries about the truckers who don’t make enough money, the ones living aboard their trucks and barely able to buy something to eat.

He doesn’t concern himself with the rare individual who takes advantage of him. He figures if he looks after the one person who really needs his help, then the occasional freeloader doesn’t matter.
What really counts is taking care of each other, Platt says.

So next time you find yourself in the position to help someone, what will you be doing?

Something to think about …

FUEL CRISIS CAN’T WAIT; STATES FIND SOLUTIONS

2006-10-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Looking for relief from high fuel prices, it may just may come from the state level.

Arkansas and North Carolina recently announced their progress. The University of Arkansas hosted a conference about turning waste into fuel. Biodiesel, made from soybean oil or even animal fat, and ethanol, made from corn or wood cellulose, were the top alternative fuels considered. And even though right now both alternatives must be blended with diesel for best efficiency, one of the nation’s largest carriers based in Arkansas already uses biodiesel in its trucks.

North Carolina has done its homework too, and figures if it could replace even ten per cent of its diesel consumption with biodiesel, the state would have an extra billion – that’s Billion with a ‘ B ’ – dollars in its treasury. Local funding is being offered so North Carolina can start switching all their government vehicles to biodiesel.

So while the federal government wonders what to do, and orders more studies, the states are looking for their own answers. Think the states can do it? Or does the federal government have to get involved before a real solution is found?

What would you do if you were in charge of
The fuel situation right now?

Something to think about …

Ex-military Training to Drive Trucks

2006-10-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Is the answer to the driver shortage having ex-military personnel fill the void? During the last five years, over two hundred fifty former marines and sailors have learned to drive trucks while finishing their tours of duty in Twenty Nine Palms, California.

If you look at the shortage from the trucking companies’ perspective, hiring ex-military is a no-brainer. They trained to follow orders, accustomed to working odd hours, managing lengthy separations from their families, and making do with short supplies, little sleep and enduring all kinds of weather. Sounds almost like a trucker built to specifications. Right?

But it doesn’t look as if the ex-military folks are going to be competing heavily for the open trucking jobs. Many of the military personnel who are graduating from the truck driving school in Southern California figure the commercial drivers license will be a good fallback career, since trucking jobs will continue to be readily available in the future. The American Trucking Associations, estimates over half a million truckers will be needed during the next decade.

So what does the driver shortage mean to you? Has it made you more valuable to your company? Have you gotten any more appreciation for what you do, has the public even noticed that truckers are beginning to be a bit scarce? What’s it going to take for consumers to notice there aren’t enough truckers--, long lines, higher prices and ultimately empty shelves?

Something to think about…

Electric Pods to Move Freight

2006-09-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here’s a solution for the truck driver shortage—Eliminate the tractor. Then you don’t need drivers—Hence no more driver shortage.

Of course, that’s a drastic solution, far into the future. But the University of Arkansas recently hosted a conference which proposed a freight shuttle system with no drivers as one answer to current transportation problems.

Cranes would lift shipping containers directly from ships onto electric shuttle cars, called ‘pods’, which would run twenty- four hours a day, taking containers inland from ports to terminals. Estimates place the cost of the automated system at about ten cents a mile per container. Designers of the pod system emphasize the security of the freight and low environmental costs, as well as the dependability of the electric motors.

The freight pods could operate within a highway median and transport six thousand containers daily. Of course, then the containers would have to be taken from the inland terminals to final destination. So truckers would be back in the picture, just waiting somewhere outside the port city limits. So what do you think? Would a pod system ease the port city traffic that much? Would this system reduce interstate traffic significantly? Do you see a possible future with no trucks within any city’s limits ? If you’re a container hauler how is this going to effect you? And what about the over the road trucker, is this going to be a benefit or not?

Something to think about …

Driver Shortage Fact or Fiction

2006-09-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

A year ago, the American Trucking Associations sounded the alarm about a truck driver shortage. So did National Logistics Management Company. But the alarm is still ringing, and nothing’s been fixed.

ATA said there was a shortage of about twenty thousand truckers nationwide.

National Logistics Management’s white paper recommended raising truckers’ average pay to sixty thousand dollars a year. This rattled a few cages since the industry average is only forty two thousand per year.

National Logistics defended its figures by noting LTL carriers which pay drivers an average of sixty five thousand dollars per year have a tremendously lower turnover rate of less than twenty per cent. This is as much as one hundred per cent lower than the turnover rate some other carriers are experiencing at this time.

Background to the turnover rate is of course the old law of supply and demand. While truckers and trailers are in short supply, the demand for shipping has increased. Today shippers pay much higher rates to get their goods hauled, whether cross town or cross country.

