Opinion: New Rules Could Mean New Day for Trucking

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B>By Steven Williams

I>Chairman and Chief Executive

averick Transportation Inc.

The hours-of-service rule changes that our industry faces in early January have certainly created a lot of unusual conversations between groups of people who previously didn’t speak of such things. I have engaged in conversations with individuals who in almost no time at all have been able to embrace the complexities of “logging” that have taken most people in trucking their entire careers to fully understand.

Assuming these observers don’t lose this newfound knowledge, they might have new career choices available to them on the carrier side in our safety and compliance departments.

There are some in the carrier community — less-than-truckload companies and certain regional truckload firms — who feel that the new rules will have little impact on their productivity and in some cases will actually improve it. Then there are those, like me, who think this change will have a profound impact on productivity and will wreck havoc on certain sectors of the industry.

This range of opinion is as wide as the differences that exist among the carriers in our nation. Time will soon tell about the impact of these new rules when they are laid down and applied in the marketplace.

We must remember that the purpose of changing the HOS rules in the first place was to improve safety. Shippers’ and carriers’ willingness to embrace compliance and endure the subsequent financial implications will determine if the Department of Transportation can achieve its objective.

The message that needs to be sent to carriers and shippers alike is that to whatever degree the HOS changes will affect their operations, the challenge of making these new rules work will also create the opportunity to fundamentally change the job of truck driving.

This change will finally force shippers to work with carriers on issues that we were unable to solve on our own.

We may not like the new rule and the implications of what a loss in productivity will mean to our bottom line and the nation’s as a whole, yet we must get past that and capitalize on the benefits that could result if we are able to materially change the driving job in America.

DOT predicts that over the next 20 years, the economy will double in size. Not only must we face the challenge of meeting the infrastructure

equirements to support this economic expansion, we also must find the drivers to operate 87% more trucks on our nation’s highways.

It is becoming increasingly more evident that we must find ways to safely improve productivity while making the tremendous investments in infrastructure that will be required.

What is more tangible and probably more obvious is the immediate problem of finding an adequate supply of drivers to fill the trucks in which we have already invested. If we are unable to meet the current crisis, then we certainly won’t have much hope in finding the drivers to operate the additional trucks that will be required.

Even during periods of high unemployment, this industry continues to find itself with excessive amounts of non-seated trucks. Maybe we should admit that truck drivers have had the good sense to choose other careers in order to meet their personal financial needs.

Shippers and carriers will soon have the challenge of adapting to the new hours rules. We will have the opportunity to fundamentally change the truckload-driving job that obviously needs to be changed.

It will be a shame if the shipping community fails to financially support carriers that choose to invest in a long-term strategy to expand real capacity — trucks with drivers in them. For more years than I care to remember, carriers have spent millions of dollars trying, unsuccessfully, to convince our drivers that we are offering them a great job and a great opportunity.

Capacity in the truckload sector is obviously strained. When the economy finally puts up a sustained period of growth, capacity is going to be critically challenged. Rates are going to go up — in some cases dramatically.

I continue to hear moans from shippers about the costs associated with the upcoming loss in productivity. I feel their pain. The carrier community has felt excruciating pain for years with no hope in sight. Now shippers’ pain has the hope of solving the nation’s short- and long-term capacity challenges if we see that pain for the opportunity that it really is.

Frankly, our nation’s economy depends on how the shipping community chooses to look at this issue. Is it a tragedy or an opportunity?

Maverick Transportation, which has headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., provides flatbed truckload carriage. The author is also the first vice chairman of American Trucking Associations, a national trade association for the trucking industry, which owns Transport Topics Publishing Group.

This story appeared in the Dec. 15 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.