At the same time trucking companies are posting extremely good profits because of the tight capacity.

Werner Enterprises Reports Record Operating Revenues and Earnings “I am pleased to report our twelfth consecutive quarter of improved year-over-year earnings. Despite rising costs for fuel and driver pay, we improved our operating margin by negotiating needed rate increases,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Clarence (C.L.) Werner. “Our freight volumes and service performance are at a high level as we move into the seasonally strongest period of the year.”

Even with high fuel and driver costs their sales team renegotiated higher rates with their customers.

Landstar nearly doubles 3Q earnings – 2004-10-14 – The Business Journal of Jacksonville

President and CEO Henry Gerkens said Landstar was able to handle the additional demand created by the hurricane without affecting regular customers.

“Landstar was able to source the capacity required for disaster relief efforts in Florida and throughout the Southeast while providing sufficient capacity to its regular customer base,” said Gerkens.

Landstar not only is making money they can have sufficient capacity during this driver shortage.

The Morning News :: Business :: Analyst Says J.B. Hunt Strong, Best Yet to Come

J.B. Hunt Transport Services may have posted record earnings in the third quarter, but an analyst said the company still has room to grow.

Who do you believe? I’m having trouble deciding if there’s really a shortage or not. Depending on the part of the country I’ve had to wait a few days for a good paying load. How bad of a shortage can it be if shippers and brokers are still offering anything under a dollar a mile?

Now I see this -

Fleets say they may need $65,000 drivers!Several major U.S. carriers say trucker pay has to increase to as much as $65,000 a year before fleets will have enough drivers to meet demand.

Covenant Transportation founder and CEO David Parker said his fleet expected to raise driver pay again in the first quarter of 2005, as many fleets did in 2004, but per-mile incremental pay raises may not be enough to draw the tens of thousands of drivers that the industry needs.

“Should we go up to $65,000 tomorrow?” Parker asked at a “Capacity Crisis” forum for shippers and carriers, held Oct. 11-12 in Atlanta. “I don’t have the guts to do it.”

While the national average pay for truck drivers currently hovers around $40,000, Parker and Duane Acklie, chairman of Crete Carrier Corp., speculated that salaries between $60,000 and $65,000 would be needed to fill the current shortfall.

“LTLs are paying $65,000 and have less than 20 percent turnover,” Parker said. “We’re paying $42,000 and have 100 percent turnover … I think you’re going to see driver pay increase over the next few years, 5 or 6 cents a year for the next five years.”

“Pay is important,” Acklie said. “We don’t have a shortage of drivers, just a shortage of drivers willing to work for what we pay.”

Finally someone has come up with the answer! Instead of bogus bonuses and b.s. incentive programs, SHOW US THE MONEY!!! TODAY!!! Companies are going to have to raise salaries to compete with construction and other jobs. Which will force them to raise rates. The market will determine how much they can get away with raising rates. Consumers seem to have a short memory when prices rise. They get used to it and continue buying.

They don’t have the guts? I can understand not wanting to give out raises, then the economy slips and they have to take it back. What about working on a percentage? Then your wages rise and fall with the rates. Trucking is cyclical and some people can’t handle not knowing from week to week what they will be making.

Where have we heard this line before? – “We don’t have a shortage of drivers, just a shortage of drivers willing to work for what we pay.” How about throughout this entire web site! My first post about the cheap driver shortage was back in March of ‘04 about my letter to the editor in Sep ‘03. How about the research of Prof. Belman that I wrote about. I ordered his book and am waiting for it to arrive. His research makes the most sense from the bits and pieces I’ve read.

You can find something about a truck driver shortage in every year that trucking has been in existance. I can’t link to these, but they’re there.

Transportation Journal; 12/22/2002; Lambert, Thomas – Despite the recent slowdown of the U.S. economy, many trucking firms are still experiencing difficulty in finding and retaining qualified drivers. For the last two decades, the trucking industry has been hit hard by a shortage of truck drivers.

How about in 2000 when trucking was trying to get the government to allow 18-21 year olds to driver interstate trucks because there was such a shortage?

Check this out back in 1990 -

Supermarket News; 1/15/1990; Alaimo, Dan

Worsening Truck Driver Shortage Feared
A looming labor shortage, increased government regulation and aging fleets are major challenges facing transportation executives interviewed by Supermarket News. These factors will add costs and complications to their goals of productivity and efficiency.

Wetterau’s Kahn believes the height of the shortage is still a year away. “It will force a shakeout in the industry, but,” he added, “within four to six years, this problem will solve itself.”

I wasn’t driving back then, but as a consumer, I don’t remember any stores that were sitting empty because there weren’t enough trucks.

I firmly believe trucking companies and certain associations use these scare tactics so that they can convince the government in allowing them to import drivers to fix this “shortage”. These are called H1b visas and the technology fields have been trying to do something about them for years for the same reasons as trucking should be.

OOIDA came out with an “alert” advising members to take advantage of the current tight capacity. In other words – “Say NO to cheap freight”. Shippers will pay if they want their stuff shipped. Some international shippers are even shipping by air because of all the delays at the ports. This was back in 2002 -

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News); 11/1/2002

Byline: Boaz Herzog

Nov. 1–Beaverton-based Nike, already transporting high-end holiday merchandise by air rather than sea because of West Coast port delays, will continue the expensive adjustment for its spring goods.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If companies want good drivers they know what to do.

If there’s a recruiter that doesn’t understand this, contact me and I’ll explain it $$$.

