Webinar Replay #76: ATRI Top 10 Trucking Industry Issues for 2024

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Mark Rhea: Good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Mark Rhea, and welcome to the Infinit-I Workforce Solutions Fast Forward Webinar.

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Mark Rhea: for November 14th, 2024, ATRI top, 10 Trucking Industry Issues for 2024. The results are out.

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Mark Rhea: I wanted to thank everyone who has participated in the survey.

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Mark Rhea: and if you don’t mind. Jump into chat. Tell me your name where you’re calling in from

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Mark Rhea: and if you participated in the survey this year or not, or if you never heard about the survey, so, if you don’t mind, just jump into chat, tell us where you are, who you are, and we’ll look forward to hearing the results of that survey

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Mark Rhea: as a quick reminder. It is November the 14th So

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Mark Rhea: we have changing weather. We have holiday, distracted driving. We have animal strike issues out there. If you haven’t got your content assigned. This is a good time to do that. A lot of issues this time of year, just as a quick reminder.

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Mark Rhea: Also at the end, we do have a new product called The Ultimate Defense truck accident defense training.

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Mark Rhea: That’s designed to help manage risk.

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Mark Rhea: Rebecca will go over 2 of the top 5 issues this year are lawsuit reform as well as insurance issues.

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Mark Rhea: And this is a program to help prepare and defend yourself for lawsuits. So

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Mark Rhea: that being said, I want to introduce our guest, our special guest for today.

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Mark Rhea: Rebecca Brewster. She’s the President.

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Mark Rhea: chief operating officer of the American Transportation Research Institute.

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Mark Rhea: If you’re not familiar with ATRI, I encourage you to participate with their program financially as well as the research that they provide our industry.

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Mark Rhea: Rebecca has been with ATRI for almost 32 years.

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Mark Rhea: and she has seen a lot of changes over the years. She’s the recipient of several awards, including the Fleet Owner Magazine.

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Mark Rhea: a dozen outstanding women in trucking the influential women in trucking award women in trucking association, and the Jr. Holiday award given by the 50 trucking associations. So

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Mark Rhea: she’s very well qualified to present the top 10 issues that came from the results of this year’s survey. So.

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Mark Rhea: Rebecca, it’s all yours.

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Rebecca Brewster: Well, Mark, thanks so much for having me on today. This is one of my favorite annual studies we do at a tree. It is, I like it so much. I have not. I don’t let my staff do a lot with this. I still do the analysis myself, because I find it so fascinating each year to see how the issues, how the votes come in, and how the issues ebb and flow over time. And so, we’ll talk a little bit about that.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, thanks again for having me on today.

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Rebecca Brewster: I hope everyone is familiar with ATRI, but if you are not, we are the trucking industry’s not for profit, research organization. And we have one mission. And that’s to do the research that makes your businesses safer and more productive.

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Rebecca Brewster: And because that is our mission, we provide all our research findings free of charge on our website. So, I’ve listed our website address here, I’ll put it up again at the end of my presentation. But it’s

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Rebecca Brewster: intuitive. It’s what we do. truckingresearch.org. You can go there. You will find all our research grouped by, we call, research hot topics. So, whether it’s economic analyses or anything to do with the environment or safety, you can click on the hot topic, and you’ll see our entire portfolio of research in that area available for a download

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Rebecca Brewster: little bit about how we’re organized at ATRI. We are governed by a board of directors made up of the CEOs of the organizations you see here. Our current chair is Derek Leathers, who is the chairman of Werner enterprises.

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Rebecca Brewster: But where, I believe the real heavy lifting at ATRI is done is done by the men and women who are members of our Research Advisory Committee or RAC.

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Rebecca Brewster: and rack members are charged with annually coming together to figure out what are the trucking industry’s top research needs?

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Rebecca Brewster: Where are there knowledge gaps in the industry to which ATRI could bring its expertise to bear.

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Rebecca Brewster: And what’s so compelling about this group is the diversity it represents in terms of the entire trucking industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, if you look at the Logos, you see big trucking fleets, you see small trucking fleets.

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Rebecca Brewster: You see professional truck drivers. We have both. OOIDA, The Owner Operator Independent Driver Association, as well as one of

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Rebecca Brewster: ATA is America’s road team captain. So, we get driver input we have law enforcement. We have someone from the Federal Government. With the Department of Commerce, we have a State Department of Transportation. We have law enforcement.

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Rebecca Brewster: We have industry suppliers. So, it really is

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Rebecca Brewster: a very diverse group, representing all facets of the trucking industry, who again, are charged with figuring out what are the top research priorities for the trucking industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: And clearly, one of the primary inputs into that process

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Rebecca Brewster: is our annual survey of the industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: So

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Rebecca Brewster: without even a drum roll, here are the top 10 issues of 2024.

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Rebecca Brewster: This survey is now 20 years old. We started. The very 1st one was in 2,005.

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Rebecca Brewster: It was originally designed to identify. So, what are the issues coming down the road that we, as an industry, need to better prepare ourselves for?

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Rebecca Brewster: But

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Rebecca Brewster: over time it became obvious that the industry was ranking the issues that were most impactful to them. Right then, these are the pain points I’m experiencing, and those pain points are different for you, depending on whether you’re a motor carrier in the C-suite or a Diesel technician or a driver, manager, driver, trainer, or whether you’re a company driver or an owner operator.

