www.trucking.com: reshaping the capabilities and response of the North American trucking industry

Diesel Progress North American Edition, June, 1999 by Rob Wilson

It was only a matter of time. Trucks have overtaken cars in production volume, leading by nearly 400,000 units for the first five months of this year. By year's end, truck production may beat out cars by nearly 1 million units.

It is a trend that has been building since the mid-1970s when CAFE requirements killed the muscle car, the station wagon and the larger gas guzzler sedans. I remember back in 1978 writing an article, "How The Muscle Car Became A Truck," but I never envisioned things playing out quite this way. We were all supposed to embrace the economy car, remember? So much for a planned economy.

Right now, however, I'm more concerned with commercial trucking, Class 4 through 8, and how it will cope with challenges in the next few years. Can it keep pace with the growth in North American freight in the overall, and if it can, where are we going to put all these trucks?

The schedule for annual replacement needs alone for North American Class 8 truck sales has shifted upwards by as much as 40,000 units. We now need to build 190,000 to 200,000 Class 8 trucks in a bad year just to handle the replacement market. It's estimated that the North American truck population in Class 4 through 8 will swell by 700,000 in five years.

Frankly, trucking is not keeping up with demand right now and configurations and weight ratings will have to step up to this also. The Internet has a crucial role to play. And, yes, more intermodal will also be needed, but not at the expense of line haul growth, but just to supplement it. Local trucking business, the pickup and delivery stuff, is on an absolute tear. With apologies to Al Gore, the would-be executioner of internal combustion engines, this is all diesel powered or will be. Electric power and fuel cell vehicles need not apply.

According to John McQuaid, president of the National Private Trucking Council, between now and 2006, freight growth will be approximately 16 percent. Local trucking revenue rose 14 percent to $59 billion in 1997 vs. 1996, and a similar increase is expected for last year, bringing the total to approximately $68 billion for 1998. A lot of this is Internet driven - people ordering stuff from Skymall and amazon.com delivered next day to their home or workplace. Long haul trucking isn't quite that nuts, but it's growing at 3 to 4 percent per year and so there's a real crunch in trucking all the way around.

One of the things being pushed is the raising of vehicle weight limits from 80,000 to 97,000 lb., with the addition of a third trailer axle, which is a 21 percent increase in capacity to selective shippers. The weight change will go down much better than longer trailers, or wider trucks and trailers. Anti-truck coalitions make those moves impossible.

But just the change in weight will translate to higher power requirements and greater braking requirements. One starts to see more need for the 600-plus hp line haul powerplants just making their way out on to the interstates.

Trucking will still be king of logistics in the next century because it has the inherent flexibility to meet every customer demand. We have seen increasing use of intermodal by domestic LTL (less than load) motor carriers since they gained the right to ship up to 28 percent of their business by rail after a bloody fight with the Teamsters back in 1991. But rail represents the status quo, only reacting to situations. Today's best trucking fleets are customer oriented and proactive

The truckload industry is being completely revamped and is producing cost-effective, time-critical freight deliveries. Just think Wal-Mart and you have the right frame of reference. The LTL careers have a lot of room for improvement. A tough market, the cat and dog stuff, not unlike scalping tickets. And then the airfreight parcel carriers are having greater impact every day and stand to benefit tremendously from the e-commerce based Internet business.

The Internet is transforming today's truck industry. Check out the web site of a line haul fleet like Schneider National and you won't believe what's being accomplished in every aspect of fleet operations. From hiring drivers to efficiently matching up the appropriate owner operators with cost-effective loads and destinations. It's all happening there.

Reshaping the capabilities and response of the North American trucking industry, this is what "trucking.com" is all about. It has come at a time when everyone is feeling swamped with challenges on too many fronts. Professionalism is winning out in trucking, finally, and not a moment too soon.

Street Smarts is a monthly column devoted to the on-highway engine market. Rob Wilson is president of Diesel & Gas Turbine Publications.