If you feel like you’re spending too much money to ship packages, two organizations think they have the solution: Younger truck drivers and bigger trailers.
Consumers are feeling the weight of increased shipping costs as more than 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers were hit with a 20 percent increase to their annual membership in April.
Shipping and freight prices overall have shot up in 2018, an issue experts attribute to a truck driver shortage, higher wages for truck drivers in an attempt to attract more drivers, and increased diesel fuel prices.
“It’s a supply and demand kind of thing,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation. “When the demand is greater than the supply, the rates are going to have to go up.”
But policy efforts are in the offing to address the truck driver shortage. They include adjusting federal law so teenagers with a commercial driver’s license don’t have to wait until they are 21 to drive outside state borders, while allowing heavier or larger trucks.
The Americans for Modern Transportation coalition, which represents companies including Amazon, FedEx and UPS, has urged for an increase in the national twin-trailer size from 28 feet to 33 feet, which can carry 18 percent more freight.
“The easiest way to explain this, is we could do the same amount of work with 18 percent less trucks,” said Randy Mullett, executive director of Americans for Modern Transportation. “So that’ll give you an idea of what it could potentially do for the truck driver shortage.”
The Department of Transportation projects that by 2045, there will be 45 percent more freight in the U.S.
“This just about cuts that rate in half,” Mullett said.
Mullett said his organization will use the legislative route to increase the national twin-trailer size.
“We’re going to continue pushing for inclusion of twin 33s in some legislation this year,” Mullet said. “We’ll leave that up to Congress to decide if and when there’s a good way to move this forward. But we’ll continue to advocate, we’ll continue to educate.”
Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana introduced the Developing Responsible Individuals for a Vibrant Economy Act in March, which would allow truck drivers younger than 21 to drive between states after completing a 400-hour training program.
Hunter said the legislation is a “common-sense approach that creates job opportunities for younger workers.” The American Trucking Associations has backed the legislation, and argues it would help expand the recruitment pool to help address the driver shortage.
The association anticipated in October that the industry would be short by roughly 50,000 truck drivers at the end of 2017 and 174,000 drivers by 2026 if trends continue.
The group also claims that 890,000 new truck drivers must be recruited over the next 10 years to account for factors such as retirement, retention and demand.
“That’s an operational hardship for the trucking industry for sure,” Bob Costello, chief economist for American Trucking Associations, said of the truck driver shortage.
Sean McNally, vice president of public affairs and the press secretary for the association, said the legislation remains a “top priority” for the group, which sent a letter to Hunter supporting the legislation this year.
Costello said he could not predict what would happen regarding shipping price increases, but said he anticipates capacity will continue to remain tight for the remainder of the year.
“I am not expecting capacity to loosen up anytime soon,” he said.
Costello said a potential catalyst for loosening capacity could come through a windfall of new truck drivers, but noted that was unlikely to happen.
“So it’s probably going to remain fairly tight until demand softens and I don’t see that at this point, at least for the next year,” Costello said.
But Poole anticipates that shipping prices will continue to increase, especially as trucking companies compensate drivers more. He also noted that shippers may utilize rail more in the future as a result.
“It makes logical sense that there would be some movement from truck to rail for longer haul carriage of containers,” Poole said.
