‘Put it on a paycheck’

Is it unreasonable for truckers to expect to be paid for all of their time? The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association says no, it isn’t.

OOIDA also doesn’t think that the men and women who keep America’s essential goods moving are asking too much to expect to be able to find a safe place to park.

Nor does the Association think that an increase in regulations equals an increase in safety.

Of course, none of these beliefs are new to OOIDA. The Association has spoken out on these issues for years.

The only difference is that with a supply chain crisis in the spotlight, there is a glimmer of hope that people in a position of power may actually be listening.

“It’s not unreasonable for drivers to be expected to be paid for their time on the job,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said moments before attending a White House supply chain meeting in December. “It’s too frequent and too common that drivers are held for as much as 30 hours a week simply trying to get loaded and unloaded. Those core issues need to be addressed, and we certainly want to be at the table to make sure that those issues are not only considered but acted on.”

Spencer’s trip to the White House was one of several recent attempts by the administration to learn about the supply chain and to hear from industry leaders on what can be done to keep goods moving and to keep truck drivers from turning in their keys.

OOIDA hasn’t been shy in its response. Through various roundtables, testimony, driver forums, committee meetings and formal comments over the past year, OOIDA has repeatedly pounded the table for more compensation, more parking and fewer regulations.

Compensation

If the wheels aren’t moving, it’s likely that a truck driver isn’t getting paid. And with dysfunction at many of the ports and a lack of urgency from shippers and receivers to get loaded or unloaded, truck drivers burn a lot of hours each week with nothing to show for it. According to a 2020 OOIDA Foundation survey, drivers report that they lose from $907 to $1,512 per week because of detention time.

There has to be a better way, Spencer says.

“Anyone who runs an office knows that you’re not going to get people to come to work for you if we say, ‘You need to be here at 7 or 8 in the morning, but I may not start paying you until 12 or 1 or maybe even 2 or 4.’ But that is the reality for drivers every day,” Spencer said. “They are expected to give away that portion of their time. We have to find ways to be better than that.”

The administration says it wants to improve driver retention as the turnover rate at large fleets has been at 90% or more for years. Spencer said that doing so starts with showing drivers they are appreciated through their paycheck.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for a truck driver was $47,130. Although the money is competitive with some other blue-collar jobs, truckers typically have to work 60 to 70 hours a week to make that salary. Plus, unlike most other blue-collar jobs, truck drivers are confined to the road and away from family and friends.

“Pay for truck drivers has largely been stagnant for 40 years or so,” Spencer said. “It needs to get better. It needs to improve, and drivers certainly all – rightfully in my opinion – believe their time has value. And they believe others in the supply chain should recognize that too. Put it on the paycheck.”

The recently passed infrastructure law includes a provision that tasks the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Labor to begin an in-depth study of driver compensation, including the time drivers spend waiting to pick up or drop off freight without getting paid. The infrastructure law also calls for the creation of a task force to investigate predatory truck leasing arrangements.

In addition, the White House announced in December that the administration intends to hold several listening sessions and driver forums over the coming months in order to deliver a comprehensive action plan “outlining any further administrative and regulatory actions the administration can take to support quality trucking jobs.”

At a driver forum in South Carolina this past December, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that improving the profession is the goal.

“It’s really important to us that this career is supported,” he said. “We have to retain our truckers. Getting that right means improving the quality of life. It means showing a respect for this profession, and, obviously, a big part of that is wages and compensation … It’s important to us that we’re doing two things at once – encouraging people to get in a field that is really important and making sure that it really does pay.”

Truck parking

Improving pay is a great start, but truck drivers also need a safe place to take a break after a day’s work.

The lack of truck parking reached crisis mode years ago, OOIDA says, and is an issue that involves the safety of the truck drivers as well as the motoring public.

“We have to recognize that as a genuine need for the country,” Spencer said.

In November, OOIDA wrote to the U.S. Department of Transportation and asked Buttigieg to dedicate $1 billion in discretionary funding to be dedicated to the lack of truck parking.

“The enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act presents an opportunity for you to address a safety crisis that America’s truckers have faced for decades – the national shortage of truck parking,” OOIDA wrote.

When truck drivers can’t find a safe place to park, they can be forced to choose between parking on the shoulder or with being in violation of the hours-of-service regulations. OOIDA said the lack of truck parking creates a major safety concern for truck drivers as well as the motoring public.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act does not dedicate any funding exclusively to truck parking, despite the broad bipartisan and industry support for federal investment,” OOIDA wrote. “With the significant amount of new discretionary funding your department will be responsible for allocating under the IIJA, we believe that you have the ability to direct funding to critical truck parking projects across the country.”

