Enduring words, indeed
WHEN YOU THINK OF FOLKS WHOSE WORDS HAVE ENDURED
throughout history, what names come to mind? William Shakespeare,
Will Rogers, or Thomas Jefferson, perhaps? Or maybe Martin Luther
King, Mark Twain, Vince Lombardi, or “Poor Richard” himself,
Benjamin Franklin?
There’s one name that appears on our own short list that we suspect might not appear on many such rosters. That would be Lana
Batts. Now a partner in the transport advisory firm Transport Capital
Partners, Batts is a long-time observer of the transportation and
logistics industry. Among other posts, she served as vice president of
government affairs for the American Trucking
Associations (ATA) in the 1980s and early 1990s
and as president of the ATA’s Interstate Truckload
Carriers Conference from 1994 to 2000.
It was during Batts’ term as president of the
Interstate Truckload Carriers Conference that we
conducted an interview with her at ATA headquarters in Alexandria, Va. At that session, we asked her
to name the top 10 issues facing the truckload sector. Her answer: “Well, nine of them would be the
driver shortage and if pressed for a 10th, I would
have to say the driver shortage.” Those words were
burned into the cerebral hard drive, where they
remain to this day.
We were reminded of that recently when reading
DC VELOCIT Y Senior Editor Mark Solomon’s feature story on the challenges of retaining truck drivers (page 32). In this latest installment of
the ongoing driver shortage saga (which seems to have gone on
almost as long as the entire “Star Wars” series), Mark describes the
sometimes extraordinary measures truckers are taking to retain drivers—assuming they’re lucky enough to find them in the first place.
And finding them isn’t easy. Despite a protracted economic downturn and lingering unemployment (just shy of 9. 2 percent at this
writing), literally thousands of big rigs are sitting idle for lack of a
driver. As Mark reports, the consultancy FTR Associates estimates the
U.S. trucking industry is short about 188,000 drivers right now.
If finding drivers is tough, retaining them is a challenge of almost
epic proportions. Based on first-quarter numbers, the American
Trucking Associations projects that driver turnover at large truckload
fleets will reach 75 percent in 2011. In real terms, that means three out
of four drivers in a given motor carrier’s employ will leave the company within a year.
Things are only marginally better for the smaller truckload fleets. Historically, these operations
experience lower rates of driver turnover, or
“churn,” than their large national counterparts
because the hauls tend to be shorter. But even
these fleets are struggling with the revolving door
right now. At these operations, one out of two
drivers is leaving within a year.
Where are they going? They’re following the
money. Experienced drivers with the proper credentials have become a hot
commodity in the logistics
world. It should probably come
as no surprise that many are
making themselves available to
the highest bidder.
So what does this mean for
the logistics executives responsible for keeping their company’s goods moving smoothly
through the supply chain? It’s
not hard to connect the dots.
Carriers are finding they must
pay more to recruit and retain
drivers. And if carriers have to
pay more, you can be assured there will be repercussions for you, the shipper. As you’ve no doubt
learned by now, as carrier costs go, so go your
freight bills.
So if Lana Batts’ words continue to resonate
with us today, it’s not just because she summed
up the problem so memorably. It’s also because
the threat has only intensified over time. The
driver shortage might develop into something
much bigger than just the top issue facing motor
carriers; it may, ultimately, become one of the top
issues facing you, their customer, as well.
