Perspective

Does your trucking company write off thousands of dollars of small losses due to the negligence of other drivers? While small-dollar claims might not seem worth the hassle of collecting, they can add up quickly and amount to significant business losses.

What if I told you that another form of automated technology could help ease the industry’s capacity crunch right now? Automated routing and scheduling can maximize the usage of available driver time, take some recruiting pressure off of fleets and address the very real challenge of keeping drivers on your staff and behind the wheel once you’ve found them.

Support for infrastructure historically has been a nonpartisan issue, both in the halls of Congress and in cities, towns and counties across the nation. It’s time for Congress to challenge itself to once again make infrastructure a nonpartisan issue.

Remember that feeling when a teacher sat you in the corner after wrongly accusing you of something? I believe this nation’s truckers have been placed in the proverbial corner by the state of Rhode Island.

Truck drivers are often away from a motor carrier’s physical buildings — where everyone else is located — so they don’t always develop as strong an attachment to the company as other employees do. So if a company doesn’t regularly reach out to drivers and involve them in its culture, that company runs the risk that drivers may look elsewhere for work, to a carrier that they perceive as better.

A recent survey of heavy-haul truckers determined the three factors that would have the biggest impact on their business were receiving a higher rate per mile, getting paid faster and spending less time finding their next load.

According to The National Safety Council, vehicle accidents are among the most costly of injury claims for businesses. The average cost of a loss related to a vehicle accident is nearly twice as much as the average workplace injury.

The American Truck Dealers’ top legislative priority is to repeal the federal excise tax, and truck dealers and automotive trade association executives will converge on Capitol Hill this month to support this important effort.

Trucking fleets work every day to draft, negotiate and execute contracts with suppliers, employees, subcontractors and customers that maximize revenue and produce efficiencies for all involved. But in a heavily regulated industry such as trucking, compliance issues related to federal, state and local laws must be directly reflected in these contracts, and that can get burdensome.