Trucking Industry

Reliance on Online Orders Leaves Private Fleets Adapting to New Reality

October 24, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Since the beginning of the pandemic, private fleets have been riding the wave of steep rises and falls in demand.

Business levels dropped quickly for many carriers, but changed just as rapidly when people began relying on online shopping more as shelter-in-place mandates spread across the country. This boost in freight demands started stretching fleets’ resources thin in many cases, and overall demand in e-commerce hit all aspects of the transportation industry–hard.

Now, the effects COVID-19 has had on the industry have changed supply chain structures and operations for good.

“People stopped going out to the local pizza joint [and instead began] ordering online and getting deliveries,” said Gary Petty, National Private Truck Council president. Private food service and grocery carriers were hit extremely hard in March and April when the public begun panic-shopping and emptied store shelves.

These actions depleted grocery and drug stores’ resources and put added strain on private fleets when they struggled to meet the needs of replenishment for various goods.

Additionally, as internet commerce demands soared, final-mile transportation demand went right along with it as more and more people ordered home goods online more often than in-store. The need for more local delivery drivers skyrocketed as well as restaurants had to transition to having only pickup and take-out options for their customers.

For example, Petty noted that Papa John’s typically uses its in-house delivery fleet to deliver fresh pizza ingredients to its more than 5,300 stores, but as pizza demand rose, Papa John’s had to hire an additional 14,000 delivery drivers–and plans to hire 6,000 more this year.

The company also brought in 50 new Class A-licensed drivers to operate its more than 200 tractors, 300 trailers, and 15 box trucks. Papa John’s now has about 500 total drivers serving its locations.

New standards also arrived at shipping warehouses, where drivers started having to wait in mile-long lines for temperature checks and needing to fill out health surveys in their trucks as they waited to complete pickups. Still, private carriers continued making important deliveries as needed, and “their value was reaffirmed in an unprecedented moment of crisis,” said Petty.

“If you make a great product and you can’t get it to the customer, your brand is diminished,” he explained further. “Private fleets stood strong. The flexibility, reliability, and ability to control operations at the customer level [during the pandemic] has been eye-popping [and] impressive for so many of the fleets.”

A large national processed poultry company, Brakebush Bros., had to make major adjustments to its methods of operation when stay at home orders were implemented, said the company’s director of transportation and logistics, Mike Schwersenska.

“About 50% of our business went away in a two-week period” at the beginning of the pandemic, he said. “Fortunately, being in cheese country, over the years we’ve also become a carrier for many other [food] manufacturers, so we could switch capacity over to assist with their freight needs. We didn’t have to cut back and were able to keep everyone busy.”

Brakebush quickly had to adapt the roller coaster of demand as restaurants using its products switched to takeout and delivery-focused business practices.

“As a company, we had an all-time sales and volume record in June,” explained Schwersenska. “Our transportation group had record miles traveled and record pounds delivered. It was the craziest thing we’d ever seen. Our team did a tremendous job making sure our customers had product when and where they needed it. And, more importantly, they did it safely.” The company did not have any drivers using the temporary hours-of-service exemption put in place during this time.

Brakebush is also one of many businesses that have adopted new health-focused practices to keep workers safe, such as sanitizing trucks regularly–which includes all doors, handles, seats, dials, and brake line gladhands. All of the company’s shared spaces are sanitized daily and all offices are disinfected as much as possible. Additionally, all business transaction receipts are now sent through paperless options.

Luckily, Schwersenska says none of the company’s workforce has tested positive for the virus throughout its entire fleet of 75 trucks and 220 refrigerated trailers. He also said he’s sure the spikes in e-commerce will not end with the pandemic, but have made consumers much more reliant on online orders–so it will likely become a new reality.

FMCSA Requests Comments Regarding Potential Driving Window Pause Pilot

October 23, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is proposing a program relaxing hours-of-service rules that mandate drivers of property-carrying commercial motor vehicles complete their driving within a 14-hour window.

The Split Duty Period Pilot Program, as it’s been named, will allow drivers to pause their driving time with an off-duty period of between 30 minutes and three hours–as long as the driver takes 10 total consecutive hours off-duty after his or her work shift.

On August 28th, the agency announced its request for public comment regarding the pilot.

