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Tulsa Attorneys Analyze Trucking Industry Crash Statistics from Three Major Carriers

The Edwards Law Firm's truck accident attorneys have compiled data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) Motor Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS) to provide motorists with accurate crash information among three of the nation's top carriers.

The firm's research shows that FedEx has the highest crash incidence (1), followed by Con-Way Freight (2) and UPS (3); over the past 24 months, the number of accidents among these carriers were 1,137 accidents, 515 accidents and 508 accidents, respectively.

"FedEx may have had the highest number of crashes—which included 29 fatal accidents—but they also had the highest number of vehicle and driver inspections," said attorney and firm partner Tony Edwards.

"Over the course of two years, FedEx was inspected over 5,000 times. It's a serious reminder that driver error and negligence are a major part of the equation when it comes to commercial vehicle crashes. Just because the truck is in good working order doesn't mean it won't be involved in a serious or fatal crash," Edwards said.

The SMS provides an assessment of on-road performance and investigation results with its Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC). The three carriers examined had varied results in the unsafe driving category, reflecting a 30.7% unsafe driving rating for FedEx, 10.4% for UPS and .7% for Con-Way Freight. The unsafe driving percentile is based on results from roadside inspections, which may include driving violations.

"The FMCSA's data is updated every month, so it's a great way for consumers and motorists to check the safety records of these carriers. All you need is the name of the company and a quick search in the database can give you a basic summary of the frequency of inspections, driver fitness, whether there is a history of controlled substance abuse among drivers and more," said Edwards.

"The only flaw is that the data relies on reported crashes, which, as we know, means if the agency wasn't made aware of an incident the details of that crash wouldn't have been reported. Regardless, everyone has access to this information and it can tell us a lot about the safety of these carriers," Edwards said.

www.virtual-strategy.com

Where have all the truckers gone?

Swift Transportation's 20,000 workers haul goods in almost 14,000 big-rig trucks that travel the interstates and back roads of the United States every day...

 

Swift Transportation's 20,000 workers haul goods in almost 14,000 big-rig trucks that travel the interstates and back roads of the United States every day. The company's performance is closely tied to the nation's economy, which has been looking increasingly sunny lately.

Where have all the truckers gone?

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So it was surprising last July when Swift's stock plummeted nearly 18 percent in a single day. The tumble came for an odd reason. It wasn't because there was too little business — but, rather, too much.

"We were constrained by the challenging driver market," the company said in its quarterly earnings announcement. "Our driver turnover and unseated truck count were higher than anticipated."

In other words, Swift had plenty of customers wanting to ship goods. But in a time of elevated unemployment, it somehow couldn't find enough drivers. How is that possible? The reasons for that conundrum tell us a great deal about what has been ailing U.S. workers and why a full economic recovery has been so slow in coming.

Consider this: The American Trucking Associations has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.

Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn't enough to meet demand, it's because the price — in this case, truckers' wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say "There is a shortage of skilled workers" than "We aren't paying our workers enough," even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.

Running the numbers

The numbers are revealing: Even as trucking companies and their trade association bemoan the driver shortage, truckers — or as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers — were paid 6 percent less, on average, in 2013 than a decade earlier, adjusted for inflation. It takes a peculiar form of logic to cut pay steadily and then be shocked that fewer people want to do the job.

Millions of able-bodied Americans need work, yet there aren't enough middle-income jobs for them. That is especially the case for men without advanced educations, who have seen their wages depressed over the past few decades. Trucking would seem to be an excellent option.

It's not an ideal job for everyone. There is no question that trucking is hard work, necessitating long hours and longer stretches away from family. But that's why it is well-compensated, at least in comparison to other jobs not requiring college degrees. The average pay for a long-haul trucker is just shy of $50,000, according to the ATA, and an experienced trucker with a good safety record can make significantly more than that. The work typically offers lavish benefits that are increasingly rare for nonunion blue-collar employees.

The job can be learned fairly quickly. In some industries, companies complain of shortages of workers for jobs that require years of advanced training, like certain engineering specialties. Trucking is not one of those industries, however.

A person can get a commercial driver's license after a course that can be as brief as six weeks of intensive study. Moreover, there were actually fewer truckers working last year (1.585 million) than five years earlier (1.673 million). Some of the missing workers could presumably be coaxed back into the industry if the money were right.

Complications

To be sure, the trucker-shortage picture is more complex than this, notes Bob Costello, the ATA's chief economist. He says these complications make a straightforward story of truckers simply being underpaid not quite fair.

For example, new safety requirements mean that individual truckers drive fewer miles than a decade ago: An average long-haul truck can now cover 8,000 miles a month, down from almost 11,000 in 2007, according to the trade association. This helps account for downward wage pressure. And the trucking companies themselves are typically working on thin profit margins and serving customers on long-term contracts, which means that if they simply raised pay sharply to recruit more truckers, they could end up losing money.

Yet there are some indications that this state of affairs may not last: The shortage of truckers is one piece of evidence that the balance of power is shifting. In recent earnings calls, executives from companies as varied as JetBlue and Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group have expressed worry about rising wage pressures.

The trucker shortage is already resulting in higher wages in parts of that industry. There have been $2,000 signing bonuses from companies looking to poach truckers and, as Kevin Knight of Knight Transportation mentioned in that trucking company's latest earnings call, per-mile pay increases have been working out to 5 to 10 percent jumps in driver pay.

Executives may bemoan higher pay for workers because it could cut profit margins. But after a generation in which the median U.S. household has seen flat to declining inflation-adjusted income, wage increases are a welcome corrective. When workers begin to have more leverage in salary negotiations, it is a sign of an improving economy, not a liability that businesses should be complaining about.

www.dallasnews.com