Transportation continues to be an ever-increasing expense across all segments of the floral industry. Prime Inc., headquartered in Springfield, MO, and one of North America’s busier trucking companies for over 40 years, services the floral supply chain by transporting fresh cut flowers and plants nationwide in temperature-controlled vehicles and considers productivity to be a key issue.

There are currently two huge challenges facing trucking, both of which are impacting productivity. These are the move towards electronic logs and the ever-changing hours of service regulations (how much driving a driver is allowed to do in a shift and in a week).

Electronic logs, or as they are commonly referred to, e-logs, are still not required by the government. There has been a push by various stakeholders within the industry to make them mandatory, but currently any e-log mandate is still tied up in the regulation-making process. Our best guess is that within the next few years they will become mandated, with a several-year implementation period. Prime Inc., and numerous other carriers, has been voluntarily using e-logs for years. We feel it is the right thing to do for several reasons:

• They keep better track of a driver’s available hours than paper logs do.

• They allow the driver to get his needed rest by ensuring he takes a full break when required.

The above two reasons then lead to better legal protection for both the carrier and the shipper in the event of litigation from the result of an accident.

With these benefits come several challenges for the carriers using e-logs.

• When using e-logs, drivers do not have any flexibility to make up for lost time caused by any sort of delays. These delays could happen when getting loaded, in heavy traffic, in bad weather, or anything else that keeps a driver from staying on schedule.

• Loss of productivity caused by the exactness of the e-logs. A driver might have a little “wiggle room” when using paper logs, but not with e-logs. While the loss of productivity varies within the trucking industry, it is safe to say there has been at least a five percent drop in productivity that can be attributed solely to e-logs.

• Uneven playing field within the trucking industry caused by some carriers using e-logs and other carriers still using paper logbooks, known in the industry as “comic books.” While paper logs remain perfectly legal, carriers using them often have an unfair advantage over e-log carriers by gaining additional productivity (through wiggle room in duty logbooks), and in some cases, offering lower rates to their shippers.

The ever-changing regulations governing over-the-road drivers are another big challenge faced by most truckers, including those supporting the floral industry. The latest set of rule changes went into effect July 1, 2013, with the biggest challenge being the mandatory break. This change requires the driver to take at least one 30-minute break during each driving shift. This is also required in team operations where there are two drivers on the truck who rotate driving shifts to keep the truck almost always in motion. This new regulation requires that the truck now be parked at least twice a day, for 30 minutes each time, while the drivers take this mandatory break. The result of this rule change is that each team-truck is losing an hour of driving time per day. And for those trucks running on e-logs, this is on top of any lost production attributed to e-logs.

The bottom line is that in the current regulatory environment, trucking companies are getting less and less production out of each truck and each driver. Combined with the current extremely tight driver market, this is resulting in less capacity available to shippers to move their products. From our perspective, this tightening of capacity is going to continue for the foreseeable future and it will also drive freight rates up.

Shippers that have relationships with carriers need to nurture those relationships by being driver-friendly or they will soon find it harder to find trucks to move their products. Carriers are looking for customers that appreciate the value of a driver’s time and who work to limit loading and unloading delays. Most over-the-road drivers are paid primarily based on the miles they drive, and delays caused by shippers and receivers negatively impacts a driver’s ability to earn a living.

Steve Field is director of safety at Prime Inc. in Springfield, MO. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Brad Quinn is in sales and marketing at Prime Inc. in Springfield, MO. He can be contacted at [email protected].