Opinion: Truckload Carriers’ Code Seeks to Reduce the Waiting

By Lana R. Batts, President, Truckload Carriers Association

One of the most important management problems facing truckload carriers is the excessive and unproductive time trucks and drivers spend at shippers’ and receivers’ docks. In fact, three recent surveys by the Truckload Carriers Association found that refrigerated carriers drivers spend over 40 hours a week at the shippers’ and receivers’ docks. A similar study of truckload van dry drivers found that they spent more than 30 hours a week. In total, this inefficient use of drivers and equipment costs the truckload industry over $1.5 billion annually. Moreover, the number would be much higher if it included the cost of driver turnover, much of which is caused by excessive waiting time.

Drivers want to drive. If they liked sitting around or loading and unloading, they would have become lumpers. And American Trucking Associations would be holding the National Loading and Unloading Championships instead of the National Truck Driving Championships.

Unfortunately, these inefficiencies are projected to get much worse. It is anticipated that the Department of Transportation’s proposed rules on hours of service will combine the two on-duty status lines into one. As a result, loading and unloading as well as some forms of waiting time will be charged against available on-duty driving hours. If DOT doesn’t increase the amount of available driving time, TCA estimates that refrigerated truckload carriers could lose up to 70% of their available driving time, while dry van truckload carries will lose more than 50%.

Further complicating the landscape are other government actions that will make if difficult for drivers to load and unload trailers. This includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s new regulation that requires training for anyone operating a forklift or other power equipment. Further, it is anticipated that OSHA’s pending ergonomics regulations will restrict the amount of weight that can be lifted, limit the number of repetitions and require rest breaks. In other words, one set of OSHA regulations won’t allow untrained drivers to operate power equipment to unload trailers while another set will make it impossible to unload by hand.

Clearly the industry cannot continue to absorb these costs and inefficiencies. That’s why TCA’s Just in Time . . . to Wait Management Panel, chaired by John Ameling, president of KAT Inc., Chesterton, Ind., has been working with the National Industrial Transportation League to increase efficiency at the docks. After three meetings with concerned shippers and receivers, a new Code of Ethics has emerged that addresses the responsibilities of all parties — carriers, shippers, receivers and drivers. The code updates the original one that was developed in the early 1990s and was essentially silent on the issue of driver loading and unloading as well as excessive waiting time.

The premise of the code is that shippers-receivers and carriers and drivers have a mutual interest in good business practices. The code is broken into three sections, outlining what shippers and receivers will do, what carrier drivers will do and what other carrier personnel will do.

For example, the code outlines specific ways shippers and receivers will treat drivers: with courtesy and respect, encouraging and accepting their suggestions for service improvements. Shippers and receivers will assure that safe practices are followed, such as loading shipments with the legal limits of size and weight. They will foster honesty, fairness and openness in their dealings with carriers; establish loading and unloading requirements as well as responsibility for used pallets and the use and payment of lumpers; and expedite the movement of equipment, maintaining reasonable hours for loading and unloading.

Among the new items in the code are provisions that call upon shippers and receivers to promptly load and unload trucks that arrive within the scheduled time and to bear the responsibility for loading and unloading. But the code also places new requirements upon the carriers to deliver shipments on time and for drivers to keep scheduled appointments.

TCA realizes that a Code of Ethics is not worth much if no one knows about it or understands why it is important. That’s why TCA sponsored an educational session with representatives from each of the affected groups, shippers, receivers, carriers, and drivers, during ATA’s recent management conference (11-8, p. 22). TCA also sponsored two similar sessions at the Food Distributors International on Nov. 3 in St. Louis and the NITL’s annual meeting in San Antonio on Nov. 16. More sessions are planned for the Food Shippers in February, the Food Marketing Institute in March and the Grocery Manufacturers in June.

For a copy of the new code, call TCA’s offices at 703-838-1950 or e-mail me at Lbatts@Truckload.org.