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Rebecca Brewster: or if you’re in law enforcement motor carrier enforcement personnel, whether, if you’re a driver trainer, so anyone in the industry can take part in this survey. This year we had over 3,700 participants or respondents to the survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: About 46% of those were representing motor carriers. Again, all positions within a motor carrier, another 33, 31% were professional truck drivers, and then the rest for everybody else. Again, industry suppliers, law enforcement, driver trainers, government.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, when you take the survey, and I hope everybody did. You are presented with a list of

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Rebecca Brewster: critical issues in the industry. This year there were 26 issues on that list. You’re asked to pick your top 3.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then for each of those 3 you’re asked to rank potential strategies. What do you think the industry should be doing

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Rebecca Brewster: to address that issue? Sometimes those strategies are

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Rebecca Brewster: Federal advocacy level we should advocate for and lobby for legislation at the Federal level, sometimes their state level. And we’ll talk about that with lawsuits, abuse reform, but sometimes their education. We, as an industry, need to educate the public on this particular issue to impact some change.

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Rebecca Brewster: And sometimes those strategies are research based. And so today, I’ll talk about some of these issues. And where ATRI’s research

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Rebecca Brewster: is weighing in with data and analysis to help the industry navigate through those issues.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, Number one for the second year in a row was the state of the nation’s economy, and it was a clear number one far above everything else in this year’s survey, and I think everyone can relate to that. And certainly, everyone who takes the survey, depending on no matter what sector of the industry they’re in, no matter what role they represent in the industry. Everyone is feeling the challenges associated with the economy from high inflation, low freight demand and lower rates.

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Rebecca Brewster: the cost of everything going up. It’s just a very impactful issue. And so, it was not surprising that it held on to its number one spot

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Rebecca Brewster: the number to the right of each issue is where it ranked in the 2023 Survey. So, economy kept its number one spot

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Rebecca Brewster: coming in at Number 2. The lack of available truck parking

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Rebecca Brewster: it hit number 2 last year for the 1st time. That was the highest ranking we’d ever seen for truck parking, and it maintained that position.

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Rebecca Brewster: lawsuit, abuse, reform, or tort reform, whichever name it goes by rose 3 spots this year to claim the number 3 position, and we’ll talk about that

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Rebecca Brewster: very, very closely related to lawsuit abuse reform is the cost and availability of insurance often very hard to separate those 2, and, in fact, in this year’s survey, just 25 points separated those 2 issues in the overall total.

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Rebecca Brewster: But insurance cost and availability at Number 4 was also the biggest climber in the survey that we found in the 2023 Survey insurance cost ranked Number 12 overall. Out of the 28 issues that were in that survey. So, it rose 8 spots to Number 4 overall

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Rebecca Brewster: driver compensation held on to its number 5

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Rebecca Brewster: battery electric vehicles. The push on the part of the current administration, and many States led by California to transition the nation’s vehicle, fleet to battery, electric and concern over those very aggressive timelines push that issue up 4 spots from number 6 to number 10,

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Rebecca Brewster: CSA, Compliance, Safety and Accountability. FMCSA. Safety measurement programs continue to stay on the industry’s radar. And certainly, in the industry’s top 10 is there continuing to be issues with how carrier safety performance is evaluated within CSA

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Rebecca Brewster: detention and delay customer facilities very impactful. We just recently released research on it that I’ll talk about up one spot from 9 to 8.

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Rebecca Brewster: The driver shortage

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Rebecca Brewster: is now at the lowest

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Rebecca Brewster: ranking we have ever seen. In the 20-year history of this survey. It was Number 4 last year, down to Number 9, and certainly impacted by what’s happening at Number one with the economy

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Rebecca Brewster: as there simply has been reduced freight demand and lower freight rates. Carriers have not been

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Rebecca Brewster: as concerned about the ability to find drivers, it’s more been hanging on to the drivers. They have likewise. Drivers have not been as willing to

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Rebecca Brewster: jump ship if you will. They’re hanging on to their carriers. So, the shortage dropped down.

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Rebecca Brewster: 5 spots to Number 4,

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Rebecca Brewster: and then rounding out the top 10, a very impactful issue, for all of us is driver distraction.

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Rebecca Brewster: and when you download the full report and read it, you’ll see the driver. Distraction here is not talking about truck driver distraction. This is talking about the impact of car driver distraction on our industry’s overall safety, and that plays out in issues like lawsuits, abuse, reform and insurance cost and availability. So

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Rebecca Brewster: truly, it’s often hard to separate and look at in a silo any one of these issues, because they really all are interconnected in one way or another.

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Rebecca Brewster: So those are the overall results. This is what it looks like when you break out. How motor carriers rank the issues versus how professional truck drivers rank the issues.

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Rebecca Brewster: and so on. The motor carrier side, the economy coming in at Number one, lawsuit abuse, reform number 2, and the driver shortage ranking higher for motor carriers

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Rebecca Brewster: again, because they’re the ones who are looking for drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: But as I always tell my audiences when I talk about this.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you are a motor carrier, and your concerns in your top 10 are holding up finding in the shortage in terms of the shortage or hanging on to us in terms of retention. The best drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: then you need to understand, appreciate, and do what you can to impact those issues that drivers say are most impactful for them.