“Truckers are American heroes–they keep our supply chain moving; they carry essential goods we need to maintain our daily lives,” said Elaine L. Chao, U.S. Transportation Secretary. “The Department is seeking public comments on providing additional flexibility for truckers as they work to service our country during this public health crisis.”

Pilot program participation will be granted to a limited number of commercial drivers. FMCSA said the study group for the pilot program will include small, medium, and large carrier commercial carriers as well as independent owner-operators. To qualify, motor carriers need to meet criteria regarding crash rates, and cannot have a rate exceeding the national average. Carriers must also adhere to pilot program regulations and procedures, allow researchers to implement a video-based monitoring system onboard their trucks, and also allow them to obtain records-of-duty status information for all participating drivers.

FMCSA is planning to study a sample of between 200 and 400 drivers for the pilot program, which it estimates will operate for three years at most. All data gathered will be used to analyze the safety of an hours-of-service change such as this.

“FMCSA wants to hear directly from drivers about the possibility and safety of an hours-of-service pause pilot program,” said Jim Mullen, acting Administrator for FMCSA. “The agency remains committed to exploring ways to improve safety on our roadways, while increasing flexibility for truckers. We encourage drivers, motor carriers, and interested citizens to review the proposed pilot program and provide substantive public comments for FMCSA to review.”

This program announcement comes just a month before widely-discussed hours-of-service regulations go into effect on September 29th, and only days before Mullen leaves his post with the agency at the end of August. Upon his stepping down, senior policy adviser at DOT’s Office of the Secretary, Wiley Deck, will take on the deputy administrator role.

“In our comments on the recently revised hours-of-service rules, we called for a pilot program to study the impacts this type of change would have on highway safety and our industry, said spokesman for American Trucking Associations, Sean McNally. “We are pleased to see that FMCSA has taken our suggestion, and we will work with the agency to ensure this program yields meaningful data that can be used for future rulemakings.”

FMCSA’s final hours-of-service modification notice was issued May 14th, and originally said nothing regarding the 14-hour driving window rule.

The final rule did, however depict four changes meant to boost regulation flexibility, such as relaxation of the 30-minute rest break rule, which required a trucker to take a break after every eight hours of consecutive driving. The change allows a driver’s mandatory break requirement to be met by using an “on-duty, not driving” status instead of an “off-duty” status.

The final revision also changes the split sleeper berth regulation to allow drivers the ability to choose to split their necessary 10 hour off-duty time into two periods–an 8 hour/2 hour split or a 7-hour/3-hour split. Neither choice of hour division would have counted against a 14-hour window mandate.

Additionally, the rule changes modify the adverse driving conditions exception, so that the maximum driving window permitted can be extended by two additional hours during challenging weather or driving conditions. It also allows for the lengthening of a driver’s maximum on-duty period from 12 to 14 total hours, and extends a driver’s operating distance limit from 100 air miles to 150 air miles.

“OOIDA commends DOT and FMCSA for proposing the Split Duty Period Pilot Program,” said executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Lewie Pugh. “While we advocated that the final hours-of-service rule should have included the split duty provision, we think the pilot program can provide substantive data to permanently give drivers more control over their daily schedules.”

$50 Million Now Available for Highway Rail-Crossing Safety Grants

October 21, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity that will provide $50 million in grant funding for agencies working to boost commuter safety at highway-rail crossings.

DOT released the notice on August 25th, and explained that the funding will be awarded by the Federal Highway Administration through the Commuter Authority Rail Safety Improvement Grants Program. The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020 appropriated the $50 million to be allocated through this particular program.

The Federal Highway Administration works with the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration to reward commuter rail authorities’ efforts in eradicating crossing point safety hazards between railways and highways with competitive grants through the CARSI program.

“Safety is always our top priority at the department under the leadership of [Transportation] Secretary [Elaine] Chao,” said Nicole Nason, Federal Highway Administrator. “These grants will help our state, local, and regional transportation partners better protect the lives of those traveling on America’s roads and rails.”

Projects that protect or separate grades at crossings, rebuild current railroad grade crossing structures, eliminate grade crossing by relocating highways, or fix blocked grade crossings due to idling trains to eliminate hazards are eligible. An eligible commuter authority will need to have experienced an accident investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board between January 1st of 2008 and December 31st of 2018.

