It was just announced recently that the DOT has passed a law stating that airlines are only allowed to hold passengers on a plane on the tarmac for a maximum of three hours, after which carriers must deplane passengers or face fines. The rules also require airlines to provide food and water to passengers within two hours of a delay, keep the lavatories functional, and provide medical attention to passengers who may need it. How does this apply to the trucking industry? It doesn’t, yet. But it sure could lay the groundwork for some much-needed relief from a problem that has plagued the trucking industry for many years.
Truckers Regularly Forced To Sit And Wait
For anyone with experience as a truck driver, you’re well aware that one of the biggest problems that drivers face is the amount of down time spent waiting to load or unload at a customer. Back when you could easily split sleeper berth time, sitting and waiting for a few hours was no big deal – you catch a nap, log your time in the sleeper, move your logbook to line two when they’re done with you, and roll on. Annoying, but no big tragedy.
But since the advent of the 14 hour logbook rule, splitting sleeper time isn’t really much of an effective option. Once that clock starts, your fourteen hours is ticking away – even if you’re just sitting at the dock making no money whatsoever. And it’s not just waiting for a couple hours that’s the problem. It’s not uncommon to sit for six to twelve hours (or more) waiting for them to get to you. Your company may pay you a tiny bit of money for waiting, but it’s pennies compared with the amount of money a driver loses if they’re forced to delay their next load by an entire day because they ran out of hours before they could get the job done on time.
Trucking Companies Are Suffering Too
Let’s not forget trucking companies have huge expenses to cover and the trucking industry has very, very tight profit margins. That is, if your company is even profitable – and very few companies are consistently profitable year after year. Efficiency is the golden rule for trucking companies – they have to get the most production possible out of each truck in the fleet if they want to be around for long.
Why Don’t Trucking Companies Force Customers To Hurry Up?
Trucking companies would love to be able to put a stop to this type of abuse – which is exactly what it is much of the time. But they’re powerless to do so. Competition is so fierce in the industry that as soon as one trucking company puts their foot down with a customer, another comes along and steals the contract away. It’s simply impossible to expect trucking companies and their customers to all work together like one big happy family and make it all better. Somebody has to step in and fix this problem.
Government Regulation To The Rescue?
People tend to cringe at the thought of government getting involved in anything, and generally it’s for good reason. The government tends to make a mess out of things that were better off before they got involved. But there is a time and a place for government regulation, and this is the time and the place.
Trucking companies and drivers are always trying to turn all of the miles they can, and trucking companies even encourage driver production by paying us by the mile instead of by the hour. This is actually a very good thing because that means when the truck is being used efficiently, both the driver and the company benefit. When the truck sits, nobody is making money. This type of business model is incredibly hard to achieve in most industries and our economy and the trucking industry have benefited greatly from this alignment of interests. But, of course, there’s always one problem – the logbook.
Government always focuses on keeping the industry in line by limiting the hours a driver can work – which they must do – we all know this. But the two biggest trucking-related problems that are crippling our economy are overcrowded highways and downtime at the customers. Fixing the roadways is an incredibly expensive, long-term proposition. Gaining efficiencies in our economy through the building of more roads would be huge, but there’s a much faster, easier place to start.
Limit The Time Trucks Can Sit At Customers
The government could pass legislation rather easily stating that customers only have a certain number of hours to either load or unload a truck before they face fines. With modern GPS tracking and networked computer systems it would be incredibly simple to know exactly when a truck arrived at the customer, and what time the actual appointment was – if there was one. The same time constraints would apply to first-come-first serve appointments – once that truck comes through the gate, the clock is ticking for the customer.
Huge Gains For Our Economy
By keeping the trucks moving, the economy would see incredible benefits. The cost of transporting goods would drop noticeably. The number of trucks on the road would decrease slightly. The number of drivers having to break the law in order to earn a decent paycheck would decrease. Trucking companies would be more profitable, drivers would be more productive, the roadways would get a bit of relief, and the overall cost of goods in our economy would decrease. Even the factories and warehouses would become more productive as they’d have to make much better use of time and manpower to get the job done in time.
