Webinar Replay 107: ATRI 2026 Top 10 Issues in Trucking

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Mark Rhea: Beautiful.

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Steve Kessler: Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to the INFINITI Fast Forward webinar series. My name’s Steve Kessler, and I’m going to host the program today.

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Steve Kessler: We have one of my favorite, programs, on tap for today. We’re, gonna feature,

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Steve Kessler: Our friend Rebecca Brewster from the American Transportation Research Institute.

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Steve Kessler: A-T-R-I, or ATRI, a lot of people, call it that. And every year, if y’all don’t know.

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Steve Kessler: ATRI undertakes a project to reach out to the trucking industry to gather what the industry considers their main concerns in trucking.

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Steve Kessler: And then every year, ATRI publishes their top 10 industry concerns, which are generally released at the ATA’s Management Conference towards the end of October.

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Steve Kessler: We’re very happy to have Rebecca on. ATRI, in my opinion, is a premier research organization for the trucking industry, and have been for quite a long period of time.

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Steve Kessler: So, having said that, that’s gonna be the focus of our, program today. We’re gonna go through the top 10 industry concerns for trucking.

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Steve Kessler: Just a couple of quick housekeeping, idea, or,

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Steve Kessler: information, we can’t hear you all, so if you have a question or a comment you’d like to make, you can put it in the chat feature there, or use the Q&A box, and we can see that here on our end, and we’ll be able to see your comments and address your concerns.

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Steve Kessler: Also wanted to introduce to all of them, and by the way, why don’t y’all just jump in the chat while, I’m introducing Mark here, and let us know who you are and where you’re from, and

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Steve Kessler: So we kind of know who’s out there that we’re talking to.

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Steve Kessler: Y’all probably know Mark Ray by now. Mark’s joined us on most of our webinars for quite a few years now.

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Steve Kessler: Mark is a truck, transportation executive. Been that way for, what, 35 plus years, I guess, now, Mark?

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Steve Kessler: Certified Director of Safety, and continues to do a lot of, consulting work, in the industry. He’s a, expert witness for a lot of, lawsuits out there, so, Mark’s a very valuable, part of our team here.

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Steve Kessler: I’m also now very happy to introduce Rebecca Brewster. Rebecca is the President and Chief Operating Officer of the American Transportation Research Institute.

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Steve Kessler: As I said, ATRI is the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research organization, so they are 5013C, I believe is, what…

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Steve Kessler: They call that, and they rely on, donations, from people in this industry, so if you haven’t donated to ATRI, please do that.

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Steve Kessler: Rebecca is the recipient of several awards, including, very recently, DC Velocity’s 25… 2026 Rainmakers.

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Steve Kessler: The 2013 Influential Women in Trucking Award from the Women in Trucking Association, and the 2010 J.R. Bob Hall Halliday Award given by the 50 State Trucking Associations.

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Steve Kessler: Rebecca has been with ATRI for over 32 years.

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Steve Kessler: And prior to that, she was a public and governmental affairs director for the Cary North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, and also a fleet analyst with Moen, Inc.

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Steve Kessler: Rebecca has a BA in English from Wofford College, and she’s a fellow of the North Carolina Institute of Political Leadership.

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Steve Kessler: So, Rebecca, welcome. It’s always a pleasure to have you here.

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Rebecca Brewster: Thanks, Steve. I really appreciate the invitation to join you and Mark today, and all of your listeners out there, folks participating in the webinar, to talk about probably one of my favorite things we do at ATRI every year, and that’s our Top Industry Issues Survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, first of all, a little background for those who might not be as familiar with ATRI, and I hope everybody is. We are, as Steve described, the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research organization, so everything we do, we do on your behalf.

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Rebecca Brewster: One of the hallmarks of what we do at ATRI is that we make all of our research available at no cost, and so I’ve listed our website address here. It’s fairly intuitive, it’s what we do, truckingresearch.org. I’ll put it up at the end of my presentation as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: If there’s, any study that I talk about, because I’ll talk about the nexus between the top industry issues and Atris research, any of those studies and our entire portfolio of research is available on our website, so I would encourage you to visit that.

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Rebecca Brewster: Just a little bit about how we’re organized at ATRI. We are governed by a board of directors made up of the CEOs of the organizations you see here. Our current chair is Derek Leathers, who is the chairman of Warner Enterprises out of Omaha.

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Rebecca Brewster: But as I always like to say, where the real hard work at ATRI is done is by the men and women who serve on our Research Advisory Committee.

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Rebecca Brewster: The individuals representing the organizations you see here and their predecessors are responsible for annually identifying the trucking industry’s top research needs. So, where are their knowledge gaps in the trucking industry to which ATRI could bring its expertise to bear?