“FRA is always working toward a benchmark of zero fatalities at railway crossings, and such safety improvements to our nation’s infrastructure will go a long way toward that goal,” said Ronald Batory, Federal Railroad Administrator.

94% of all railway-related deaths and injuries take place at railroad crossings or are caused by trespassing, according to the FRA. Trespassing is the cause behind at least 400 rail-related deaths every year.

“Working together with FHWA and FRA, we can improve safety around highway-rail crossings and prevent collisions, injuries, and fatalities,” said K. Jane Williams, FTA Deputy Administrator. “Rail safety includes encouraging safe behavior around all rail crossings; it’s about making sure the American public is safe near all rail tracks.”

This funding opportunity has four main goals, according to the DOT. These are: to improve safety at all railway-highway crossings through the elimination of hazards in these areas, to reduce overall fatalities, crashes, and serious injuries at these crossings, to reduce the number of public at-grade crossings by either closure or grade separation, and to reduce delays and improve systems by eliminating blocked grade crossing hazards.

DOT also notes that the proposed location of an eligible project does not need to be at the location where the NTSB previously investigated a reported accident. “The proposed location of the project is up to the discretion of applicant,” DOT said.

There is also a required cost share of 10% of all project costs. Additionally, the planned type of award will be a cost-reimbursable grant agreement sent directly to the applicant or through an allocation to the applicant’s State department of transportation. The grant period of performance must be proposed by the applicant and can vary by award. DOT estimates grant awards will typically last between one and four years.

“The applicant should demonstrate the technical feasibility of the project with engineering and design studies and activities; the development of design criteria and/or basis of design; the basis for the cost estimate presented in the CARSI application, including the identification of contingency levels appropriate to its level of design; and any scope, schedule, and budget risk-mitigation measures,” explained DOT.

The current closing date for grant applications is October 26th, and the DOT will be hosting a Funding Opportunity Informational Webinar on September 10th from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM Eastern time. This informational webinar is an attempt to help applicants fully understand all eligibility and opportunity requirements and have their questions answered.

To participate in the webinar, you must provide your name, title, organization information, and email address to Sarah.Tarpgaard@DOT.gov by September 9th. DOT also recommends you download the NOFO’s full announcement and information packet under the Related Documents tab on the grant information webpage, which you can find here.

FMCSA Requests Survey Permission for Exemplary Trucking Safety Methods

October 15, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

This month, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced its intent to study technologies and policies across the trucking industry in an effort to reward carriers exceeding safety guidelines. Regulators are currently seeking approval from the White House to begin this survey, in which they will choose a number of carrier operational managers overseeing companies that are going above and beyond safety requirements and that are boosting regulations regarding driver fitness.

2015’s FAST Act implemented a “Beyond Compliance program,” which works to recognize motor carriers surpassing safety regulations by giving them boosted scores within the Safety Measurement System, and is the inspiration for these surveys.

FMCSA originally released a notification in 2016 meant to meet the 18-month post-FAST Act congressional deadline, which consisted of program restructuring ideas. The agency published an additional request earlier this year, saying the primary notice was an effort to create public knowledge around the program itself.

The original notification urged for a widespread recognition mechanism for choosing to install innovative safety technology, including boosted driver fitness programs and improved safety-management tools for fleets, through the Compliance, Safety, and Accountability program.

“After a review of the comments received and conducting a small-scale study, it was determined additional information was needed to ascertain the best approach moving forward,” said an FMCSA official. “For that step, the agency is required to conduct an information collection request resulting in the additional Federal Register notices.”

In 2016, FMCSA stated that its Beyond Compliance program would let motor carriers sign up for the program once measures were initiated, even before enrollment was mandated. Now, the recent announcement requests survey-conducting permission from the Office of Management and Budget.

“The study does not attempt to conduct a full survey of the motor carrier population,” said FMCSA. “Instead, it relies on expert opinion from carriers that are objectively determined to exhibit safe operations that exceed industry averages as indicated by driver out-of-service rates, vehicle out-of-service rates, and crash rates. To identify these carriers, the study will utilize existing data from the Motor Carrier Management Information System database.”

