Editorial: Rising Truckload Sector
Even the most skeptical curmudgeon would have left the recent Truckload Carriers Association annual meeting with a sense of at least some encouragement.
Top truckload executives were broadly optimistic. Demand for hauling services, they said, is strong, diesel fuel is a bargain by recent standards and freight rates are generally appealing.
Severe problems that hobbled trucking in the recent past — a brutal recession, $4 diesel — are at least in remission, if not eliminated. The one remaining blight on this otherwise soaring landscape is the driver situation. There simply aren’t enough of them to move all of the freight on loading docks.
“Drivers are absolutely the challenge, first, second and third,” said Don Daseke, CEO of flatbed group the Daseke Cos.
Immediate past TCA Chairman Shephard Dunn, the president of Bestway Express, said he could put 50 new drivers to work tomorrow and keep them busy — if he only could find them.
The fleet managers are paying attention. Any issue of Transport Topics these days has a story or advertisements about carriers offering higher pay for drivers, but so far the efforts have not solved
the problem.
The pay-increase notices will, therefore, continue. They will be supplemented by fleet managers celebrating safe drivers and careful maintenance technicians, as happened at TCA.
Later this month in Louisville, Kentucky, count on equipment suppliers at the Mid-America Trucking Show to tell carriers how their products are just the perk needed to make drivers happy. There will surely be some takers.
Less obvious than drivers is the matter of the federal government. Major regulations on electronic logging devices for driver hours, training for entry-level drivers and carbon dioxide emissions are supposed to show up soon, and that creates uncertainty. The hours-of-service restart rule is temporarily at bay.
There is also great congressional interest in passing a multiyear highway bill, but nothing close to consensus on many critical details. More clarity, especially on infrastructure, would be welcomed.
It’s important to keep an eye on possible problems, but the happy news is that trucking will get to try and solve its problems from the platform of a strong business climate. It would be ungrateful to ask for more.