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Rebecca Brewster: and on the driver side of the equation, parking compensation and the economy route are their top 3

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Rebecca Brewster: over the past probably 5 years we’ve seen parking and compensation rank, either as Number One or Number 2 on the driver list. They kind of jump back and forth. In fact, a few years back, we even had a year where they tied for the number one concern among drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, we’ll talk about a number of these issues today.

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Rebecca Brewster: the very 1st survey was in 2,005. It’s interesting that we have 3 issues that were in this year’s top 10 that are still in this top 10 list, and we’re in the top 10 list in our very 1st survey in 2,005

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Rebecca Brewster: driver shortage insurance costs and tort reform or lawsuit abuse reform. So

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Rebecca Brewster: for better or worse, we’re hanging on to those 3 issues 20 years later.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, let’s talk about truck parking. It’s the number one concern among drivers. It’s Number 7 among motor carriers. I think it’s very important that it shows up on the motor carrier list, because even though the motor carriers themselves are not

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Rebecca Brewster: daily experience. The lack of truck parking their drivers are. And, as I said, you need to acknowledge, appreciate, and do what you can to impact those issues that drivers say are most impactful to them.

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Rebecca Brewster: This is what that looks like. I don’t care where you live in the country. You could replicate these pictures anywhere. You see drivers parked on shoulders and ramps into rest areas at exits where there are truck stops that are filled to overflowing, or even just not near a rest area or an exit where there’s a truck stop, because there just isn’t available truck parking. And

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Rebecca Brewster: if I’m not careful. This is the issue that I climb up on my soapbox on, because it is just so frustrating. And it impacts so many other issues on the list.

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Rebecca Brewster: drivers are not going to want to come into this industry, and or drivers are not going to want to stay in this industry when this is their option, for where they’re going to get a night’s sleep, it’s not safe for the drivers. It’s not safe for vehicles that must navigate around them. It creates more

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Rebecca Brewster: opportunity for incidents that involve the truck. Safety incidents that drive up insurance costs the potential for a bad crash, draw up the drives up the potential for a nuclear verdict. So, it’s just again.

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Rebecca Brewster: this is an untenable situation that we’ve got to do something about in the industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: We are very fortunate at ATRI to work with a very large data set of truck GPS data. We do a whole host of analyses with it, including working for a number working with several State DOTs to examine this truck parking issue from a real-world lens. And so, this is what the parking crisis looks like using truck GPS data. This is a rest area, public rest area on both sides of I-eighty. In Iowa.

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Rebecca Brewster: Red is parked trucks. And so, you see within the rest area, you see lots of red because the trucks are parking in the rest area. But you also see trucks parked on the ramps going into the rest area and out of the rest area.

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Rebecca Brewster: But if you look to the right, to that interstate interchange just east of that rest area. You see red there as well, because trucks must park there because the rest area is full. So again and again, here at the interstate interchange. There are no restroom facilities. There’s less lighting. There are no amenities. There’s nothing there except some gravel or concrete for the driver to pull over and park on. So, a situation we’ve got to do something about.

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Rebecca Brewster: We know that the US DOT has had an increased focus on expanding, parking capacity that is playing out at the state level. So, this is a map showing the States in blue and the red. The regions where ATRI has been involved in truck parking studies on behalf of these entities. So, the States know this is an issue.

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Rebecca Brewster: They know that it is impactful for the supply chain for drivers, certainly, but for the supply chain overall.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, my hope is one day well.

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Rebecca Brewster: I’m still in this career that we see this map fill up, that all States are focused on. Addressing this issue of truck parking.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, driver compensation I mentioned it goes back and forth between one and 2 on the driver side of the equation. It is an issue we track through a study I’m going to describe, but we also track insurance cost and availability, which is, as I mentioned, very closely related to lawsuit abuse reform. So, let’s talk about that study.

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Rebecca Brewster: This is perhaps one of the most frequently downloaded studies from ATRI’s website. It’s our operational cost of trucking or Ops cost, as we call it, for short.

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Rebecca Brewster: We did this for the 1st time in 2,008. It was intended to be a 1-time research initiative to collect real world financial data from fleets of all sizes and sectors and come up with an average cost per mile and per hour to operate a truck.

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Rebecca Brewster: It was intended to populate the conversation and the work done at the on the public sector side to really understand how much it costs to operate a truck. As they were considering investment in infrastructure.

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Rebecca Brewster: looking at things like tolling. There were so many

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Rebecca Brewster: wild numbers out there that that were being used by the state dots and others that we felt in our rack, felt it was important to bring this real-world data and real-world numbers to this thing.

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Rebecca Brewster: Well, quite frankly, it became so popular as a benchmarking tool for fleets that we have continued this research annually every year since.

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Rebecca Brewster: and so straight to the punchline bottom, right hand corner in just this 5-year snapshot. And for the overall research since 2,008. In this year’s report, which represented 23 costs, we hit the highest cost per mile we have ever seen in this research, $2 and 27 cents per mile operated truck. Now, this is the aggregated data that represents all fleet sizes and all sectors

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Rebecca Brewster: when you download the full report, and I’ll show an example of some of this. It breaks it out into fleet size. It breaks it out by sector, so you can really start to pinpoint and benchmark your own costs against your peers.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, driver, compensation. Just looking at this 5-year history. Here you can see that both the driver’s wage cost per mile as well as the driver. Benefit cost per mile. Continue to climb as fleets respond to the need to keep and bring in and keep the best drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: This is no secret to anyone in this industry. We have had several years now of escalating costs, and that’s even in the face of a freight recession

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Rebecca Brewster: when rates have been lower. So, you can see when you take out fuel, because that’s a very volatile cost line. Item, obviously, we saw in one year a 53%, almost 54% increase in the next year of almost 14% decrease in the fuel cost per mile. So, remove fuel. And you can see that we’ve had 3 straight years of increases, 7.4% 12% and 6.6%.