FMCSA’s plan will require online surveys to be done by around 112 participating carrier operational managers and 113 non-participating managers. Through these answers, the agency believes it will be able to better understand just how influential modern safety technologies and programs have been for the highest-performing carriers.

“Only those carriers that perform near the top quartile across all three categories are potential participants,” said the agency. The categories being examined are those mentioned above: DOT-reportable crash rates, driver out-of-service rates at roadside inspections, and vehicle out-of-service rates at roadside inspections.

Those chosen will give their answers through an electronic survey platform, and results will later be studied to see which safety program and policy aspects are most prevalent among all participants.

“The resulting information would reveal the elements of safety programs that these motor carriers are using and their achieved results, and what these motor carriers believe to be the most effective for achieving safety and [what] should be included in a Beyond Compliance program,” said FMCSA.

American Trucking Associations has also shown its support regarding new manners of recognizing those in the trucking industry that often choose to implement safety-improving technology and programs. Additionally, the National Association of Small Trucking Companies and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are invited to take part in the survey by surveying their own manners for collection of secondary data.

“This would enable greater participation by smaller carriers and owner-operators, and would also enable a wider perspective of responses,” FMCSA explained.

All responses collected and analyzed will be part of the overall pilot study findings report, and the agency said analytical and descriptive analyzation methods will be part of the study. All results will be implemented into a formal report overseen by FMCSA itself.

The full report will also become available to the public via FMCSA’s website. The contents of the findings will be used in the final report the agency will need to send to Congress.

Health Considerations are a Priority for the Transportation Industry, Experts Say

October 11, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Planning experts are saying the transportation industry, along with all public agencies, needs to begin implementing more health considerations into any policy changes or decisions.

A new “Health in All Policies” framework is currently recommended by Conduent Transportation’s strategy and innovation leader, Renee Autumn Ray, to be adopted into public agencies at each level of government.

“This really makes sense to a lot of agencies because, pretty much every public agency has a foundational principle to administer for the health, safety, and welfare of all of the people in their jurisdictions,” said Ray. “Health is kind of embedded, at least at some level, in a lot of the work of transportation and other public agencies.”

Ray recently published a paper called, “Increasing Access to Essential Health Functions: The Role of Transportation in Improving America’s Health,” in which she discusses how obstacles to transportation access have a negative effect on health care access. The paper also explains how those without a personal vehicle typically have to rely on less efficient or less convenient methods of transit.

Additionally, Ray explained that integrating a health-in-all-policies method could decrease the difficulties that come with social and systemic factors that affect both personal economic growth and care. These factors also include education, job access, and socioeconomic status; all of these conditions can cause differences in quality of life and overall health.

“Transportation access is one of the fundamental objectives of the public sector,” said Eno Center vice president of policy and finance, Paul Lewis. “It’s also one of the most important ways the government can enable residents to live healthy and productive lives.”

Ray also said that impoverished people tend to move far outside the city and into its outskirts where lower costs of living and fewer options for public transportation are available. The distance from city centers, she said, also has a large impact on a person’s ability to work just one job and the amount of time they have for leisure.

Longer life expectancy can also cause transportation difficulties, said Ray in her paper. On average, she noted, people outlive their driving ability by up to a decade.

“When we think about where older adults are living, most of them are living in suburbs that it’s going to be very difficult to run transit through,” Ray said.

Ray believes the most effective way to make any positive changes is to communicate thoroughly with members of the community–the ones who are directly affected by these issues.

“The best way to understand how to do planning is by having local relationships,” she said. “You need to go into different communities that you’re planning for and talk to those people, and then do the things that they tell you. Doing a better job listening to folks in the community is important.”

She is glad, though, that more and more people have been dedicating themselves to the studies of planning and public health, and says that the upward trend of those entering multiple sectors can only be a good thing.

Ray also pointed out that although the majority of public transportation experts and public health workers typically want the same kinds of improvements for their communities, their verbiage may differ, and it’s important for the public to understand that.

“I think one thing that’s important to note is that we use different jargon, but we’re frequently trying to do the same thing,” she explained. “Getting a framework for some of that jargon, to me, is helpful to understand that there are some foundational principles that lie across all of the work we’re doing in our various public agencies.”

