Werner Enterprises

The best fleets, buffeted by higher costs and now increasing environmental mandates, manage to stay ahead of competition through vision, strategy, and execution. But in the end, executives say it’s their people who make the biggest difference.

If shippers think implications from pending truck regulation issues don’t affect them, they’d be wrong. Most of these proposed regs around alternative fuels and speed have a direct impact on truck capacity and costs—and eventually rates.

The chief executive of one of America’s largest trucking fleets is warning of the unintended consequences of “an avalanche” of state and federal mandates for electric trucks.

The decades-long and ever-perplexing truck driver shortage—estimated in excess of 80,000 by the American Trucking Associations—has eased somewhat, according to leading trucking executives. In exclusive interviews with LM, top executives say years of pay increases have apparently paid off in better retention and recruitment of qualified drivers.

Omaha, Neb.-based Werner Enterprises, a global freight transportation and logistics services provider and the nation’s seventh-largest truckload carrier, said this week it has acquired Tampa, Fla.-based Reed Transport Services Inc. and RTS-TMS Inc., through the signing of a definitive agreement and closing on the acquisition of 100% of Reed’s stock.

Werner officials said that bringing NEHDS into the fold will allow it to integrate the company into its existing nationwide final mile home delivery network, for big and bulky products, and also provide current and existing customers with an expanded menu of service offerings.

The acquisition of ECM will boost Omaha, Neb.-based Werner’s fleet by more than 6% as well as increasing coverage for regional short-haul freight in these geographic markets.

It’s starting to affect the trucking industry’s Class 8 sales, which were off to a torrid start in 2021. Even with the driver shortage affecting overall capacity, trucking companies are seeking to modernize their fleets to take advantage of fuel savings, reduced maintenance and newer amenities.

Trucking is seeing a big bounce back in demand, and tight capacity puts TL carriers in control of rates—but longer-term issues remain. Who will supply the necessary pool of drivers? And will a new spike in the pandemic drive another slowdown?

The latest tweaks to the 83-year-old truck driver hours of service regulations went into effect Sept. 29 as the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) attempts to build in flexibility to a monolithic regulation covering some 3.5 million long-haul truckers.

When asked to assess 2020 Peak Season prospects, a pair of executives at some of the nation’s leading motor carrier and logistics services providers said at this week’s Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) virtual conference indicated things are looking solid.

Like seemingly everything else in Washington, Republicans and Democrats are light years apart in negotiations over a new five-year federal highway spending bill, and seem likely to kick the problem into 2021. That inaction—on what was once considered a so-called “must-pass” piece of legislation—is frustrating to leading trucking executives and others who rely on a modern American infrastructure network of interstate highways, bridges, ports and airports.

Company officials said that Werner Final Mile will provide national delivery and related services to residential and business locations throughout all Canadian provinces and territories. They added that this service leverages the company’s strategic alliance agent network, delivering large or heavy items by two uniformed associates manning a liftgate straight truck, in order for customers to ship things like non-conveyable products, including returns and exchanges, in the United States and Canada.

There is a new trend increasingly seen in third-party logistics (3PL). Major 3PLs and brokers are evolving from pursuing "one and done" implementations of third-party transportation technologies.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently had an opportunity to talk to Derek Leathers, president and chief executive officer of Werner Enterprises, about market conditions, the ongoing driver shortage, and pricing, among other topics.