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Carriers say waiting time main concern under hours rule
By Linda Longton
Time spent loading and unloading trucks is by far the biggest issue impacting productivity under the new hours-of-service rule, said attendees at a roundtable held during the Truckload Carriers Association's recent annual meeting in Hawaii.
Carrier attendees agreed that communication with customers is key to regaining lost productivity. For example, to help his customers better understand the impact of the new rule, Bryan Molinaro-Blonigan with Warren Transport, Waterloo, Iowa, said his company has been holding a series of focus groups. Too often, he said, when calculating a driver’s hours for a load, customers assume they are getting a “fresh truck” every time. “They don’t understand that the guy may already have four or five hours out of the day,” he said.
The new rule has led many carriers to charge for detention time. “We’re doing a good job of billing,” said Bill Wilson, vice president of safety and risk management for John Christner Trucking, Sapulpa, Okla. “I don’t know if we’re collecting that much, but we’re billing it.”
Wilson’s company uses a software program that alerts customers that detention will start after a predetermined period of time. “I think it’s helping. I think our customers are getting us off the docks quicker,” he said.
Detention time becomes especially critical on multi-stop loads, said Dave Scureman, executive vice president for Louis J. Kennedy Trucking, Kearny, N.J. “Some customers were trying to turn us into an LTL carrier,” he said, by asking drivers to make six to eight stops on a truckload. But now “customers are working with us to reduce our detention time drastically,” he said.
Working with his customers has also helped Vern Garner convert many accounts to drop and hook operations, said Garner, owner of Garner Transportation Group and former chairman of the American Trucking Associations. That change, he said, has also helped with recruitment and retention. “Even though we paid for detention, the drivers want to be driving, not sitting,” he said.
Beginning April 15, O&S Trucking will begin paying detention time to drivers “whether or not we collect it,” said Jim O’Neal. “We’re not going to do this on the backs of drivers,” he said. O’Neal, who is chairman of TCA’s shipper-carrier relations committee, says TCA will work with NITLeague and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to revisit the issue of shipper-carrier best practices. “We are trying to facilitate a meeting to work through issues such as a standard amount of waiting time.”
Asked to raise their hands if they believed drivers and owner-operators will come out winners under the new rule, no participants gave a positive response. “The last thing we want to do is push people over the edge who are already way too close to being on the verge of not being able to make a decent living,” said Brian Griffin, president and CEO of Roberson Transportation Services, Mahomet, Ill., who moderated the panel. “That’s one of the issues this association needs to focus on.”
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