Bigger trucks anyone?

Nope. Bigger and longer is not always better.

 

I like the video but He is missing a hell of a lot of background info, from the reason why trucks became prolific to why drivers don’t care what they haul.

his presentation is good but we have to just to put it in perspective, 80% of the cdl holders who drive semi trucks in the country work for a company. 20% are owner operators.

out of that 80%; 50% of that number are regional or wide area drivers, 30% are OTR and 20% are local drivers.

why this matters is because as much as the other issue I will mention, this industry is geared up for a specifc type of driver who just drives and has no skin in the game.

the other reason is our infrastructure gets worse as time goes on. We had destroyed our rail system and instead of putting money into it as we should have, we focused on the stupid idea of rebuilding Europe which led to their old rail systems being replaced with modern systems that could be upgraded easily. Their infrastructure also was rebuilt, including Finland (which I have been too a few times). This is left out of his video too, and it is important to understand that we pretty much abandoned rail transport because of the problems we had with rail by 1960 cost of it to the customer could not be capped without interjecting rebuilding funds from the government who literally helped destroy it.

the last issue is this, rates are not proportional to the amount of weight or real estate used in the trailer, LTL freight has to be competitive but FTL freight seems to be fixed when it comes to rates and the large carriers. If we added say 5 more feet to the trailer, the amount gained from it in revenue would not be cost effective in the long term. This would still put the driver at the present level of wages and leave the more problems with driver dissatisfaction.

 

I found the clip entertaining, certainly Hollywood generated, and getting goods to the public is as old as transportation itself. He makes a good point, trucking is last in the shipping equation, and I think he missed a key point why, like the elderly, we have no leader(s). I think "road trains" are inevitable, as demand increases and drivers decrease. That's fine for long distance of bulky things, but the age old problem remains, getting it to the customer. It's a sleeping giant the government would love to ignore, apparently they are too focused on making English a requirement for any driver, but don't accept the fact in 2020, foreign truck drivers in the US were about 320,000. In 2025, it's estimated over 740,000, or 18% of our drivers are foreign born and do a good job.
Due to space limitations for delivery, trailers simply can't get any bigger, and intermodal is probably the best thing for long distance, eliminating the OTR altogether.

 

More likely your going to see semi autonomous convoys, pun not intended. Namely you will have 1 driver at the head of a number of short haul vehicles following him for liability reasons. If you remove the cab and all the crap for driver comfort and slightly alter the shape of the trailer. You can get about the same cargo space and weight increase as adding 5 feet would give in the same or a potentially smaller package and likely get a far more efficent vehicle.

Alterntivly you may see trucking move to drones. 1 driver who is responsible for dozens of otherwise autonomous vehicles but can take direct control if something goes wrong. again for liability reasons.

Sure specialized jobs like end dump or super heavy haul are likely always going to need a human. At least in MY lifetime. But i think the era of meat in seats is coming to a close. The recent explosion of accidents since the huge injection of barely qualified forigners, moron natives, and ageing out of the experinced drivers along with the huge increase in general traffic on the roads and cut throat rates will ensure it.

Besides one of the largest costs for a company is drivers. Eliminate 90% of the drivers and profits even at cut throat rates will be massive. Meat in a seat cant compete with a truck that doesnt require a person who needs a living wage.

 

Meanwhile in Canada Super B's with 140k lb gross are one of the most common configurations on the road. You guys are behind lol.

 

Believe it or not a standard 5 axle tractor trailer is allowed to gross close to 88k lbs across many of the provinces, depending on the usual factors (laws, frost restrictions, axle spacing etc).