Everyone Wins
Passing this sort of legislation would be a huge victory for everyone – truck drivers, trucking companies, warehouses and manufacturers, and the consumer. It would be inexpensive, relatively easy to enforce, and the benefits would be realized quickly. Do you think this is feasible? Does government intervention terrify you? Are there others areas we should be looking at first? Leave a comment below – let me know what you think.
It would seem to me that this type of law would force shippers and receivers to tell drivers they couldn't arrive before their appointment time. So drivers would probably just have to be sitting somewhere else.
Hey lak – I see what you're saying. I always pushed hard to try to get pickups and deliveries moved ahead as often as possible. No question I made a lot more money that way.
There are already a good number of shippers and receivers that won't allow you to come in before your appointment time, and the ones that do allow it wouldn't be obligated to unload you early but would still have that option if they're willing and able – which a lot of places are. The biggest problem lies with the shippers and receivers that just flat-out abuse the system the way it is. We've all sat at these type of customers countless times when there were no other trucks there, or maybe one other truck, and you wind up sitting for six or eight hours before they even begin working on you. There's absolutely no reason for this most of the time other than they just don't feel like bothering with it at the moment or the shift that's on duty right now figures they'll just push it to the next shift. Then there's the shippers that schedule you for 8:00 am, put you in the dock, and leave you there for five hours untouched and you finally finish getting unloaded about 3:00 pm. Just abusive and/or inefficient operations at the customer – which wouldn't happen if they had a time limit to get you out of there.
Even if shippers wouldn't let you deliver early, most often the load planners and dispatchers will know this and won't schedule a driver on a load hoping they can get it picked up and delivered early. It's really about expectations and the ability to properly plan ahead. If a load planner knew almost for certain that their trucks would be loaded and unloaded in a timely manner they could pre-plan a driver two or three loads in advance far more easily than they can now – which would lead to much more efficient operations overall.
If you look at the airlines – they never, ever take-off early. They can't – people would miss the planes. And when was the last time your plane landed, taxied to the terminal, and made you sit there for six hours waiting to get off the plane or get your luggage? Almost never. And when there's a delay of a even two or three hours in the system it makes national headlines and people are in an uproar. Heck, in trucking you're pleasantly surprised to wait only two or three hours. But knowing the plane will almost always take off on time, passengers can plan ahead and book a flight time that suits them. Can you imagine going to an airport with an 8:00 am take-off time and not knowing if the plane will even take off by 2:00 pm? How could your relatives on the other end ever make efficient plans for picking you up? How would you even book your flight in the first place? Would you leave a day early just in case? What if it does take off on time – will anyone be able to pick you up a day early on the other end? Will your Hotel have a room available? How woud you even book a room – get one an extra day early just in case? How could anyone ever travel efficiently? They couldn't.
Our airline systems are amazingly efficient and reliable when you really dive into the numbers and consider the size and scope of their operations. If airlines can get an endless stream of jets loaded, unloaded, and maintained on time, then a shipper or receiver can certainly do the same – and everything would run far more efficiently.
This is really well thought out. I'm sure there would be a number of issues involved with the attempt to write regulations of the type you're promoting but, with a lot of work and input from drivers, carriers and shippers, I do believe a workable solution could be reached. Anyway, interesting and well written piece.
Thank you Phil.
I absolutely believe a workable solution could be reached – no question. The govt is always trying to tweak the hours of service, truck size and weight limits, analyze restricted truck routes, and all kinds of stuff to try to make the system safer and more efficient, but they're ignoring the 800 pound elephant in the room – the fact that trucks are needlessly sitting idly for hours on end on a regular basis – disrupting sleep patterns, forcing more trucks to be on the highways, and causing massive inefficiencies in the system.
For many years I've felt this situation being ignored has been a glaring oversight that must be addressed.
Test reply.
