Please complete the form below for a quick response


    Name (required)

    Your Email (required)

    Subject

    Your Message

     

    Skip to Content

    Category Archives: Industry News

    How the Coronavirus Pandemic Might Reshape Trucking’s Future

    Trucks on the open road, southwest US
    Eric S. — Getty Images

    The world changed nearly overnight due to the ­novel coronavirus pandemic and governments’ responses to it, but analysts postulate it will take a long time to return to a semblance of normalcy.

    Some changes that have occurred within the trucking industry might pass quickly as com­munities ­reopen and business revives, but others are expected to remain in place for a long time, or even permanently.

    The pandemic’s effects on commercial transportation and logistics are clear, running the gamut from health and safety to operational and economic.

    Industry participants and analysts say the fluid situation makes it difficult to predict what the transportation environment will be like in six months — much less years from now — but certain long-term trends already are starting to emerge.

    0 Continue Reading →

    FMCSA extends expired CDL, CLP, med cert waiver

    The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has extended a waiver that gives truck drivers additional time to renew their expired CDLs and medical certificates due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

    Drivers now have until Sept. 30 to renew licenses and certificates that expired on or after March 1. The initial waiver, granted March 24, extended the expiration dates until June 30.

     

     

    In addition to CDLs and medical certificates, the waiver also includes commercial learner’s permits, extending the validity period for CLP holders without requiring them to retake the general and endorsement knowledge tests.

    States, CDL holders, CLP holders, and interstate non-CDL commercial drivers are covered under the waiver, FMCSA says.

    The agency says truckers have had difficulty scheduling DOT physicals and driver’s license renewals due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

     

    0 Continue Reading →

    Trucking employment ticked up in June

    CCJ‘s Indicators rounds up the latest reports on trucking business indicators on rates, freight, equipment, the economy and more.

     

    Employment in the for-hire trucking industry grew by 2,500 jobs in June, according to the Department of Labor’s monthly Employment Situation Report. According to the DOL, trucking has added jobs every month since October, save for a dip in April.

    Up a cool 25,000 jobs from the same month last year, employment in the for-hire trucking industry totaled 1.4774 million

    0 Continue Reading →

    FMCSA denies OOIDA request to exempt certain small carriers from ELD mandate

    A petition to the U.S. DOT asking for a reprieve from ELD compliance for small carries with clean safety records has been denied, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association announced Tuesday.

    OOIDA filed the exemption request last November, less than a month before the deadline by which drivers were required to begin using an electronic logging device. The association requested that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration allow small businesses, defined as those with less than $27.5 million in annual revenue, to continue using paper logs for to record duty status if they had no at-fault crashes and did not have a safety rating of Unsatisfactory.

    0 Continue Reading →

    To ease trucker shortage, Trump team considers dropping age requirement to 18

    The Trump administration is advancing a program to let some younger workers drive big trucks across state lines, signaling an openness to lowering the driving age more broadly amid a massive trucker shortage.

    The federal government currently require

    0 Continue Reading →

    Indicators: ‘Trucking Conditions’ remain near record highs, forecasted to hold into 2019

    Market conditions for trucking companies, as measured by FTR’s monthly Trucking Conditions Index, remained heavily tilted toward carriers in April. What’s more, says FTR, carriers can expect the conditions to continue to improve and hold strongly in carriers’ favor into 2019.

    0 Continue Reading →

    Small US trucking companies bolster capacity

    Shippers concerned about tightening US truck capacity may need to broaden their search for space to put freight.

    Large US truckload carriers are clawing back their own capacity by cutting trucks from their fleets, but a rise in the number of motor carriers at the other end of the for-hire trucking scale is adding to overall available capacity.

    The question for shippers is can they access that capacity and, for larger shippers, is that capacity actually usable? In addition, will the arrival of the electronic logging mandate in December choke that growth?

    0 Continue Reading →

    Is the digital experience all it’s cracked up to be, in trucking and elsewhere?

    As we all know, trucking is in the midst of a digital revolution of sorts; with the industry experiencing all sorts of disruptive effects as a result (go here and here for more on that).

    But here’s the thing: are the human beings caught up in all of this “digitization” happy about it? And are they looking forward to more of it? That’s a key point for as I’ve noted in this space before, people will play a critical role in making this “digital transformation” a success.

    0 Continue Reading →

    California plans to fix its transportation infrastructure by selling out its clean air to the trucking industry

    If the transportation funding proposal unveiled this week by Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislative leaders simply contained the gas tax hikes and vehicle fees outlined in their press releases and statements, then of course lawmakers should support the proposal. The state’s infrastructure needs far outpace the revenue collected in fuel taxes, which California has relied on for

    0 Continue Reading →

    Driver turnover rates tumbled in late ’16 to lowest since 2011

    The driver turnover rate at large truckload fleets fell to its lowest point since 2011 in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the American Trucking Associations’ quarterly turnover report. The turnover rate at large fleets, those with more than $30 million in annual revenue, fell 16 points to 71 percent in 2016’s final three months.

    ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello cites the year’s choppy freight environment for the dip in turnover rates. “As inventory levels throughout the supply chain are drawn down to more normal levels, and freight volumes recover, we should see turnover rise along with concerns about the driver shortage,” he says.

    0 Continue Reading →