Blog

In January 2015, long-haul driver Kevin Kimmel entered a truck stop outside Richmond, VA, for a rest break and to complete his log. As he worked, he observed men gathered around a nearby RV. And he saw something else: a young woman's face at the window—but fleetingly, as though someone inside the vehicle had pulled her from view.

As a means to combat the driver shortage issue, the trucking industry is identifying the most intriguing incentives to draw new employees. There’s an understanding of why there is a shortage -- it’s partially due to the aging out and retirement of current drivers and a decrease in safe driving abilities. The other piece to the puzzle is the recruitment and retention of the next generation of drivers. And, where there is a constant push for students to leave high school and go straight to college, training schools and companies are hard pressed when recruiting new candidates to enter the industry.

The organizational structures and IT systems of transportation companies traditionally have been geared for operations and the order-to-cash cycle of loads. Investments in fleet maintenance management systems and related integrations tend to lag behind, causing transactions and information to become lost on an island of its own, apart from the full business enterprise.

It’s not always business as usual when it comes to embracing data and using business intelligence to drive company operations. For fleets and 3PLs, adopting tools that seem far removed the road might seem counter intuitive to business practices that have worked for decades. But if you haven’t been questioning the effectiveness of those practices in the current business climate you’re getting left in the dust by competitors who are leveraging technology to maximize the most important, and least visible, elements of success: saving time and improving efficiencies.

When it comes to recruiting and hiring new drivers, the first thing recruits most likely look at is the pay rate. But, what happens when multiple companies have competing offers? At that point, secondary perks become more important. These are perks that will improve drivers’ quality of life, such as better in-cab conditions, good equipment and comfort items.

We’ve all become familiar with SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) cloud computing models that are used to provide a range of software and other applications. You may have even come across the term IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), which allows companies to configure and deploy virtual technologies that are hosted in a data center and managed remotely.

One of the hardest parts about running a business is hiring and retaining qualified employees. In the transportation industry, that means hiring employees who drive the trucks and others who manage those drivers. It’s especially important to find the right people because the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scores affect how the business operates.

Motor carriers with regional and long-distance operations may soon be using a technology that can increase the fuel efficiency of semi-trailers by 7% on average.

A “confidence report” published by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NAFCE) in 2016 lists the fuel savings of two-truck platooning technology at 4% for the lead vehicle and 10% for the following vehicle.

Local and regional freight haulers cannot afford to bet their business success on forecasts about national economic activity. Despite rosy forecasts for the Canadian economy, transporters of oil and lumber in western provinces are dealing with falling volumes driven by North American and international factors.

California. Great place for movie stars, techies and wine lovers. But not such a great place if you’re an owner-operator or motor carrier that relies on them, thanks to the California Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc., case.

Essentially, in what is being labeled a landmark decision, it classifies all independent contractors (ICs) as employees unless companies can demonstrate otherwise based on the so-called ABC test. Unfortunately, this won’t be an easy test to pass for most of California’s 70,000+ owner-operators. That puts drivers and motor carriers in the Golden State in the dark about what to do—or if they should do anything at all.