Last week I wrote an article from a presentation given at the Wyoming Farm Bureau Legislative Meeting, on current issues in the trucking industry. The lady had a pile of facts and figures included, and since trucking has a major impact on most industries, agriculture included, I feel they are relevant.
The trucking industry is a major U.S. employer, with 7.3 million people employed in the trucking related jobs in 2008. Nearly 3.4 million of those people were actual truck drivers.
Ninety-six percent of trucking companies operate fewer than 20 trucks, and 88 percent operate six trucks or less. It's a small business industry.
In 2011, over 69 percent of Wyoming commodities relied exclusively on trucks to move their goods, and more than 80 percent of the commodities in the U.S. depended solely on trucks for the delivery of their goods.
Truck movement of manufactured freight at the national level is 81.76 percent. In 2010, Wyoming saw 16.3 million tons of inbound manufactured freight, and trucks moved 13 million of those tons.
In 2009, commercial trucks accounted for about 10 percent of all vehicle miles driven nationwide. In Wyoming, trucks drove 2,064,000 miles, about 22 percent of all miles driven within the state that year, and paid 66 percent of all the taxes and fees owed by Wyoming highway users.
The trucking industry deals with anti-trucking groups. The one that stood out the most to me is called "Parents Against Hired Truckers." This group, along with several others, has been causing serious efforts in the Department of Transportation's (DOT) efforts to revamp the Hours of Service Rules, a critical component of any trucking business, for years.
Interesting facts, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI've been working in the trucking industry for years, although never actually driving.
I do not know the agenda of "Parents Against Hired Truckers" but I disagree that fighting for an improvement (and I assume that this is what is meant by 'revamp' ?) of the Hours of Service Rules as an "anti-trucking group" is a negative thing.
Like every industry this one is on the edge of treating a part of their most important employee group -the drivers- on and over the edge what you can ask from a human being. The official rest period for those men and women are 10 hours. But these hours are no nap-time. These hours actually include the loading and unloading, eating, making calls for and with the company, paperwork, technical maintenance and (this is a huge part) the waiting time for loading and unloading. The actual rest (=sleep) time of those men and women hardly exceed 5 hours a day. I think these people are very special to be able to handle this job with so few hours of personal rest when on the job. Not even speaking of other components like the huge responsibility for their freight, time pressure and loneliness.
Uupps.. that was rather long =)
Again, 'anti-truckin groups' for me(!) are not people who fight for better work conditions. For me(!) 'anti-trucking groups' are people who think we do not need trucks at all, complain about them when they have to wait behind them on the highway but still want to have fresh food and nice clothes available every day.
But again, thank you for bringing this topic up and raising peoples awareness of a part of ag that some people might not think about at all.