Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/324702
BUSINESS June 2014 | Overdrive | 21 J.B. Hunt Senior Vice President Richie Henderson addressed the 2014 ALK Transportation Technology Summit last month in Princeton, N.J. Among the points he made: • Capacity is tight due to the driver shortage and will continue to plague carriers until related retention and demographic problems are addressed. On the other hand, the demand is producing a "pricing revolution." • J.B. Hunt will hire "11,000 drivers for turnover replacement this year alone," Henderson said, at a cost of an average $5,695 per driver. • The company is leveraging social media to connect with drivers. • A wage increase, which he said is long overdue, could produce the best results. The share of U.S. freight tonnage carried by trucks grew from 2012's 68.5 percent to nearly 70 percent in 2013, says the American Trucking Associations' American Trucking Trends report. This was achieved in spite of "congestion, regulations and crumbling infrastructure," said Bill Graves, ATA pres- ident and chief executive officer. Among other highlights in the report: • Trucks hauled 55.4 percent of all trade with Canada and 65.4 percent of all trade with Mexico. • Trucking employed more than 7 million people. • The industry paid $37.8 billion in state and federal highway user fees. TRUCKING GRABS BIGGER SHARE OF FREIGHT PARTNERS IN BUSINESS TIP: HOW TO HANDLE BANK ACCOUNTS If you are the sole owner of the business, open an additional per- sonal account and save yourself the extra fees associated with business accounts. Deposit your settlement checks in this account, and pay yourself for driving from these funds. A separate account also will give you streamlined access to all of the information needed if you are audited. The Partners in Business program is produced by Overdrive and the consultants at ATBS, the nation's largest owner-operator business ser- vices firm. It is sponsored by Ryder and Goodyear. The next Partners in Business seminars will be Aug. 22 and Aug. 23 at The Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. The Partners in Business manual can be ordered through eTruckerStore.com. HUGE TOLL FROM CONGESTION Trucking lost $9.2 billion to traffic congestion in 2013, according to a recent report from the American Transportation Research Institute, which says the industry in aggregate was delayed 141 million hours in the year. ATRI's annual report, The Cost of Congestion to the Trucking Industry, says the delays were the equivalent of about 51,293 drivers sitting idle for an entire working year. HUNT EXEC SHARES RECRUITMENT PERSPECTIVE The average value of a stolen cargo load, $207,982, shot up nearly 40 percent in the first three months of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013, an indication of the "continued persistence and increasing sophistica- tion" of criminals," says FreightWatch International's quarterly theft report. Loads of food and drink (excluding alcohol) were the most common type of load stolen, accounting for 21 per- cent of thefts. VALUE OF TYPICAL CARGO THEFT JUMPS Source: American Trucking Trends 2014/US DOT Biz_0614.indd 21 6/3/14 10:24 AM