Editorial: Growing Pains From Progress
This Editorial appears in the June 5 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
With East Coast ports beginning to welcome the largest containerships capable of passing through the recently expanded Panama Canal, trucking will soon feel the effects of this new era in shipping.
These Neopanamax megaships are boosting business for trucking companies operating at those ports, but they are also bringing new challenges.
Drayage providers will see steeper peaks in demand when the big ships arrive, which will force truckers to haul a higher volume of containers in a shorter time, causing backups at terminals.
“Things will get interesting from a truck and driver capacity standpoint as more of the larger vessels show up,” said Dave Manning, president of TCW Inc., which operates at the ports in Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga.
This serves as a reminder that even positive developments such as the canal expansion often are accompanied by challenges and disruptions.
Trucking could experience similar growing pains in the months and years ahead as other major changes come to the industry.
Consider the federal mandate of electronic logging devices. The ELD regulation will improve compliance with driver hours-of-service rules for all carriers, but the industry likely will experience some degree of hardship when the rule takes effect in December.
The many carriers that have been using electronic logs voluntarily for years are ahead of the game, but others could be inviting trouble by waiting until the last minute to install devices in their trucks or failing to adequately train their drivers and dispatchers on how they work.
In the end, the ELD rule will be good for the industry. It will improve regulatory compliance and help weed out bad actors who ignore HOS.
Looking further ahead, the advance of automated driver-assistance technology could bring tremendous safety and productivity gains to trucking in the coming years and decades, but it will likely have its share of stumbling blocks as well.
Concerns that automation will eliminate driving jobs are overblown, at least in the short to medium term, but the industry will need to contend with that perception as it seeks to attract new drivers to the profession.
In the next stage of this evolution, drivers and onboard technology will increasingly work in tandem, which may require new training for drivers and further refinement of safety systems.
As the trucking industry enters a period of great change, it’s helpful to remember that progress often comes with some amount of pain and disruption. Let’s not lose sight of the greater good while experiencing those growing pains.