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Rebecca Brewster: All those outpacing inflation. So

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Rebecca Brewster: motor carriers of all sizes in all sectors are feeling the pain of these rapidly increasing costs.

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Rebecca Brewster: And in one of those areas. And our number 4 issue overall, of course, is insurance cost.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so just in one year, we saw a 12 and a half percent increase in the cost per mile insurance premium cost per mile, and that’s over one cent per mile, which doesn’t sound like a lot to the outsider. But when you think about how many miles you run, you start to realize how much that really adds. Up

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Rebecca Brewster: over the past 8 years, we’ve seen an increase of over 33% in this one-line item.

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Rebecca Brewster: and how those cost increases impact you as a fleet often depends on your size of operation.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, if you are like the large carriers in this data set on the right-hand side those fleets with more than a thousand trucks.

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Rebecca Brewster: You have a lot more resources and tools at your disposal. To lower your premium costs, you can self-insure. You can use higher deductibles so that lighter red bar your insurance premium cost is lower for those bigger fleets.

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Rebecca Brewster: but when they are involved in a crash, their out-of-pocket costs are higher, because they have assumed more of that risk themselves. And so, you see that reflected in the dark red bar.

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Rebecca Brewster: contrast that with fleets on the right-hand side of this, I mean on the left-hand side of this slide. The low, smaller fleets don’t have as many resources and opportunity to lower their insurance premium costs because they can’t. Self-insure can’t take on higher deductibles, so they have to pay more for insurance to cover that risk for them.

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Rebecca Brewster: But when they are involved in a crash, then that

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Rebecca Brewster: insurance covers more of the out-of-pocket costs, and so they have lower out of pocket costs. But there’s no question

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Rebecca Brewster: that this issue is most impactful for the folks on the left side of this equation the smaller fleets who are bearing a higher cost per mile for insurance.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, let’s talk about battery electric trucks. It was number 6 overall up from Number 10 last year

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Rebecca Brewster: on the motor carrier side of the equation. It ranks number 8. I suspect the push that moved it up to Number 6 also included several votes on this issue from the truck dealer side, because those folks are also feeling the challenges of, particularly in states like California, the mandates to, and the timelines for increasing the percentage of vehicles that you sell that are battery electric vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: Clearly an impactful issue. So, our Research Advisory committee has over the past several years directed us to study several different topics associated with this. So, in our 1st study, which we released in 2022,

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Rebecca Brewster: we looked at what are the emission reduction potentials coming from these different vehicle types. And so, we used Federal data to model

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Rebecca Brewster: the emission reductions compared to a traditional class, a Diesel engine truck

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Rebecca Brewster: to a similarly equipped

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Rebecca Brewster: class, a battery electric truck

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Rebecca Brewster: versus a fuel cell battery, electric vehicle, as well as several other options for powering those vehicles. But we looked at full life cycle emission reductions. And when you look at it, compare a class, a battery electric vehicle.

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Rebecca Brewster: you only get about a 30% reduction in Co, 2 emissions from that vehicle, and that’s in large part because of the emissions that come from mining the materials to build the batteries, to generating the electricity to power those vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: The next big challenge, of course, is the nation’s grid electricity, electricity grid

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Rebecca Brewster: ready to handle a transition to battery, electric vehicles?

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Rebecca Brewster: Where are we going to get the materials to build all those batteries. What is that supply like? Where does it come from? And then, obviously, if truck parking is the number 2 issue overall.

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Rebecca Brewster: It’s a big issue for the industry. And if we’re going to mandate battery, electric vehicles, where are those vehicles going to charge? And so, in this second study that we released in December 22. We looked at each of these issues in detail.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, let’s talk about grid sufficiency. 1st of all. So, we

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Rebecca Brewster: calculated these percentages using federally, publicly available data. So tomorrow.

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Rebecca Brewster: if the Biden Administration had their wish and every single vehicle in the United States car and truck were battery electric.

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Rebecca Brewster: it would require just over 40% of the current electricity generation nationwide to power those vehicles. So

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Rebecca Brewster: everybody’s battery electric. Tomorrow.

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Rebecca Brewster: we’re going to start to absorb over 40% of the current electricity generation in the nation

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Rebecca Brewster: depending on what state you live in, that percentage can be higher or lower. So, look at, for instance, California, where so much of this mandate and push for this is generated from the California resources board.

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Rebecca Brewster: If every vehicle in California cars and trucks tomorrow were battery electric; it would require over 57% of California’s current electricity generation to power those vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: And that, of course, is California, where things like wildfires impact

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Rebecca Brewster: electricity, availability where there are rolling brownouts. And so, you start to understand that it’s very challenging to tell the supply chain that operates 24, 7, 3, 65, that you can’t power your vehicles because we must conserve electricity because it’s hot and people need to run their air conditioning. So, it really starts to become a conflict of

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Rebecca Brewster: providing the electricity necessary to power all these vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: And of course, if you’re going to have a battery electric

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Rebecca Brewster: commercial truck that has a far enough range so that your driver doesn’t have to stop every 90 min to recharge their truck.

