The federal government may have failed to address trucking industry woes for decades. But with bottlenecked ports and voters unhappy about product shortages and inflation, members of Congress appear to be all ears. That’s largely why American Trucking Associations (ATA) president Chris Spear and others were tasked with educating politicians about the industry’s priorities.
Officials from the ATA have reportedly testified before Congress upwards of 25 times during the last five years. With the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package being negotiated earlier this year, freight haulers had a strong interest in making sure enough money was funneled into road and bridge repair. But perhaps ranking higher than eliminating potholes, truckers required a bigger bite of the infrastructure apple.
“In 2019, the (Federal Highway Administration) found that the percentage of drivers who regularly experienced difficulty finding truck parking had skyrocketed from 75 percent to 98 percent. The truck parking shortage is not just a safety and compliance issue; it is also an economic issue for drivers and fleets. Time spent looking for available truck parking costs the average driver about $5,500 in direct lost compensation — or a 12 percent cut in annual pay,” Spears reportedly stated. “Truck drivers give up an average of 56 minutes of available drive time per day by parking early rather than risk being unable to find parking down the road. The result is declining industry productivity and further depletion of the driver pool, both of which contribute to supply chain inefficiencies.”
Industry experts have explained to members of Congress that inefficiencies plague the trucking industry. It’s not uncommon for CDL holders to lose minutes trying to secure safe parking and hours in detention time waiting to load. These losses take a bite into limited drive-times. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours of service regulations may look good on paper. However, they do not reflect the actual number of hours truckers transport loads.
It may have come as something of a rude awakening, but Spear let them know onerous government mandates are part of the problem.
“Pay has increased substantially, especially in the most challenging sectors of our industry. Long-haul earnings, for instance, are up 24.3 percent since the beginning of 2019, and increasing at five times their historical average, which is nearly 10 percent year-over-year,” Spear reportedly stated. “Yet, the shortage and retention of talent remains — elevating other contributing factors, including lifestyle changes, more time with family, work flexibility choices that only independent contractors enjoy, time lost from severe congestion and detention time, and the added layers of mandates.”
The current workforce shortage and supply chain bottlenecks have been 15 years in the making. Sometimes well-meaning bureaucrats and politicians best serve the country by stepping aside and allowing hard-working Americans to do their job. If politicians are committed to improving industry conditions and workforce retention, adding physical infrastructure and eliminating impediments might be a good start.
Source: trucking.org
I don’t recall electing any of these tyrannical lobbyist quislings. They speak for their greed not the industry. Traitors of society. The lowest subhuman form of organisms under failed lawyers turned politicians.
As I agree with a majority of the article, I find in my own opinion that bridges and roads infrastructure plays very little part in the reason drivers have chosen to either leave the industry or not be a part of it all together. For me the continuing over reach of unfamiliar politicians and bureaucrats. We need to stop the knee jerks and do our do diligent before we continue enacting regulations that we are not familiar with
If politicians and bureaucrats want to see truck drivers come back, stay on, and freight start flowing again, how about they take a hard look in the mirror and then unplug the regulation dam they themselves created. You can waste all the taxpayer money in the world on relaying roads and sidewalks to nowhere, but the real problem is the web of cobbled together regulations written by people who’ve never once done the job themselves.
A big part of the “apple” needs to go towards IT, and using the ELD to separate apples from oranges, especially “hard to hire” “apples and oranges”. At the bottom of the “ELD slide” would be hard to hire driver’s at the top of the “slide” would be the save, well seasoned OTR driver. These 2 people are completely different workers and should NOT run under the same HOS regulations. Several other “classifications” can filtered with some IT and some common sense brain storming.
The politician’s need to get us more parking and get rid p f a lot of the regulations they have foce apond us truck driver. High pay and more hometime would also help. Security for female driver like me attruck stop,rest areas would also help with getting more women behind the wheel of the truck.
1st I want the Ata to stop telling our government anything about trucking, I have not seen 1 thing the Ata has done in the last 30+ yrs that has helped trucking..most of my friends and myself think the Ata, when it comes to trucking issue, are a bunch of communists..2nd the trucking industry doesn’t need anymore help from the government. Haven’t you people learned anytime the feds get involved you get the shaft..geez look at inflation right now, look at the high fuel prices, oh and let’s not forget how they lied to us about the cost of def..when it got into all the truck stops so we all could buy at the pump it was suppose to go down in price, all it has ever done is go up now it avg of $1 to $1.25 more than I’ve ever seen it at the pump, GOD help you have to buy it elsewhere..
One more thing about government involvement, have you prices a truck lately, my dealer at home told me a new truck I couldn’t get was going to cost over $200 most of which is because of all this technology and emissions which the government has their grubby hands on..