Perspective

The recent announcement that Knight Transportation and Swift Transportation are merging is a much bigger and industry-changing event than realized. It comes on the heels of another major development: the public offering by Schneider. In three years, these two deals will be viewed as having set in motion a number of mergers and acquisitions at a pace never witnessed before in the truckload and intermodal industry.

There is nothing fun about not getting paid for the loads you have hauled. But unfortunately, every small trucking company and owner-operator will encounter clients who sometimes take 45 to 60 days — or longer — to pay.

Trucking can always use more technology. That’s one reason we see so many tech startups in the industry these days.

The American trucking industry depends on drivers: a simple statement but one that bears repeating. As president of American Trucking Associations, I have the great privilege of representing 3.5 million professional truck drivers, working on their behalf in Washington to make our industry better, to make their jobs easier.

As I prepare to serve as chairman of the Transportation Intermediaries Association for the next two years, I reflect on my experience with the association. Throughout the past 13 years of attending TIA events, participating on various committees and investing time as a board member and executive committee member, I have experienced firsthand the benefits that come from associating with and investing in TIA.

Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign for president, slashing regulations was a core theme. Many of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees are long-standing opponents of a heavily regulated business environment. I welcome this time to catch our breath. The rate of regulatory change in the trucking industry has been too rapid for many businesses to keep pace.

The electronic logging device mandate for tracking hours of service has brought a lot of attention to truck telematics, and many experts are providing advice on how to prepare for that transition. But one aspect of telematics that few are addressing is how underutilized most existing systems are. In my estimate, only three in 10 fleets are utilizing their telematics system to the max.

In 2008, I wrote an article where I described a future scenario in which a driver in a truck is leading a convoy of several driverless trucks. In 2011, I began predicting that we would have autonomous cars on the market and on the roadways by 2020. These predictions seem to be turning out better than my 2007 prediction that Apple would not get much market share in the cellphone business.

As reported in Transport Topics in early December 2016, (12-12, pp. 4, 43) American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear told a roundtable of lawmakers at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., that the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, represents the future of secure transportation.

Aftertreatment systems are unequivocally becoming the Achilles’ heel for all fleets and a leading contender for high cost, load delays and asset downtime. However, there is much more to the root cause of this escalating issue.