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Rebecca Brewster: You’re going to have to have more battery power on that truck, and more battery power brings more weight to the tractor.

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Rebecca Brewster: and with that additional weight means you’ve got to give it up somewhere else to stay within Federal limits.

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Rebecca Brewster: weight limits. And so that means you’re able to haul less cargo. And so, in fact, you’d need more of this very expensive battery electric class a vehicle to haul the same amount of freight you’re currently hauling in your Diesel truck.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then the truck parking issues. So

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Rebecca Brewster: using data from the Federal Highway administration, their Jason’s Law report, we know that there are 313,000 truck parking spaces nationwide. The majority of those are at private truck stops.

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Rebecca Brewster: but about 40,000 of them are at public rest, areas

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Rebecca Brewster: that 313,000 number equates to about one for every 11 truck drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: So

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Rebecca Brewster: if we’re going to put a charger at every single one of those 313,000 truck parking spaces, just the initial deployment, not maintaining them, not pushing electricity to them, or building out the grid to do so just to install the chargers. The initial cost is 35 billion dollars.

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Rebecca Brewster: And as we know, it’s the number 2 issue overall, it’s number one for drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: There aren’t enough parking spaces, so we’re going to have to have more chargers than we do current truck parking spaces.

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Rebecca Brewster: There are several other challenges and the research. This study does a good job of going into them.

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Rebecca Brewster: but one of them is a current Federal prohibition on commercial activity at public rest areas. So those 40,000 spaces are taken out of the equation. You can’t sell electricity at those spaces based on current federal law. And so, unless the State is going to provide that electricity for free to those 40,000 spaces.

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Rebecca Brewster: you can’t charge for it under current law. So just a whole host of challenges inherent with the truck parking

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Rebecca Brewster: problem and the lack of available truck parking and this push toward electrifying our nation’s vehicle fleet.

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Rebecca Brewster: but all is all is not lost, and there are options for us as an industry and as a nation, to reduce our carbon

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Rebecca Brewster: footprint and do so in a way that is a significantly less costly than

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Rebecca Brewster: building out the infrastructure to charge electric trucks and purchasing those electric trucks.

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Rebecca Brewster: and that’s using renewable Diesel

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Rebecca Brewster: and renewable Diesel is a drop in fuel. You put it in the trucks you currently own.

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Rebecca Brewster: and you get a much greater reduction of carbon than you do with that battery electric truck. So, you’re not having to invest in new vehicles. The nation is not having to invest in new charging infrastructure for those vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: And look at this. This is again done using publicly available data. The Federal Department of Energy’s greet model is how we came up with these calculations. So, if a traditional Diesel truck is your baseline at 100

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Rebecca Brewster: you get, there’s that 30% reduction from a

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Rebecca Brewster: battery electric truck that has a longer range. But when you get into the shorter-range battery electric trucks, that

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Rebecca Brewster: carbon reduction goes down. Because now you’re using more electricity. You’re having to power more recharge more frequently. But look at the potential from renewable Diesel.

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Rebecca Brewster: 64% reduction in carbon emissions from a fuel that you can drop in the trucks you have today without the need for additional charging infrastructure. So, we really need to

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Rebecca Brewster: inject common sense into these conversations and really start focusing our attention on better options for reducing our carbon at a much lower cost.

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Rebecca Brewster: Like the potential from renewable Diesel.

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Rebecca Brewster: Obviously, traffic congestion has a role into how much fuel you use and how much fuel you’ll use as an impact on your emissions. And so clearly, congestion is a big issue. This is one we’ve been tracking for several years.

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Rebecca Brewster: We call it our top truck bottleneck list. For this we use it again. We turn to our truck GPS data set.

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Rebecca Brewster: We’re monitoring on an ongoing basis traffic congestion at over 300 locations around the Us.

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Rebecca Brewster: We take a full calendar years’ worth of GPS data. We look at 2 metrics, how slowly trucks are operating, due to congestion, and how many trucks are impacted at each location. So, speed and volume go into a calculation that results in the top 100 worst places to operate a truck.

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Rebecca Brewster: Every red dot on this map is one of those top 100 locations. You see, the top 10 are all flagged.

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Rebecca Brewster: And the States in green have the most of those.

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Rebecca Brewster: Top 100 locations.

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Rebecca Brewster: Texas leads the way with 13 of the nation’s top truck bottlenecks, and 9 of those top truck bottlenecks in Texas are in and around Houston. So, if your fleet and drivers operate around Houston, you’re not surprised to see those big numbers coming out of there.

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Rebecca Brewster: Here’s the top 10 list for traffic. Worst traffic congestion choke points

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Rebecca Brewster: every year. When we release this, I’m often asked by the media. So, this is trucks causing this congestion. Right? I’m like, no, it’s not. It’s called a truck bottleneck list, because that’s where ATRIce data generates from. But the fact of the matter is, these are bad locations for trucks to operate in. They’re bad locations for cars to operate in. They are just highly congested choke points.

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Rebecca Brewster: For those who are not familiar with that number one location, and it’s been the number one location for several years now.

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Rebecca Brewster: Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge that connects New Jersey and Manhattan

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Rebecca Brewster: and so, what our GPS data tells us is that

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Rebecca Brewster: the average rush hour truck speed that’s morning and afternoon rush hour is 20 miles per hour, and so significantly below the posted speed limit. And again, it’s not just trucks that are going that slowly. It’s cars that are in that same traffic congestion, going that slowly.