Whatever words are used to describe issues and solutions, Ray insists that creative problem-solving through a collaborative effort is key. For example, throughout the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has worked on a program allowing curbside pickup and grocery delivery services to be used for specific subsidized food benefits.

Ray says actions like these during COVID-19, and other efforts to improve overall community health, give her hope that public sector officials will help the nation come out better than it was before the pandemic.

“[Positive change] is hugely important now, with COVID,” said Lewis. “But this has always been an issue.”

FMCSA Pushes for More Driver-Assist Tech, AAA Says it is Still Unsafe

October 10, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Earlier this month, the most-discussed topic at the day-long Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration safety summit was the implementation of driver-assist technology throughout the trucking industry. Experts have been considering these innovations as being prevalent ways to decrease the number of truck-involved crashes.

“Nothing contributes greater to highway safety than the person behind the wheel,” said J.B. Hunt Transport senior vice president of safety, security, and driver personnel, Greer Woodruff. “But, I have seen drivers that have years of safe driving have a momentary lapse for a circumstance that unfolds, and this [technology] has saved them. They have been very thankful to have had these systems on their vehicles.”

Woodruff also noted that driver-assist systems are able to help carriers navigate the “increasing headwinds” of modern challenges, including everything from distracted driving to traffic congestion to the growing number of vehicle miles typically traveled.

Currently, FMCSA is suggesting voluntary use of these systems by fleets and independent owner-operators. This technology includes adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning systems, forward collision warning systems, and forward-facing camera systems.

Integration of these technologies has now reached around 45-50% of the market, according to Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems vice president of engineering and R&D, Richard Beyer.

“These systems help the driver to reduce the stress and improve the safety,” he explained. “But it’s still based on good, solid driving practices [and] drivers staying alert and being part of the solution.”

However, two tests by AAA over the last two years have shown that partially-automated driving systems do not always work as expected, and the company has recommended that vehicle manufacturers limit the use of this technology.

AAA researchers tested the systems of five different manufacturers over a distance of 4,000 miles, and cited an issue every eight miles, on average.

“AAA has repeatedly found that active driving assistance systems do not perform consistently, especially in real-world scenarios,” said AAA’s director of automotive engineering, Greg Brannon. “Automakers need to work toward more dependable technology, including improving lane-keeping assistance.”

The majority of problems encountered by researchers involved systems meant to keep vehicles in their respective lanes; however, testing showed that many vehicles failed to detect simulated broken-down cars in their path of travel. According to the study, the test vehicles hit the out-of-commission vehicles around two-thirds of the time, traveling at an average speed of 25 miles per hour.

This recent second round of testing showed little difference from similar testing by AAA of four other vehicles in 2018. Additionally, the systems that combine braking, steering, and acceleration control continued to stop working altogether without much notice to the driver.

“When we’re talking about advanced driver-assistance systems, it really is going back to the capabilities of the driver,” said Daimler Trucks North America executive manager of advanced safety systems and autonomous driving, Ritchie Huang. “What we’re building is just supplementary to them.”

Chris Spear, President of American Trucking Associations, said the main priority for ATA is highway safety, and suggested that regulators should work toward creating an environment in which these kinds of technological innovations can explore their potential.

“I think you’ve got to stick with innovation, because it’s, quite frankly, moving 10 times faster than the government,” said Spear. “Just get out of the way. Let innovation take care of it.”

Still, AAA’s Brannon said the most recent testing on automated driving systems within personal vehicles show that systems have not been improving drastically, even though they are being implemented into mainstream models more often.

He also explained that those who first purchased the systems were typically early technology adopters, but now, more and more less tech-savvy people are operating these kinds of vehicles.

“People are really less familiar and less likely to really engage in understanding how the systems work,” Brannon said. “They just assume they do work. That could be a really dangerous assumption.”

Additionally, people easily begin to rely too heavily on the technology when frequently operating vehicles that have it in place, and Brannon said this is extremely dangerous when the systems fail in any way. AAA also explained that during real-road tests, all systems had difficulties ensuring that the vehicles remained in their lanes, and often caused the car to move too close to guardrails and other vehicles.

The issues with this current technology could, in fact, delay the adoption of entirely-autonomous vehicles, Brannon noted, because now, drivers who have operated a vehicle with the technology in place may have trouble trusting them.