If you go to Transport Topics and download the carrier rating reports for 2007, there’s an interesting article on the lead-in about how private equity investors have been buying up carriers and expect a 30% return on their investments. I suspect this is the whole reason for carriers stealing so outrageously from their drivers, to the point they really cant keep them anymore-all for short-term profit. I think trucking is about to become the next big public fiasco, right up there behind foreclosures energy prices. Just one more way to gut the economy. More and more carriers are attritioning experienced drivers out and replacing them with owner-operators and outsourced brokering. The article states carriers with less hard assets are more attractive to investors-meaning more brokering and less actual traditional trucking companies. Owner-operators will have to find a way to fight this collectively as individual-and desperate-truckers are easy to roll over. And the time to fight it is now, before it becomes any more entrenched and the equity groups’ influence any more powerful. We know Congress has selective hearing and hears money talk far easier than they hear a few truckers.

Longer trailers and heavier loads, that places the burden on the driver. If a new driver gets caught on a roadway that doesn’t allow them, who pays the fine? How many times has your company gave you directions that put you on questionable trucking routes.

It’s all about shippers and brokers. Find one thing that the ATA promotes that is good for drivers and not so good for shippers and brokers. If you do find something, like being “greener” it will be harmful to their competitors.

Speed governors? That’s all about drivers leaving ATA companies to make more money in ungoverned trucks. There are many types of freight were time is of the essence and time trumps fuel price, even in trying times. Look at how FedEx utilizes Eastern European immigrant drivers in leased owner-operator trucks. Those guys are going at breakneck speeds with doubles on dangerous routes like the PA turnpike. FedEx can benefit from all of the other ATA directives while ignoring speeds. If a Eastern European gets in trouble for tampering with a governor, who cares? They get rid of that driver and find another.

The ATA has been pushing longer and heavier for a long time, the problem is that it’s more work to drive 97,000 lbs, doubles / triples with no plan on more pay or training.

You can’t deny that driving slower saves on fuel. The “sweet spot” for fuel efficiency is somewhere around fifty five miles per hour. That’s the speed at which rolling resistance and air resistance are about equal. Going much faster than that then the additional energy is mostly needed to push the air out of the way.

If folks want to go faster it’s fine by me. I can’t afford to pay for all that extra fuel. I just wish they wouldn’t wreck so often and shut the highways down and cause so many delays. It doesn’t do anyone any good to be barreling down the highway at high rates of speed only to have to sit in a “backup” for hours waiting to sponge the idiots off the road who got in such a hurry and crashed.

I think longer and heavier are inevitable. I have no problem with turnpike doubles, triples or even road trains. One tractor pulling a road train at 2 or 3 miles per gallon is overall more efficient than several tractors pulling a trailer each at five or six mpg. You have to realize that the whole point of trucking is t get “stuff” from point A to point B as cheaply as possible. If some truckers can make a living doing it that’s ok..if not…too bad, so sad…..taking care of truckers and providing them with employment is not the point. The point is moving “stuff”.