Trucking news and briefs for Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020:
ATRI: Drivers rank parking, ELDs as top concerns
Owner-operators view truck parking, the ELD mandate and driver compensation as the top issues facing the trucking industry, according to results of the American Transportation Research Institute’s annual Top 10 Trucking Industry Issues survey.
Based on survey responses from more than 3,100 industry stakeholders – including owner-operators, company drivers, fleet personnel, industry suppliers and more – the overall top issue facing the industry is the perceived driver shortage.
However, when drivers’ issues are separated from carriers’ issues, truck parking ranks as the No. 1 concern. This lines up with how owner-operator/independent contractor responded in the survey, and differs slightly from company drivers’ rankings, which had parking as their No. 2 issue.
Drivers as a whole ranked driver compensation as the industry’s second most pressing issue, which owner-operators ranked as their third concern, compared to being the top concern for company drivers.
ATRI said many drivers said the perceived driver shortage and compensation are linked, and that the solution for recruiting and retaining drivers is to increase pay or modify pay models.
Owner-operators ranked the ELD mandate as their No. 2 concern, which only ranked No. 10 for all commercial driver respondents to the survey. Company drivers ranked detention/delays at customer facilities as their No. 3 issue, which was also the No. 3 issue for truck drivers overall.
