Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/141405
Sweet & More regionalization of freight continues to reduce haul lengths. That's often good news for owner-operators when it comes to income and lifestyle. By Todd Dills but cold warehousing and temperature-controlled intermodal have made short haul more of a norm. As happened with dry van rates, reefer rates offered by brokers and shippers don't always compensate properly for the increased time associated with hauls of shorter length. "Overall productivity and total miles are coming down" for reefer haulers among ATBS' clientele, says Amen. "The pay per mile hasn't really caught up with that." However, some carriers driven by fuel prices are well aware of these trends, says Jay Thompson, president of Transportation Business Associates. "It starts to make you do a different sort of planning," he says. Thompson – active in consulting among produce haulers, growers and other shippers – delivered a presentation in 2012 to the Fresh Produce Association of America that argued a case for shorter-leg relays "like they have on the dry side." The old argument against reefer relays was that a shipper preferred having one trusted trucker to watch the shipment until it was delivered. Information technology now has given carrier and shipper back-office staff the ability to keep track How has your length of haul tracked over Owner-operators' average length of haul the past five years? <100 miles 10% 100-250 miles 13% >800 miles 34% 501-800 251-500 miles 21% miles 22% Shorter 40% Much shorter 15% Not About sure the same 5% 24% Much longer 5% Longer 11% OverdriveOnline.com poll If one thing has been widely true about the freight market over the past several years, analysts say, it's that average length of haul has declined – notably in dry van and, more recently, refrigerated. "In the mid-2000s, there was a huge move in the general freight dry van business," says Todd Amen, president and chief executive officer of owner-operator business services firm ATBS. Owner-operators in dry van, he says, "went from an average length of haul running 800 to 1,300 miles down to 400 to 500 miles." Over that same period, overall yearly miles also fell and income rose slightly for ATBS clients hauling dry van, Amen says, continuing into the most recent two years. Between 2010 and 2012, ATBS numbers show operators' annual dry van miles fell 1.4 percent to 115,050, while income rose $3,688 to $48,556. From the perspective of contracting owner-operators, Amen says, such shorter hauls "take more time, and they cost more money on a per-mile, per-load basis." The mid-2000s also brought rate increases, Amen adds, "but carriers didn't necessarily change the pay of the contractors" until some years had passed. Also in recent years, Amen and others note, regionalization has hit the reefer segment. "There's plenty of that 1,100mile [or longer] haul left," says Amen, More than half of Overdrive readers said in June that their average length of haul had gotten shorter over the last five years. Only 16 percent reported seeing longer hauls. July 2013 | Overdrive | 27 Short_and_Longhaul.indd 27 6/27/13 11:56 AM