Great article Brett. While I'm not real confident a law such as this will be put in place anytime in the near future, it sure would be nice. Let's not forget the customers who say "turn to channel 3 on your CB and we'll call you when your load is ready." It's 2am, and you're dead tired. Can you sleep? Sure, at the risk of missing your truck number being called and the customer marking you as "late" with your own company giving you a service failure! Sometimes, it's simple things that these customers don't understand. In the age of cell phones, why can't they call me? That way I don't have to tune out the CB, but still pay enough attention to if they call my truck number, and the ringer on my cell phone would wake me up.
A lot of things in trucking are made much more difficult than they have to be…mostly because people just don't care enough to think of a simple solution.
You're right – I don't think this type of law will be enacted real soon simply because there isn't enough awareness of the problem outside of trucking, and I'm not sure if there's even enough concern or clout to begin such a process with the trucking industry itself. The airline laws went into effect pretty swiftly because it's something that could effect almost every American at some point so the general public was quite interested in getting it done. But not enough people understand the problem to really push for a solution right now. This is the type of thing the ATA would have to get behind to get anyone's attention.
And I totally agree – a lot of things are made far more difficult than they have to be for truckers simply because nobody really cares enough about truckers to bother – quite sad but true.
This is the number 1 problem in trucking as far as I am concerned. If we can get this to change it will help the trucking industry out and even the shippers/recievers too. But will this ever happen as there are 3 million trucks on the road and a whole lot more people boarding planes daily. Airline industry gets more
attention due to the number of people using it daily. Now we need to get the same respect and rules applied to stop the wasted time.
I absolutely agree – it is the biggest problem in trucking. I don't understand why everyone focuses on the damn logbook rules all the time – they're fine. I guess it's because it's a topic that the general public gets all worked up over so it's easy for Senators and Congressmen to persuade the general public that they're working hard to look out for their safety – and thus get re-elected.
If the general public understood how much money they would save and how many fewer trucks would be needed on the road they would get behind this in an instant.
My Husband has been driving a long time, I also rode for a few years. I really wish there was a way to make the customer understand that we do not get paid to sit. At present my husband runs for .32 a mile and runs a dedicated route so he also does his own unloading at .10 a box with an average of 2200 boxes a week.When he gets to his drop half the time they are late or they are slow as they want to sort it as is comes off the truck some of the customers refuse to buy rollers and now my husbands company is using the paperless logs and a little black box with a iratateing voice telling him just how much time he has left to drive, if that is while searching for a parking place in sunny Cali then he is in deep yogurt , so than he has that issue to deal with. I feel as though the folks who make the DOT rules have been truckers. maybe that should be a requirement of the job
Thanks Mrs B! You're exactly right, and you've also touched on the other biggest problem in trucking – finding parking.
Somehow in our society truck drivers have been looked down upon for quite some time now. It didn't used to be that way, but it has been for a long time. Truckers rarely get much consideration from anyone – the DOT, the customers – even your own company often times will treat you with very little consideration. I can understand that most people have never done it so they don't know what we go through. But you don't have to live it to understand that we have places to go and a job to do and having us sit for endless hours in parking lots doing nothing is unacceptable. Even if they don't care enough to take the time to understand what the job must entail for us, it should be basic human decency to have a little respect for someone and don't treat drivers like dogs you can just chain up outside and ignore them for hours at a time.
But when basic human decency and respect fail, laws must be made. Such are the ways of society. It's time they make some laws to curtail this treatment. Thanks Mrs B!
The detention time(usually 2 hours) paid is a joke for those who do pay it and most never gets to the driver. Shippers and recievers need to be fined big bucks like the airlines will be. In today's paper it says UP TO $27,500 PER PASSANGER IF PLANES ARE DELAYED 3 HOURS AND PASSENGERS CAN'T GET OFF.
Huge fines to the shippers/recievers after 2 hours would be a big part of stopping this problem. I know more people are involved with airplanes, but trucking needs the same respect to keep the trucks moving. And get rid of the lumper fee. You wanted the product, its your problem to get it off the trailer without the driver paying for it with a com check.