A House version of the highway bill included a measure to dedicate $1 billion for truck parking construction. The bill passed the House but then died in the Senate. The Senate version, which ultimately passed, did not dedicate any money toward truck parking.

OOIDA says that fixing the truck parking crisis could also contribute to fixing the nation’s supply chain crisis.

At a House Transportation & Infrastructure hearing on supply chains in November, transportation expert David Correll said the American Trucking Associations’ estimated 80,000 driver deficit could be resolved by simply improving the utilization of America’s existing truck drivers by 18 minutes per day. According to Correll’s data, truckers typically drive only 6.5 hours a day even though they are allowed a maximum of 11 hours.

“My research leads me to see the current situation not so much as a headcount shortage of drivers but rather an endemic undervaluing of our American truck drivers’ time,” Correll said.

OOIDA pointed out that truck parking studies indicate truckers spend an average of 56 minutes per day of driving time looking for parking.

“Truckers consistently rank the lack of truck parking as one of their top concerns, and there are few better ways you could improve their safety and livelihoods than by addressing the parking crisis,” OOIDA wrote. “It should not be a shock to anyone that good drivers leave the industry over the inability to find something as basic as a safe place to rest when they are weary.

“We can and should do better by these absolutely and always essential workers.”

Overregulation

At the December driver forum in South Carolina, OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh relayed truckers’ frustration regarding overregulation to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Drivers are always on the hook,” Pugh said. “There’s a book with the thickness of the Bible full of regulations that truckers have to follow. Let’s look at these regulations, and keep the regulations that make sense. There are so many regulations that have nothing to do with safety whatsoever. Guys are so sick of being overregulated.”

OOIDA says that the burdens caused by overregulation can hinder safety by creating extra stress on drivers and can also prompt experienced and safe drivers to leave the industry.

The Association also filed comments in December to the U.S. Department of Transportation, asking for regulations without safety benefits to be removed.

Although OOIDA agrees safety should be the U.S. DOT’s priority, the Association said that more regulations do not necessarily lead to an improvement in safety. OOIDA used the electronic logging mandate as an example. Since the costly regulation was put into effect, truck-related fatal crashes have continued to increase.

“We believe DOT should address burdensome one-size-fits-all trucking regulations that unnecessarily punish small businesses,” OOIDA wrote. “Many of these policies are based solely on improving compliance with regulations rather than actual safety performance. For instance, small businesses have been forced to bear the majority of the $1.8 billion price tag associated with the FMCSA’s ELD mandate.

“While FMCSA has touted improved hours-of-service compliance, we have not seen any data suggesting that ELDs actually reduce crashes. As a result of this compliance-focused approach, fatalities and crash rates have been going in the wrong direction for more than a decade.”

OOIDA said it challenges the administration to find less intrusive alternatives that actually enhance highway safety and reduce crashes.

The department, including FMCSA, should regularly review its regulations to determine if they have actually done anything to improve safety, OOIDA said.

“Regulatory reviews should be done in an objective manner that analyzes crash data and/or other information that has a proven statistical relationship with crash risk.

The Association also said that U.S. DOT should communicate with truck drivers to find out what is working and what isn’t.

At the driver forum, Pugh said FMCSA should be more concerned about training drivers properly than ticketing them after the violation occurred.

“Unfortunately, it seems to me that that we continually legislate and enforce things after the fact instead of being ahead,” Pugh said. “We want to ticket after the fact. We want to write tickets after the fact, but let’s get ahead of this thing. Train these guys. These poor guys come into this industry and get no training. Guys get their own authority. If you have $600 or whatever, you can get your own authority and be a motor carrier without knowing anything about trucking. Then a year later, you’re going to come in and do an audit and give this guy all these fines because he didn’t know what he was doing. Why isn’t there a prerequisite for getting your authority?”

Buttigieg said the U.S. DOT will be proactive in evaluating regulations.

“Every year, we have a regulatory agenda, and we should be looking at what can be improved – that means adding and subtracting – to make sure that what’s in there really works.”

No quick fix

At the House hearing in November, Correll told Congress that there is not a single culprit to the supply chain problem. Instead, he said there is a need for the reordering of priorities. The lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and Logistics said that those priorities include better utilization and improved treatment of truck drivers.

“We’re all sort of living with the consequences of the prioritizations we made in America over years and over the pandemic, and the only way we can do better is to reprioritize in a way that respects truck drivers’ time and respects truck drivers’ dignity and harmonizes the system,” Correll said. LL