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Rebecca Brewster: I live in Atlanta. So, I’m not no stranger to Number 5, 6 and 9, and, in fact, when I look at my office window back behind me, I can see the traffic congestion starting to build at Number 6,

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Rebecca Brewster: so, I know all too well from real world experience how bad those locations are.

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Rebecca Brewster: But the good news is that when we do research like this that uses real world industry data, it does make a difference, and state dots rely on this output to understand where they can make investment in infrastructure, to lessen the congestion impacts on all users, but certainly on the trucking industry

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Rebecca Brewster: we saw it, for when we 1st started doing this research, the Burn interchange in Chicago was number one for 3 years in a row, the State of Illinois paid attention. They issued a press release, saying we’re going to fix this location because we don’t want to have the number one truck bottleneck.

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Rebecca Brewster: and that location in this year’s list for the 1st time. Now that that construction is done is out of the top 10. So, when dots make the investment in fixing these interchanges in adding capacity, whatever it needs to do to reduce the congestion, we do see truck speeds increase closer to the posted speed limit, and those locations fall in ranking.

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Rebecca Brewster: But traffic congestion is not the only delay that our drivers experience, and certainly detention at customer facilities is a big issue. It ranked overall on the list, but it ranks number 4 here. It’s very impactful for drivers, because let’s face it. Drivers are the ones who are sitting there

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Rebecca Brewster: burning hours and time.

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Rebecca Brewster: waiting to be loaded or unloaded. And so, our Research advisory committee recognized it and asked us to do this study, which is a continuation of research we’ve been doing for several years, collecting driver data on detention and looking at how impactful it is, how it changes over time.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, we have 3 different driver surveys the most recent one in 23, where we looked at detention overall. In this study we’re going to quantify not only how impactful it is for the drivers, but from a broader perspective. How impactful detention is to motor carriers and to the larger supply chain.

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Rebecca Brewster: Ultimately, the partner we need to work with. To fix this situation obviously, is our customers. And so, we added another component. Looking at the safety impacts of detention

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Rebecca Brewster: just to underscore for our partners on the customer side.

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Rebecca Brewster: how impactful this issue is, and how we need to collaborate to bring it down. And so, let’s look at some of the numbers 1st of all. So, I mentioned, we’ve got 3 different years of survey data here 1418 and 23.

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Rebecca Brewster: And when we talk about detention here, we are talking about

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Rebecca Brewster: after the 1st 2 h. So. So, these highest bars here represent

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Rebecca Brewster: 0 to 2 h after the 1st 2 h. So ultimately, this is when your drivers have been there, you know, up to 4 h.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, a couple of key points, nearly 40% of drivers stops in 2023 included detention of more than 2 h, so that after the initial 2 h

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Rebecca Brewster: mimicking a finding we found in our 2019 study, women drivers are detained

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Rebecca Brewster: more than men, drivers hard to understand.

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Rebecca Brewster: That is one issue you would not think would be a gender issue. But our women drivers were detained more.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you operate in the spot market, you’re going to experience more detention than those who operate in contract freight.

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Rebecca Brewster: This slide 6 or 5 very impactful bullet points

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Rebecca Brewster: doesn’t really do justice to all the analysis and all the calculations that are detailed in the full report. So, I encourage you to download the full report. But at the end of the day. Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of the cost of detention.

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Rebecca Brewster: nearly 136 million hours of lost productivity in 2023,

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Rebecca Brewster: when your drivers are detained.

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Rebecca Brewster: they’re going to burn some fuel because they’re going to, they’re going to have to idle to keep the truck warm or cold. So, we’ve got about 73 million gallons of wasted Diesel.

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Rebecca Brewster: There’s an opportunity cost your drivers not getting on down the road to go to the next appointment. So, we’ve calculated 5.4 4 billion lost miles.

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Rebecca Brewster: Even when carriers charge shippers for detention. It is not covering all the costs that that carrier absorbs because of that detention, wear and tear on the vehicle, that fuel waste several other costs, and so 3.6 billion in

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Rebecca Brewster: unreimbursed expenses that a carrier or driver is absorbing, that the shipper is not paying for.

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Rebecca Brewster: Add all that up. And the final price tag is 11.5 billion dollars of lost revenue because of detention.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, I mentioned, we added a safety analysis to this latest detention report. So again, using that truck GPS data set.

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Rebecca Brewster: we isolated several facilities that are types of facilities not specific customers, but types of facilities that are more

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Rebecca Brewster: are frequently known for detention, like food processing places, chemical facilities, a number of places where there’s known detention types of facilities. And we looked at

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Rebecca Brewster: truck speeds for detained drivers. That’s again after 2 h going into those facilities. And after that while they were at those facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: it’s no real surprise that the data showed that the drivers drove faster after leaving a facility where they were detained. They’ve been held up. They’ve got to make it to their next appointment, so that was not a surprise. What surprised us is drivers are driving faster on the front end of going into those facilities as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: Why, we hypothesize is because they know drivers know this is a type of facility or a specific customer where I’m going to be held up. So, I’m going to try to get in line in the queue a little faster in the morning, so that it doesn’t impact me as much. So, there is clearly a safety hook

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Rebecca Brewster: and a safety impact to detention as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: Driver shortage I mentioned at the beginning. It’s down to its lowest overall, ranking on the survey that we’ve ever seen at Number 9, but it still ranks as Number 3 for motor carriers. And so, we continue to do research to investigate. How can we open up

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Rebecca Brewster: driving positions? And how do we attract new people into driving positions that we have not previously done so?

