What are the top concerns in the trucking industry today? The economy, truck parking, lawsuit abuse reform, insurance cost and availability, and battery electric vehicles, according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), a trucking research organization, which recently released its 20th annual Top Industry Issues report that identifies the trucking industry’s leading concerns. These concerns will be heavily covered at the Women In Trucking’s Accelerate! Conference & Expo, Nov. 10-13 in Dallas.
“Without question, this has been another tough year for the trucking industry,” says Gregg Troian, President of PGT Trucking, a corporate member of WIT. “Our costs continued to climb while freight demand struggled. But each year we can count on ATRI’s analysis to not only quantify the issues, but more importantly, what we can collectively do as an industry to address each.”
Several sessions and Interactive Roundtable Discussion Groups at the upcoming Accelerate! Conference will focus subject matter experts on the freight economy – including Lee Klaskow, Senior Analyst – Transportation with Bloomberg Intelligence, and Avery Vise, Vice President-Trucking of FTR Transportation Intelligence.
This year saw the state of the economy and the lack of available truck parking retain the two top spots on ATRI’s overall list, respectively. There will be a special panel on the lack of truck parking featuring subject matter experts from TravelCenters of America, OOIDA, Truck Parking Club, Trux Parking, Clean Harbors, and Camargo Insurance.
In addition, there is growing concern over the proliferation of nuclear verdicts that has led to Lawsuit Abuse Reform rising to the third top concern in trucking this year. The largest climb in ranking this year came in insurance cost and availability, which rose 8 spots to be the industry’s number four concern overall. Rounding out the top five this year was driver compensation.
The continued focus on transitioning the nation’s truck fleet to battery electric – and the aggressive timelines and significant cost for doing so – drove battery electric vehicles (BEVs) into the industry’s sixth overall concern, up four spots from last year.
More than 3,700 trucking industry stakeholders participated in this year’s survey, including motor carriers, truck drivers, industry suppliers, driver trainers, and law enforcement among other groups. Over 45% of the survey respondents were motor carrier executives and personnel, while truck drivers represented 31%. Among professional truck driver respondents, these were the top three concerns: truck parking, driver compensation and the economy, while motor carriers ranked the economy, lawsuit abuse reform, and the driver shortage as the top three concerns.
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“Without question, this has been another tough year for the trucking industry,” says Gregg Troian, President of PGT Trucking, a corporate member of WIT. “Our costs continued to climb while freight demand struggled. But each year we can count on ATRI’s analysis to not only quantify the issues, but more importantly, what we can collectively do as an industry to address each.”
