The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) back at the end of October with its annual study on the issues perceived by US trucking industry participants, including carriers, commercial drivers and other industry players, such as freight brokers.
Supply Chain Digest Says...
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In the end, not surprisingly, the never ending driver shortage topped the list, followed driver compensation. |
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All told, a record 3100 usable responses were received. Each respondent was ask to pick their top number 1, 2 and 3 issues from a list of 10 (with the alternative of "writing in" an issue not listed.
An issue that was ranked by a respondent as most important receives three points, while an issue ranked second received two points and an issue ranked third received one point.
The sum total of points for each issue were used to generate a prioritized list of top industry concerns. The issue with the highest number of points is identified as the top industry issue and is given an Industry Concern Index (ICI) to illustrate the relative level of concern from one issue to the next. The #1 issue receives an ICI of 100, and then all other issues are indexed against this value. For example, if an issue receives an ICI of 50, it was calculated to have half the level of concern as the top issue.
Got all that?
In the end, not surprisingly, the never ending driver shortage topped the list, followed driver compensation, and then availability of driver parking, as shown in the graphic below. There appears to be a glitch in the chart, as "parking" appears to have a higher score than compensation, but the rest of the report makes it clear compensation was the number 2 issue.
The driver shortage has been the number 1 overall issue since 2017.
Source: ATRI
But those are the combined scores across all participants. Not surprisingly, the priorities varied widely between carriers and drivers, as shown in the graphic below. Notice parking is the number 1 issue for drivers – but not even in the top 10 for carriers!
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Source: ATRI
The survey also asked participants about their ideas for addressing each issue. For the driver shortage, the top ranked solution was to "Advocate for Congress and federal agencies to develop an apprenticeship program to attract, train and retain safe 18-20 year old interstate drivers to the industry."
Number 2 was "Quantify the impact of state Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) delays on new driver credentialing for both Commercial Learner’s Permits (CLP) and Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) testing."
And number 3 was "Identify unique requirements and issues associated with expanded driver recruitment of women and minorities."
SCDigest doesn’t think any of those three is going to make a meaningful difference.
The report is available from the ATRI site here: Critical Issues in the Trucking Industry 2020
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