Originally posted 2004-10-18 04:00:00.

We get a room and I’m surfing the channels and come across John Ratzenberger’s Made in America on the travel channel. It’s Cliff from Cheer’s traveling around checking out products made in America. After listening to Where the Right Went Wrong by Pat Buchanan which is really a good listen. One of his many points is that America has lost our manufacturing base which is what made America great in the past and we’re going to be up a creek when a crisis hits. It’s kind of depressing and a little scary and I needed a show like Made in America to see we haven’t totally lost every manufacturing job.

When I first started trucking, one of the coolest parts of the job was seeing the factories around the country. From small shops to the huge factorys. Even though I don’t haul produce or a lot of raw materials anymore I see a lot of shops where high end furniture is made. Along with slot machines and computer components.

Trucking is cyclical along with the economy. Trucking is one of the leading indicators of how the economy is going. For us, it’s going pretty good and we’re hoping to ride this cycle as long and as profitable as we can make it. Mainly because we invested BIG last year and this year, so we need a couple of good years to get things paid off so we can ride out a few slow years. Slow years will happen it’s only a matter of when and how slow will it get.

Originally posted 2006-03-21 22:37:58.

If you see an eighteen wheeler coming up real fast behind you blowing his horn, he may want to use the runaway truck ramp, you might want to move into the left lane.

Definitely worth the download or you can request free copies of a cassette tape or audio CD, look on the left side of the cmca.com page. Or free cassettes are at truckstops on the way or the ports of entry. Cotrip.org is where all the chain and road conditions are.

Originally posted 2005-12-31 00:31:15.

Durable goods are up (here), truck tonnage is up (here) and there is a “growing dearth of drivers”. Which I think is good news. Fleets may not, but if they paid drivers well enough, more people would choose trucking as a career. Their problem isn’t a shortage of drivers, it’s a shortage of people that will work cheap.

From Fleetowner.com:

Mitchell said. “Meanwhile, the overall rates being charged for transporting goods have been largely constrained. The simple combination of rising operating expenses and constrained rates make for a situation where eventually something is going to have to give.”

Even with all of those factors putting more pressure on trucking operations, strong freight demand is contributing to an upbeat mood; even helping to spur investments in trucks and trailers.

Wabash (trailer) adds jobs, Great Dane (trailer) opens service branch, Freightliner starts a third shift, 693 jobs.

Rates are rising:

However, transportation costs are continuing to escalate. That’s putting a lot of upward pressure on logistics costs for shippers, said Wilson – though to the benefit of truckers.

“Trucking costs increased by $20 billion [totaling $482 billion] in 2003 compared to 2002,” she noted. “Increased demand for their services allowed larger [trucking] companies to be more selective in the freight they were carrying and to push through rate increases. Also, with shippers still constrained by a lack of options, the trucking industry is continuing to be able to push through surcharges to cover surging fuel costs.”

And finally diesel prices drop again.

Originally posted 2008-06-04 20:37:59.

Bandits an ‘epidemic’ for truckers
“It’s become quite a problem. The biggest problem is when drivers are running up and down the road they’re talking on the CB, saying what they’re hauling. “They’re talking when they shouldn’t be talking.”

I have been an o/o for ms carriers and now swift transportation for about 9 years. The way I see this, is that the entire mess was created by the continous 14 hour rule. that makes it so that we are always under the gun. cant stop to eat, cant stop to shit, cant stop and take a short nap. cant stop for anything. also trucks are driving faster. really safe dont u think?  I would think that the truck stop industry would also be hurting from this. The problem is that people in the government keep trying to pass a rule, regulation, or law that will keep people from breaking the law. thats impossible but these people are tooooooo stupid to see that. Let us drive our trucks under rules that we can live by, the old ones for instance, and deal with the rule breakers.

I did respond personally to this o/o, but he probably didn’t like my response. The 14 hour rule isn’t perfect, but at least it was an attempt to cut down on the abuse and inefficiencies at the loading docks. According to several trucking industry articles (that I don’t feel like looking up again), they reported several carriers had implemented detention charges for inefficient shippers and shippers had become more efficient because of the new rule.

The part in the email about not being able to stop… total b/s.
FMCSA kept the split sleeper berth rule. If you really wanted to stop
and eat, log it as sleeper berth for two hours and extend your day.
Which also means you can go back and load your truck and log it as
sleeper berth too. But like I’ve always said, it’s up to the individual
to stand up for themselves because the government can’t do everything.
Besides, if you take a 3 hour break or two 1.5 hour breaks as off duty you can still finish driving within the 14 hours. How long does it take to drive 11 hours?

I tend to differ from
my emailer in that “this mess” was created by carriers (like Swift)
forcing drivers to work for free, log it as off duty and then drive for
a full day after a full day of either work or of waiting around on the
docks, like the old rules for instance. Deal with the rule breakers? I
would love it if someone would enforce the STAA or OSHA or someone
would deal with the carriers and dock time / labor. But it’s not going
to happen Unions or OOIDA don’t have the power any more to deal with
the situation. It’s got to be up to the individual to stand up and
either get paid or find a carrier that treats them right.

There’s still a lot of press about the “driver shortage”. There may
not be an actual shortage but drivers do have the upper hand in
choosing a carrier if only we could take advantage of it. Instead, some
drivers like my friend who stay with the same low-life carrier year
after year. Hopefully he has a dedicated run that has him home on
weekends or more and is getting the table scraps for pay so he can
survive.