Utility Truck Design
The shortage of truckers that has been boiling in the United States for years has reached a boiling point, causing anxiety in small factories to the Federal Reserve. Transport companies have responded by increasing wages and increasing their transportation rates. Then, your customers have to choose between making smaller profits or transferring higher costs, which fuels inflation. Some producers have found a shortage of trucks, which can slow down economic growth. Do not expect the problem to disappear soon: in the tight labor market, construction and manufacturing jobs will continue to attract potential truckers. |
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1. How bad is the driver shortage?
The truck driver deficit rose to a record 296,311 in the second quarter of this year, according to FTR Transportation Intelligence. The change was rapid: in the fourth quarter of 2015, less than a tenth of drivers' jobs were vacant.
2. What caused the problem?
The root cause dates back to 2004, when federal rules changed to measure whether drivers had reached the maximum workday: drive 11 hours in a 14-hour period. The new rules say that the 11 hours start at the moment when a driver gets behind the wheel; before that, the watch would stop whenever a driver cooled his heels on a loading dock. (Only 6% of drivers are women). Since drivers could not work that long, more were needed to cover the routes. This started a shortage of drivers interrupted only by the recession at the end of 2007. And the truck driver population is aging. Only 20% of drivers are between 20 and 34 years old, compared to 30% of construction workers. That's partly because drivers must be at least 21 years old to cross state lines, according to federal regulations, eliminating long-distance transportation as a viable vocation for new high school graduates.
3. Why has it suddenly gotten worse?
Blame the strong economy. The tonnage of rental trucks increased by 7.9% in the first half of 2018 compared to the previous year, more than double the profit in the same period of 2017, according to American Trucking Associations. On the supply side, with the unemployment rate hovering its lowest level in almost half a century, construction and manufacturing attract workers more easily than trucks, which can take weeks on the road in one go. Payrolls rose by 4.1% in the last 12 months, ending in June for construction and 2.3% for the manufacturing industry, while truck transport was delayed with a gain of 1.7%. In addition, a recently imposed federal requirement that truck drivers use electronic recording devices has prevented drivers from tampering with their schedules. That's reduced capacity between 5-10%, according to several industry estimates.
4. Can something be done?
The industry has been pushing to allow people under the age of 21 to drive interstate routes; A bill on this was presented at the Congress in March.
5. Who is feeling the pain?
Anyone who needs to move goods. Long-distance transportation costs advanced by 9.4% in June compared to the previous year, according to the Labor Department, the largest increase in almost a decade. So truck transport has been a dismal part of many second-quarter earnings reports.
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