There you have it. Shipping rates are up, huge trucking companies profits are reported in the news daily, and no one seems able to find a solution for the drivers.

So is there an actual shortage of drivers? Or are the figures not accurate because so many drivers are changing companies at dizzying rates, getting themselves counted into the averages perhaps three or four times instead of once? Would better pay help retain drivers? If not, what would? Would you drive for a company whose only virtue was a little more money in your pay envelope?

Something to think about….

Driver Safety Tracking not just Carriers

2006-09-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

They already inspect your truck, are you prepared to be inspected as well?

A system similar to safestat, which rates the safety performance of trucking carriers, is being proposed for truckers themselves. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) wants to develop such a system to track the safety record and performance of each driver.

They point to research showing a motor vehicle driver who previously violated safety regulations is more likely to be a repeat offender as one of the reasons for issuing these inspections. FMCSA will publish its initiative in the Federal Register, allowing inspection of commercial drivers. The driver inspection system would be tagged ISS-D, similar to the ISS Carrier Inspection System now in place. Any driver flagged in the new ISS-D system would undergo a review of his or her documentation and carrier credentials.

Companies and law enforcement officials could also track a driver’s history, whether the driver changes employers or drives for several carriers at the same time.

Even more alarming, enforcement agencies would have the authority to check not only the driver’s logbook but other documents including medical records.

Who’s going to have access to this information?

What is the acceptable level of information the government can accrue with out violating ones personal rights of privacy?

Will the gathering of this information eventually lead to some type of profiling of truckers?
Where do you draw the line on personal rights versus safety?

Is this just a knee jerk reaction to appease the safety lobby, or is it a sound solution to the problem?

Something to think about …

Big Money for Big Trucking Companies

2006-09-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE MAKING BIG PROFITS, BUT ARE YOU?

BIG EARNINGS FOR THE LAST QUARTER IN TWO THOUSAND FIVE AND EVEN BIGGER RETURNS FOR THE FIRST QUARTER IN TWO THOUSAND SIX LEAVE SOME ANALYSTS WONDERING WHETHER THE CURRENT TRUCKING CLIMATE CAN LAST MUCH LONGER.

THE TWO BIGGEST EXPENSES FOR THE INDUSTRY, NUMBER ONE, DRIVERS, AND NUMBER TWO, FUEL, ARE BEING BLAMED FOR THE LARGEST INCREASE IN SHIPPING RATES.

THE DRIVER SHORTAGE AND ONE HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE PERCENT TURNOVER RATE CONTRIBUTE TO THE INDUSTRY’S NUMBER ONE EXPENSE. HOW MUCH ? STANDARD AND POOR FIGURE THE TURNOVER RATE COSTS TRUCKING COMPANIES ABOUT THREE BILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.

TREMENDOUSLY INCREASED PRICES FOR FUEL, THE INDUSTRY’S SECOND-LARGEST EXPENSE, ARE BLAMED ON HURRICANES, LESSENED OIL PRODUCTION AS REFINERIES NOW MUST RETOOL FOR LOW SULFUR FUEL, AND HUGE WORLD-WIDE DEMAND.

MANY COMPANIES HAVE ADDED FUEL SURCHARGES TO THE SHIPPERS’ BILLS. OTHER COMPANIES RAISED THEIR RATES FOR A VARIETY OF LARGE AND SMALL REASONS, SUCH AS EXPENSES FOR NEW EQUIPMENT, INCREASED OPERATING COSTS, AND EVEN HIGHER INTERSTATE TOLLS.

ANALYSTS CONTINUE WATCHING THE INDUSTRY, CONCERNED OVER HOURS OF SERVICE RULES AND THE SYSTEM STRAINING TO FULFILL DEMANDS FOR SHIPPING. HOWEVER, THEY WERE PLEASED WITH TRUCKING COMPANIES WHICH HAD SEVERAL PROFITABLE APPROACHES TO THEIR BUSINESS, WHETHER COMBINING REGIONAL TRUCKLOADS WITH BROKERING FREIGHT AND REFRIGERATED HAULING, OR EXPANDING ON A NATIONAL SCALE.

SO HOW ARE YOU DOING IN COMPARISON TO THE COMPANY YOU DRIVE FOR? DO THESE REPORTS WHICH SHOW TRUCKING COMPANIES IN THE BLACK MAKE YOU SEE RED ? ARE THERE ANY STRATEGIES THE BIG COMPANIES ARE USING WHICH COULD BE SCALED DOWN AND PUT TO WORK FOR YOU? WHAT CAN YOU DO TO RECEIVE A BIGGER SLICE OF THE PIE? NEGOTIATE A BETTER DEAL, GET YOUR OWN AUTHORITY, OR BUY STOCK IN THE COMPANY?

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT …