Did you know that many truck drivers have said that they would rather quit the industry than use an Electronic Logging Device (ELD) device?
In April of this year, Overdrive magazine did a survey of its readers that showed 70% of truck drivers were opposed to the ELD mandate.
The magazine goes on to speculate what the marketplace would look like without these truckers, “Assume the 71 percent of independents who say they’d quit actually do, and apply that to carriers in the for-hire population with one to five trucks.
This would equate to an overall loss of about 260,000 trucks, according to data mined by RigDig Business Intelligence, Randall-Reilly Business Media’s equipment- and business-data analysis unit.
That would remove more than 10 percent of the industry’s capacity. When the 71 percent is applied to carriers with up to 15 trucks, it leads to a capacity reduction of more than 27 percent or about 709,000 trucks.”
The American Trucking Association (ATA) expects the driver shortage to grow to 239,000 by 2022, primarily due to retirement and increased driver demand.
Combine this with the notion that many drivers will quit when the ELD mandate becomes live next month and the ATA has seen double-digit gains in the annualized turnover rate for both small and large truckload fleets, jumping 16 percentage points to 90%, the highest it has been since Q4 2015.
For smaller carriers with less than $30M annual revenues, the turnover rate grew by 19 percentage points to 85%, the highest since Q1 2016. This news cements the acceleration of the driver shortage, making it an ever-critical challenge to be solved.
At Kuebix, we believe that the best approach to solving the driver shortage is for shippers to implement a four-part plan that focuses on young age groups to ensure a steady flow of skilled and energized individuals that see the profession in a new light.
Plus, shippers need to be more creative and think of new ways to gain efficiencies and reduce costs.
Technology like the Kuebix TMS can help by giving shippers high levels of visibility across their entire transportation networks - and connectivity among all partners.
Cloud-based Transportation Management Systems (TMS) are helping companies connect in one place to less-than-truckload, truckload, and parcel carriers; receive real-time quotes using direct carrier rates; and request and receive spot quotes using a single shipment management interface.
Technology can help put a dent in the driver shortage challenge while improving transportation operations – that’s a win-win for all parties involved.
Related Article: Technology Key to Addressing Driver Shortage
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