THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S NEW RULES GOVERNing a commercial truck driver’s hours of service (HOS) have reduced median driver wages by between 3. 2 and 5. 6 percent by cutting the number of hours in a driver’s workweek, according to a survey by the National Transportation Institute (NTI), a Kansas City, Mo.-based consultancy.

The survey, which as of press time had not yet been released, canvassed 412 trucking firms. Specific wage reductions will depend on the nature of the job and the types of services that drivers perform, according to Gordon Klemp, founder and president of NTI.

NTI estimates align closely with projections by Cameron Holzer, president of truckload carrier CRST Expedited, which in early October announced a $10 million wage increase over the next 12 months for 4,000 of its drivers. The increases, which took effect in mid-October, are the largest in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based transportation and logistics specialist’s 58-year history.

CRST Expedited is the largest unit of the

$1.3 billion company CRST International.

Holzer said the increases are designed to retain CRST Expedited’s existing drivers and to help it add about 200 new drivers to its fleet. CRST Expedited is experiencing driver shortages in California, the Midwest, and Texas, Holzer said. “We will hire from most any region at this time,” he said in an e-mail. Wage increases will continue beyond this year, and top performers could see their incomes rise well above the median per-driver rate, Holzer said.

Holzer said the increases are also aimed in part at offsetting the roughly 5-percent wage hit its drivers have taken as a result of HOS compliance. Holzer wouldn’t comment on driver wages at his company. It is believed base wages for truckload drivers range between $48,000 and $55,000 a year.

CRST Expedited mostly uses two-driver “sleeper” teams that operate dry van services over a median length of haul of 1,400 miles. A typical sleeper team can make a 1,000- to 1,200-mile run in a 24-hour period while still meeting HOS guidelines, according to Charles W. Clowdis Jr., managing director–transportation for consultancy IHS Global Insight.

The hours-of-service regulations were written in
December 2011 and enforced 18 months later. The rules
reduce a driver’s seven-day workweek by 15 percent to 70
hours from 82 hours. For the first time ever, drivers have
limits placed on their traditional 34-hour minimum restart
period, requiring it to occur once every seven days and to
include two rest periods between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. over two
consecutive days. The 2011 rule bars truckers from driving
more than eight hours without first taking at
least a 30-minute break. The rule left
unchanged language allowing drivers to
operate 11 consecutive hours behind the
wheel; safety advocates had hoped the
agency would reduce it to 10 hours.

The rules were the subject of a fierce legal battle pitting the Federal Motor Carrier Safety However, in early August, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., let stand virtually all of the FMCSA rules, effectively ending the legal fight.

EXPEDITED VS. NONEXPEDITED

Expedited shipments are time-sensitive in nature and can command as much as a 50-percent rate premium over shipments not needing rush deliveries, according to Clowdis of IHS. Shippers are willing to pay more for urgent, time-definite service, and CRST Expedited will be able to fold the higher labor costs into its rates, Clowdis said.

Holzer said customers understand CRST Expedited’s position and are willing to tolerate higher rates. Perhaps not surprisingly, Holzer said the wage increases would not apply to drivers working for CRST’s nonexpedited operation.

The last time driver wages rose appreciably was in 2004 and 2005, when they increased by about 20 percent over the two years, according to Noël Perry, a principal for the consultancy Transport Fundamentals. The gains were fueled by a tight market for drivers and by an economic boomlet propelled by what was in retrospect a Pyrrhic rise in housing-related activity. A freight recession that began in 2006, the collapse of the housing market, and the financial crisis and subsequent recession forced drivers to effectively give back half of those gains, Perry said.