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Rebecca Brewster: And what’s so compelling about this group is the diversity of its makeup. If you look at the logos, you see we have not only large trucking fleets, but we have small trucking fleets as well. There are industry suppliers, we have a law enforcement officer, a motor carrier enforcement personnel.

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Rebecca Brewster: We have professional truck drivers. We have both a WIDA representative, as well as one of the America’s road team captains, and a variety of industry suppliers. So it really is a very diverse group of trucking industry stakeholders

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Rebecca Brewster: Who all bring their unique perspectives and viewpoints to the process each year to identify what research would be most impactful for the trucking industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: And certainly, one of the primary inputs into that process is this annual survey that we’re going to talk about today. So this is our 21st year for the industry’s Top Industry Issues Survey. Our first one was in 2005.

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Rebecca Brewster: This year, we had over 4,200 respondents, which is a near-record amount for us, so really excited to see those numbers go up. You see the breakout there in terms of responses, so much like our Research Advisory Committee represents a very diverse group of industry stakeholders.

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Rebecca Brewster: Anyone with a nexus to trucking is invited to take part in this survey. So you can see this year we had about 47% of the respondents were motor carriers. That’s everything from the C-suite, to driver managers, to dispatchers, to technicians, safety professionals.

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Rebecca Brewster: Another 30% were truck drivers, both owner-operators and company drivers, and the remaining 23% was everybody else in the trucking industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, if you haven’t taken the survey, it’s an online survey, and when you log in, you are presented… this year, you were presented with 27 issues.

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Rebecca Brewster: And you’re asked to select your top three, and if there’s any criticism ever levied in our direction about this survey, as people say, 3’s not enough. All of these things are concerning to me, or let me pick 5. But our methodology has you really zero in on your top three.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then for each of your top three concerns, you’re asked to rank potential strategies. What do you think the industry should collectively be doing about that issue? Is it an issue that requires national-level advocacy? Is it an issue that requires state-level advocacy? Is it an issue where there is,

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Rebecca Brewster: a need for more education and outreach, or, in many instances, is it a re… is it an issue where more research is needed? And that’s where our Research Advisory Committee comes in.

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Rebecca Brewster: Looking at that list, if it’s not your, top issue isn’t identified there, you can write in issues, and we’ll talk about how we do utilize those write-in issues, as well as identify and write in other strategies.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, without further ado, here are the top issues identified by our survey respondents for this year. And coming in at number one, no surprise to most of us, I think, is the state of the nation’s economy.

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Rebecca Brewster: And this, in fact, is the third year in a row that the state of the economy has been the number one concern. So the number to the right of each issue is where it ranked in the previous year’s survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: So you see both lawsuit abuse reform, you know, how impactful that is to the trucking industry, and as I call it, its close cousin, insurance cost and availability, both rose one spot to be number 2 and number 3 overall.

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Rebecca Brewster: Followed by, the lack of available truck parking, which…

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Rebecca Brewster: drop down two spots, and I would say that’s not necessarily because the situation has improved that much in truck parking. It’s really more reflective of how impactful lawsuit abuse reform and insurance costs and availability are, particularly in light of what’s going on in the economy.

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Rebecca Brewster: Rounding out and holding on to its number 5 spot, driver compensation. And then coming in at number 6, CSA.

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Rebecca Brewster: FMCSA’s regulatory framework, compliance, safety, and accountability.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, the last 4 there, you can see, are brand new issues to this year’s survey. So, starting off with number 7, English language proficiency for drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, recall that I said, you can write in an issue? So, we had already planned, based on the results of the 2024 survey, to add English language proficiency to the survey this year, based on the fact that so many, predominantly drivers, wrote it in as one of their top concerns last year.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we were going to add it to the survey this year. Then you’ll recall in April of this year, the Trump administration issued an executive order calling for the, once again, enforcement of the rules that have been on the books for a long time, requiring English language proficiency. Subsequent to that, you had

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Rebecca Brewster: several high-profile crashes where ELP was,

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Rebecca Brewster: An issue raised in those crashes as well.

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Rebecca Brewster: Coming in at number 8, diesel emissions regulations. So, we know that the Trump administration has, rolled back a number of the regulations and efforts that were in place from the previous administration to push for battery electrification.

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Rebecca Brewster: But, everything is not gone yet. And, we know that next… starting next year with Model Year 27 vehicles, we have… still have

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Rebecca Brewster: some very challenging requirements for NOx emissions, reductions in NOx emissions, and if that remains in place, which it appears it will from the EPA, we know that that’s going to drive the price of trucks up, and so…

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Rebecca Brewster: concern over those regulations. What’s interesting is, that one appears as number 8 for the first time on the list. Battery electric vehicles last year was number 6 overall, and it has dropped down to number 23. So we’ve sort of swapped out diesel emission regulations for battery electric vehicles.

