Overdrive

July 2014

Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info

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VOICES 4 | Overdrive | July 2014 A ppointment at Pepsi at 1 p.m. Got here on the dot. It is now 3:54 p.m. and still waiting at the dock. First 2 hrs are free. My driving hours just ticking away. So wrote a reader under our OverdriveOnline.com poll in May, illustrating a problem that's been near the top of the list of reader issues through the years: uncompensated waits at shippers/receivers' docks. Two hours later, the reader chimed in again, still waiting: "I have less than 4 hours to drive. I am not going to make my 11 a.m. appointment for tomorrow two states away." The Obama administration's draft highway bill language includ- ed a proposal to require that car- riers pay a minimum hourly wage for driver detention. Though the compensation reform provision was not included in the fi rst congres- sional draft of a highway bill out of the chute, also in May, debate nonetheless has intensifi ed among owner-operators and small fl eet owners over just whether the federal government ought to be involved in detention at all. Commenting in the Overdrive's Trucking Pro LinkedIn group, some operators worried that a mandate for a minimum wage for detention would cut down the considerably higher rates some already are getting. Chattanooga, Tenn.-based small fl eet owner Michael Goodman sug- gested that "any carrier who continu- ally allows shippers to use their trucks to sit without proper compensation should stop doing business with those shippers. That would have more impact than anything the feds can do. I don't need or want the government to get more involved in my business. All it would do is cost carriers reve- nue and expand an already bloated government agency. That will result in yet another tax to pay for the oversight." In some ways mirroring such viewpoints over on the Team Run Smart website was Overdrive 2007 Owner-Operator of the Year Henry Albert, longtime independent and former small fl eet owner. He describes, like Goodman, deciding to not do business with a shipper after getting hit by inadequately compen- sated load/unload periods. "Not every business decision is a profi table one," he wrote. "I look at this issue in much the same manner as when fuel prices increased rapidly. Due to market forces, carriers quickly added fuel surcharges to their rates." He was responding in part to leased owner-operator Jeff Clark, who is passionate about the need for mandated detention pay regardless of market forces. "When something of value is free, it will eventually be wasted. When anything of value is wasted, overall effi ciency is sacri- fi ced." Other operators criticized that view, arguing that putting the man- date for detention pay on carriers just adds another stress to small busi- nesses in an already overregulated/ stressed environment. Clark acknowledges the "con- troversial" nature of his stand but adds that the current state of affairs on detention "harms small-busi- ness truckers more than the me- ga-carriers. … The problem for us small-business truckers is the number of small-business truckers. A bad shipper has enough carriers to use a different carrier every day for eternity." With detention growing as a standard feature in shipper-carrier contracts, such arguments typically go, wait times would fall. Debate over detention pay Are you in favor of a federal mandate for carriers to pay detention equal to or greater than the minimum wage? OverdriveOnline.com poll Yes 72% I don't know 4% No 24% A less-vocal majority of Overdrive readers showed favor for a detention-pay mandate. Voices_0714.indd 4 6/26/14 9:59 PM

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