Record Number of Trucks on Road

Is that good or bad?

 

I think this might be misleading. For instance, I'm a new authority registering my truck for the first time but I was on the road in the same truck last year leased to another carrier. Depending on how they calculated this could affect these numbers. I think...

 

Where are they stashing all of them? Because traffic looks nothing like it did in '08, and the load to truck ratios are holding up as well.

 

Maybe this want get it off topic to bad. I remember back in the 70's we hit a slow spell, & had to wait on loads out in California. I recall one time around the old Texaco Truck stop at Colton there was no parking spaces left. Even the streets had trucks parked on the side of them.


There was a motel just east of the old truck stop that had large dirt lot, it was full of trucks too. I believe on that trip I laid over 5 days before getting a load of produce back east. I believe at that time that was the most trucks I had ever seen in one place.


What would it be like if that came about today?

 

Like it was in AR after the ice storm during construction on I40 this past winter? Dot wasn't letting anyone leave the truck stops for awhile there either and they ran out of fuel at some some of them. That was biggest big truck convention I've ever seen.

 

Good question. There's no doubt there's more trucks on the road lately (and in the truck stops). But I suspect that for the most part, for every truck that is added to fleets, miles-per-week averages and driver gross pay come down accordingly. So they are creating more "jobs" but reducing "job quality" in the same amounts. Good news for the kids failing out of college, bad news for the experienced drivers who will never see meaningful wage improvements