An often-overlooked link in the supply chain is adding to the U.S. freight-backlog mess: trucking. “We can’t find enough people that want to do the job.”
Desiree Rios for The Wall Street Journal
Many drivers are paid by the mile, and typically don’t get paid for the first two hours spent waiting to load or unload cargo. Even after that window, drivers often don’t routinely seek compensation from carriers or freight brokers for that time because they seldom get it, according to a 2020 survey by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. Any pay for time spent waiting is generally less than what drivers would make when their wheels are rolling.
To address that, Mr. Faircloth raised the rates he charges his shipping customers and offered to pay his drivers a straight salary of $1,650 a week. “Inefficiency in the entire industry gets under drivers’ skin,” he said. “You help us get more efficient, and that helps drive rates down.” “It’s the operations that are the issue,” said Ms. Morris, who belongs to a trucker group called PAR18 that is pushing to ensure port drivers get paid for their time. “We’re obligated to wait there for two hours for free.”at the bottlenecked ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, recruiting additional drivers has been an uphill battle, said Lisa Wan, director of operations for RoadEx CY Inc., a Carson, Calif.-based operator that hauls cargo from ports to local yards and distribution facilities.
Jesse Milligan of West Lafayette, Ohio, is a third-generation trucker who started driving in 2009, after he got laid off from a steel mill. He hauled lumber, chemicals and military vehicles all over the country with his father, who owned his own truck, then bought the vehicle and went into business for himself.
“If they can make in two or three days what would normally take them a week, they’ll go home,” said Jerry Gioia, an owner-operator with a four-truck fleet based in Hayden, Colo. Tyler Foster, 53, a long-haul driver from Green River, Wyo., said that some big trucking companies treat workers like they’re expendable. “They just run them hard, they get very little pay and they leave after three to six months,” he said.Allison Zaucha for The Wall Street Journal
Drivers and fleet owners also say that government regulations can be intrusive or cut into driver earnings, pushing some to leave. Those include rules intended to reduce fatigue bydrivers’ time behind the wheel, or to curb pollution near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by phasing out the use of older trucks.
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