Specialist
Lecturer at University of Pennsylvania
Agenda
- Driver retention as a catalyst for increased transportation costs and supply chain shortages
- Outlook and potential solutions for driver shortage and retention, discussing shortening of supply chain stops and inefficient usage of drivers’ time
- Laws and regulation surrounding employment and licensing of truck drivers, including breakdown of CDL (commercial driver’s licence) and ELD (electronic logging device) dynamics
- Short- and longer-term outlook for the trucking market, including timeline for autonomy impacts
Questions
1.
Could you start by outlining truck driver capacity in today’s environment? We hear a lot about challenges and a driver shortage, and I think you’re here to present a counterargument to that in some regard.
2.
You said we’ve set up an inefficient trucking system where assets aren’t being utilised at the rate they could be. Is the premise of your thoughts on the perceived driver shortage that it’s an inefficient market?
3.
Is e-commerce making the supply chain less efficient? I’ve heard the counterargument that it’s not necessarily a driver shortage – instead, it’s lobbyist rhetoric, and it’s very pervasive. If the core problem is inefficiencies in truck driver time usage across any given supply chain, aren’t we going in the opposite direction? We’re adding stops via more depots, and holding inventory more spread out at more distribution centres than ever before in the US. This creates more stops, more inefficiencies for the truck driver vs a long hauler who is on the road potentially all day and is not making many stops beyond sleeping or refuelling.
4.
Can you break down the key pieces of regulation and their influence adding to the driver shortage discussion? It’s always been interesting to hear the reasoning behind a 21-year-old CDL [commercial driver’s licence] age vs an 18-year-old. There are also factors such as AB5 coming into play, as well as the ELD [electronic logging device] mandate.
5.
Previous Interviews have indicated the regulation environment on top of insurance premiums rising fairly quickly in the recent decades or even years has hit the owner-operator market hardest. Are the owner-operators for smaller firms disproportionately negatively impacted by these types of regulations? Is it harder for owner-operators to operate, and operate profitably in today’s environment relative to 10 years ago?
6.
What is your outlook for 2022 if the driver shortage continues? Would you expect regulatory changes if the issue exacerbates?
7.
When might autonomy and other technology make needle-moving impacts in the drivers’ market? How does it start, what does it evolve into and over what timeline?
8.
Are there any final key topics that you’d like to raise or reiterate in conclusion?
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