24 WESTERN PALLET
have a driver shortage when we don’t even attract half of the working population?”
Capacity is also being helped by the influx of new truck investment. New trucks have greater uptime, which can translate into 4% greater availability for service. Smyrlis cautioned, however, that new equipment investment isn’t so much to expand the fleet size but to retire older equipment.
“Around 75% of Canadian trucking executives are saying they are ordering new equipment for 2019 but it is replacing aging equipment in their fleet,” he commented. “In fact, if you look at the size of major fleets in the U.S., they are actually shrinking. They are getting smaller. The smaller U.S. fleets are getting larger, but they still don’t have the capacity to counterbalance what the large guys have (lost).”
And in spite of cost and availability pressures, the issue of truck detention remains a significant issue. According to survey results, only 16% said they would always collect a truck detention fee. Another 42% said they would rarely collect a detention fee if their trucks were held up and almost a quarter said ‘never.’
“It is pretty sobering that they (carriers) have to absorb those kinds of inefficiencies to their system,” Smyrlis said. “Even more concerning was the fact that they were not only absorbing that kind of inefficiency, but they were also doing absolutely nothing about it.”
Truck Tech Change
While Smyrlis hears a lot of skepticism about new technologies such as platooning (the linking of two or more trucks in convoy, using connectivity technology and automated driving support systems), driverless trucks and others
While trucks are frequently detained by shippers, over 65% of carriers rarely or never collect detention fees.