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Rebecca Brewster: And one of those is bringing more women into the industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: Depending on which data set you look at right now, women make up somewhere between

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Rebecca Brewster: 4 and 8% of the driver workforce. So clearly, we have room to bring more women into the industry. And if you download ATRI’s crash predictor model, it’s listed under our safety research.

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Rebecca Brewster: You’ll see data that shows that women drivers are safer drivers than their male counterparts. So, there’s a real strong safety rationale for why we would want to bring more women into driving positions.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, for this research, we did several steps. We did a motor carrier, a driver, survey, a motor carrier survey. Also, we interviewed motor carriers. We interviewed drivers, and then we had a We interviewed truck driver training schools. And then we had a women driver focus group where we wanted to drill down into

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Rebecca Brewster: what attracted you to trucking jobs as a woman. What’s

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Rebecca Brewster: keeping you here? And for those who have left the industry. Why did you leave? And so, let’s cover some of those findings.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, we had equal numbers of men and women participate in the survey. So, some interesting findings emerged from that.

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Rebecca Brewster: Why did you become a driver? The orange bars represent the percentages of women who selected those reasons for why they became a truck driver. So, for women its independence. They like driving and competitive pay, and quite frankly, that pay parity. Competitive pay. Financial independence is a big, resounding finding among the women who participated in our research, not only in the survey but in the focus groups. In the interviews

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Rebecca Brewster: there is not a gender gap in pay. In the trucking industry drivers are paid

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Rebecca Brewster: irrespective of their gender, this the same, and so it is a great opportunity for women to make a living in this industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: But there are problems, and those problems are often impacting drivers every day. And so, this we asked drivers, how frequently do you encounter the following things.

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Rebecca Brewster: and you can see among women the most frequent, frequently experienced challenges are no or limited access to exercise facility, and there was a lot of discussion about this in our focus group, because the driver said, you know, oftentimes I don’t even feel safe walking around at a rest area, because there’s not enough lighting, and I’m not comfortable doing so.

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Rebecca Brewster: Of course, the parking issue is impactful for everyone.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then the 3rd top rank issue for women is, I believe, just. It’s a national disgrace for us that drivers are not provided access to restroom facilities at customer, at restrooms, at customer facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: we should not have to live in a country where legislation must be introduced at the State level, or even at the Federal level that requires customers to provide backs, bathroom access to drivers. I mean that we should all

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Rebecca Brewster: be ashamed of that, and it’s a situation that has to change.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, we took all these survey findings and we and we coalesce the data into these 6 key challenge areas

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Rebecca Brewster: for women drivers. But the fact of the matter is, if we can fix these for women drivers, we’re going to make it a better place for men drivers as well. So, this is certainly a rising tide situation

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Rebecca Brewster: for each of these 6 key challenge areas. We then drill down in the research into specific issues related to that challenge.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, for instance.

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Rebecca Brewster: inability to complete truck driver training

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Rebecca Brewster: a couple of things going on there. I don’t have the money to pay for the training. I don’t feel like I’m equipped to do the skills or what’s necessary to drive a truck. I don’t have anyone to take care of my child while I go to CDL school, or I live in a rural area where travel to and from the CDL school is very challenging. So again, 6 key challenges drill down into the issues. And this is

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Rebecca Brewster: basically, a roadmap for the industry. So, this is the in the conclusion sections of the report that talks about what can we do for each of those specific issues. And if you’re a motor carrier, what role do you play? If you’re a truck driver training school, how can you address these issues to mitigate some of these impacts. And if you’re a driver yourself.

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Rebecca Brewster: either considering coming into the industry or you’re a driver in the industry, what can you do for each of those to lessen its impact on your day-to-day life as a driver? And so, I encourage this report is chock full of so much incredible information.

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Rebecca Brewster: These slides really don’t do justice to it, but I encourage you to download it, and if you’re a motor carrier, look at what you can be doing to address a lot of these challenges that are faced by women drivers. And, as I point out, if they’re faced by women drivers and we fix them. It’s going to make it better for men drivers as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: These are the topics that our Research Advisory committee identified for us to work on over the course of the next year.

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Rebecca Brewster: Lawsuit abuse reform coming in at Number 3. We are going to update our study, our 2020 study looking at the impact of nuclear verdicts.

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Rebecca Brewster: We’re also hearing a lot about the growth in cargo theft and more frighteningly, how very sophisticated cargo thieves are becoming.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, we’re looking into that. And then that 1st study is really taking. We’ve now got 20 plus years of driver demographic data from all our various data collection activities.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we’ve got a current driver survey on our website where we’re asking for demographic data. And we’re going to look over time. How has the driver population changed, and what does that

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Rebecca Brewster: trend line inform? How does it inform us for identifying new populations of folks to bring into the industry. For instance, those who have who are aging out of the foster care system, or those who are formerly incarcerated individuals, are there opportunities to reach out to those individuals and bring them into truck driving jobs.

