Trucking as an industry has many different facets. And each of those facets has their own set of issues. The movement of international containers from ports and domestic boxes from rail terminals, or intermodal, is facing major challenges when it comes to capacity.
Intermodal has traditionally relied on independent contractors (ICs) to move those shipments. These drivers own their own trucks and receive a fixed rate in exchange for performing the work. The industry has seen challenges in the past that reduced the IC fleet. The introduction of the commercial driver’s license (CDL), drug testing, TWIC cards and CSA 2010 have all reduced the overall fleet. But at the same time, these typically focused on what was perceived as bad actors. So while the overall capacity pool was reduced, the remaining drivers were better, on the average.
More recent challenges are starting to have an impact on all of the drivers and not just the bad actors. Port congestion is a huge issue. Neither trucking companies nor ICs are compensated reasonably for the extensive waiting times incurred at several port facilities. There have been several efforts by various parties to eliminate ICs in favor of the employee driver model. But the issue isn’t the relationship between the trucking company and the IC. The issue is long wait times at facilities and lack of compensation from either those facilities or customers for those wait times. Almost every independent contractor started out as a employee driver who then invested the money to purchase their truck and start their own business. If they wanted to be employee drivers, there are plenty of jobs out there now that are going unfilled. Trying to force ICs out of the market will only further shrink the available capacity to move these shipments.
Chris Giltz, Senior Vice President of Operations, Evans Network of Companies