But the give-and-take process is
coming to a head, and that’s a good
thing.
High-tech advances, notably the
advent of electronic on-board
recorders (EOBRs) that monitor a
truck’s every move, give neither side
room to hide. Gone (or fast going)
are the days when drivers prepared
paper logbooks—and sometimes
fudged the information in them—
and their employers would be none
the wiser. EOBRs, whose mandatory
use is the subject of legal action but
which are now being used by many
large truckers, do away with paper
logs and make it impossible for drivers to
exceed their hours-of-service limits.
Using the technology, the trucker
knows exactly where its drivers are, what
they should be doing, and what keeps
them from accomplishing the task within
the number of hours in a day they can
operate. The good news is that both sides
now have increased visibility into the
problems and their causes, and that’s a
key step toward achieving solutions,
according to Kohl of Marten Transport.
Kohl contended that as technology
becomes more pervasive in fleet operations,
the standard shipper demand of lumping
accessorial charges into the base rate rather
than breaking them out as individual line
items should be tossed over the side.
Unless the items and charges are listed
separately, Kohl said, carriers will never be
fairly compensated for the actual cost of
the individual services, and the specific
issues that slowed the trucks down and
warranted the accessorial fees in the first
place won’t be identified and corrected.
In a business where time is money and
driver delays cause real-time cash burn, “it’s
critical that drivers get paid for the ‘down’
time that they don’t control,” Kohl said.
However, shippers should not blindly
accept all accessorials without first understanding what they mean and then negotiating any appropriate changes with the
carriers, according to Charles W. Clowdis
Jr., a long-time trucking executive and
head of supply chain advisory services at
consultancy IHS Global Insight. “Most
carriers will be more than willing to discuss and negotiate,” Clowdis said.
To pre-empt the aggravation of having
to work things out across a bargaining
table, Clowdis has advised that, when
appropriate, shippers compensate truckers and drivers for going—sometimes literally—the extra mile upon request.
“If you need a driver to go into a residential area to make a delivery, give him a
few extra bucks for doing it,” he said.
4Show a little love. For years, there has been mounting evidence showing
that drivers jump companies and leave the
industry not because of inadequate pay or
benefits, but because of lifestyle issues and
the shabby treatment they receive from