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Rebecca Brewster: I’m very fortunate at ATRI to work with a small but very dedicated team of research professionals. And when you look at our website and look at the entire portfolio of our research and realize that it is done by the 9 individuals who I am honored to work with. It really is a

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Rebecca Brewster: a lean, mean research machine who’s committed to doing the work on your behalf, and I just always like to give them

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Rebecca Brewster: credit where credit is certainly due.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you want to stay on top on the latest from ATRI, when you’re on our website. Downloading studies. You can click on that yellow button on our homepage.

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Rebecca Brewster: provide an email address, and you will get notified when we release a new study. Or when we put out

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Rebecca Brewster: a data collection call like our operational cost of trucking, or when we have a driver survey, you can push that information to your drivers. I promise you we will not inundate you with emails because we don’t release resources that frequently. But it is a way to stay on top of the latest and greatest from ATRI. So, I hope if you are not on our contact list you will join it soon.

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Rebecca Brewster: and then everything I’ve just described to you is done with charitable contributions from the industry. And so, 1st and foremost, to those who are on the webinar today, whose companies, or who you personally provide a charitable contribution to ATRI. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that support. If you are not an ATRI contributor, and you like what we do. And you think there’s value in it to the industry. I hope you’ll visit our website.

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Rebecca Brewster: as I always like to say, no contribution is too big, but no contribution is too small. And just. Yesterday we got a $50 contribution from a return contributor who’s contributed to the past, and he sent us another $50, and so I hope that everyone will take a few minutes. Consider how important this work is to the industry overall, and to you individually and your job, and consider making a charitable contribution to ATRI.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, Mark, that’s it for me. I love I I could talk all morning long about the top industry issues. I love it.

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Rebecca Brewster: and thank you to everyone as you started with

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Rebecca Brewster: for taking part in the survey, and I hope folks will visit our website as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: Well, thank.

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Mark Rhea: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. I would emphasize the word research that’s in the title of your organization, which is just. Just give me the facts. Don’t give me your opinion. Give me the facts. Give me the data which your organization has been very instrumental in doing.

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Mark Rhea: everybody that’s on. Give. Give a thank you to Rebecca’s 32 years, supporting, listening to us

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Mark Rhea: as an industry and documenting these issues that are that are used all over the United States for numerous reasons.

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Mark Rhea: Thank you for your 32 years and all the work that you have done to serve our industry.

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Mark Rhea: Just a couple of.

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Mark Rhea: So, pop into pop into chat and give her a thank you. A couple of comments I’ve got. We got to figure out how to get more women behind the wheel. That’s an obvious issue

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Mark Rhea: detention is alive and well. We’ve talked about that for

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Mark Rhea: since the beginning of time, and certainly done, does not look like we have done a whole lot to improve that. And renewable Diesel

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Mark Rhea: certainly, looks like it’s a viable alternative to the electrical batteries in

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Mark Rhea: the parking issue is bad, and it can

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Mark Rhea: I absolutely get worse if we don’t start looking at some of these issues? So, I do have one quick question with and with an increase

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Mark Rhea: in speeds due to detaining the client at the client?

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Mark Rhea: Is there an increase in speeding violations? And has this been studied.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, we have not looked at that issue. I think now that we have, I mean again, I think we all expected the finding that at the back end of detention drivers would drive faster.

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Rebecca Brewster: But the fact that it’s occurring on the front end as well, I think, will be a topic that we have with our research Advisory committee. When that group meets in March. You know, what additional research can we do around this topic to bring greater visibility to this particular to how impactful detention is.

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Rebecca Brewster: And that’s 1 thing I should mention and didn’t. We are always looking for research suggestions. So, on our website, we have a research suggestion,

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Rebecca Brewster: where you can submit ideas for research. So, if you have a topic, you’re not sure if we’ve done studies on it, or if there’s

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Rebecca Brewster: you know, potential to do additional, I hope you will

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Rebecca Brewster: do so through that part of our website as well.

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Mark Rhea: Okay? And then somebody asked, if this is available, you will be getting an email follow up that has the presentation. So that’s that will be coming if we could put up the poll right quick. I also

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Mark Rhea: wanted to make sure. You know, 2 of the top 5 are risk related lawsuit reforms, insurance and premiums, and we do have a product, a new product called the ultimate defense, and it is designed to

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Mark Rhea: help carriers prepare for litigation ahead of the before the accident.

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Mark Rhea: I would strongly encourage you to look. Reach out. Item number 2, say yes, and we will get back with you on these contents done by a defense attorney.

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Mark Rhea: What to do at the scene of an accident. A lot of helpful information to get ahead of the

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Mark Rhea: these nuclear verdicts and these crazy lawsuits that we have not

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Mark Rhea: handled as well as we should as an industry. So ultimate defense. Number 2, if your anatomy needs anatomy. Certification points.

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Mark Rhea: Type yes, into Number One, and we’ll get you some point certifications

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Mark Rhea: fantastic information. Rebecca, fantastic. Some real challenges out there with the women drivers

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Mark Rhea: detention parking on and on and on.

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Mark Rhea: I was surprised. It’s distracting. Didn’t hit the top 5. But

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Mark Rhea: it’s a real issue that’s out there. So

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Mark Rhea: without anything else to say, I think we’re going to shut her down for today. And, Rebecca, thank you again for your

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Mark Rhea: listening to our industry, and allowing our industry to participate and give them their views

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Mark Rhea: on the issues that are out there.

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Rebecca Brewster: Thank you so much.

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Mark Rhea: Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much.