Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/634029
34 | Overdrive | February 2016 shows average miles per truck per month fell over 25 percent from 2007 through 2012," he says. Since then, miles per truck are "up 6 percent, but still off sig- nificantly overall." ATA's 2015 shortage analysis acknowl- edges surplus numbers in the driver supply/demand equation in the worst years of the recession, with the shortage returning in slight form in 2011. Starks, too, sees the forces behind the up-and-down "lumpiness" of the long recovery from the recession as the prin- cipal reason for anemic driver pay. He describes a significant disconnect between shippers' and carriers' views of pricing throughout the post-recession period, making rate growth – and conse- quently driver pay growth – less possible. Because many shippers were growing only modestly, "their expectations for transportation price increases were low." Starks says his company's driver short- age trend estimates offer value mainly because "there are no real actual num- bers" of drivers short. A trend of growing numbers in his view illustrates a market that isn't operating "as efficiently as it potentially could" and getting worse. When combined with capacity uti- lization numbers, averaging above 95 percent in recent years, Starks says, the driver shortage estimate has been a good indicator of when pricing will in fact move, as it did significantly in 2014 and, less so, this past year. Based on current trends, he adds, 100 percent utilization could come by 2017, and the market "will have to respond." The industry's typical cycle of pay advances takes 33 to 36 months, Klemp says. It starts when a major fleet is the first in a long time to announce a major pay raise. It ends when the last of the large influential fleets brings its pay in line. "It did it this time in 17 months," Klemp says, starting in 2014 with U.S. Xpress. That compressed cycle indicates a strong sense of a driver shortage. Owner-operator Lester sees the driver shortage debate and statistics as the "same old thing we've been talking about for the last 30 years": how to pay drivers adequately for a tough job in a competi- tive market. "I hate to hear that there's such a dilemma when I just can't see it," he says. "What do football teams do? They throw gobs of money at players because they know these guys are who they want. The market demands it. There's just not that many players that are out there who are first-rate. They get these unbeliev- able contracts because they're a rare breed. Are drivers that rare of a breed? I would like to think that." – Max Heine contributed to this report. PAY AND THE DRIVER SHORTAGE