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Rebecca Brewster: Number 9, driver training standards. That’s another one that drivers started writing in a number of years ago. I think based on their comments and the write-in comments.

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Rebecca Brewster: Driven by the fact that, that

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Rebecca Brewster: truck drivers believe we are not doing a good enough job training new entrant drivers so that they can safely operate. So it had been an issue, it had shown up on the driver list of concerns, but this year it jumped up into the overall top 10.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then I was sharing with Mark and Steve before we started that there was one issue that surprised me a lot, and that’s artificial intelligence and trucking. So…

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Rebecca Brewster: When you think about the potential for AI to really, lead the way in terms of the industry’s efficiency and productivity, there’s a lot of potential there. But there’s absolutely no question

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Rebecca Brewster: that every single person in the industry hasn’t had this thought at least once, is AI going to

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Rebecca Brewster: replace me, or is it going to drastically change the way I operate, and maybe not necessarily for the best. So… so I think that’s what drove that. It just was… it was an unexpected, top 10 contender for me, and I was surprised to see it there.

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Rebecca Brewster: So those are the overall issues, which I always find fascinating, but I think the real power of this annual analysis is when we look at how motor carriers rank the issues versus how truck drivers rank the issues.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, when you look at the right side of that, on the motor carrier side, you see two issues very closely related, driver shortage and driver retention.

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Rebecca Brewster: Neither of which showed up on the overall top 10. And in fact, this is the first year in the 21 history of the Top Industry Issues Survey that the driver shortage has not been a top 10 issue.

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Rebecca Brewster: Directly reflective of what’s going on in the economy and the freight recession, wherein there simply isn’t as strong of a need for drivers because we don’t have the freight to haul.

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Rebecca Brewster: But it is still a concern for motor carriers, and so I always make the point that if you are a motor carrier, and among your top 10 concerns.

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Rebecca Brewster: are finding and keeping the best drivers, then you need to understand, appreciate, and do what you can about those issues that drivers have identified as most impactful to them.

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Rebecca Brewster: And on the driver’s side of the equation, you see compensation. Again, that’s sort of the driver side of the economy. How is it impacting my wallet? The lack of available truck parking, English language proficiency, because I, as I said, that had been a write-in by a number of drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: Broker issues, and then, concern, over how long they’re being held up at customer facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you download the full report from our website for this Top Industry Issues report, you will see that we break out, among the truck driver responses how owner-operators rank their top concerns versus how company drivers rank their top concerns. So if your fleet is more focused on company drivers, you’ll understand how they rank the issues.

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Rebecca Brewster: Versus how motor, owner-operators do.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, our first survey, one of these annual surveys was in 2005. The issues in red are ones that were with us in 2005, and unfortunately, are still with us today in 2026.

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Rebecca Brewster: But again, this is the first year where we have not seen the driver shortage, which was the number two concern in our initial survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: We have not seen the driver shortage, in the top 10.

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Rebecca Brewster: What’s interesting about 2005, and I think it… I think it relates to English language proficiency in particular.

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Rebecca Brewster: Fuel cost was number one in 2005, and if you think back to 2005, we had just had Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005,

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Rebecca Brewster: greatly impacted the, Gulf fuel supply, which drove prices up. So, fuel costs being number one was really reflective of just what was happening at that moment in the industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: I think the appearance of English language proficiency on the top 10 is a similar issue. It’s in the headlines, everybody’s aware of this, and so it shows up

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Rebecca Brewster: In the Top Industry Issues Survey. In fact, I was telling someone just the other day, I think had we launched our survey a little bit later, we always launch it right after Labor Day, had we launched it a little bit later, I wonder if we wouldn’t see non-domiciled CDLs as a top 10 issue,

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Rebecca Brewster: even maybe to the exclusion of English language proficiency, because that was then the issue that was getting all the media attention. So, it is very reflective of what’s happening at that… then and now, at that time, but again.

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Rebecca Brewster: There are certain issues that just…

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Rebecca Brewster: Stay with us year after year after year, for better or worse.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, let’s talk about where ATRI’s research intersects with a number of these issues, starting with driver compensation, how the state of the nation’s economy is impacting the industry, and insurance cost and availability.

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Rebecca Brewster: And all three of those are, touched on in our annual… another annual report we do, our operational costs of trucking. So, we’ve been doing this research since 2008. Every spring, we put out a call to four higher motor carriers of all sizes and sectors.

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Rebecca Brewster: To… and ask them to provide what I would say is fairly detailed financial data, which ATRI then aggregates and analyzes to come up with a number of industry benchmarks, including

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Rebecca Brewster: How much it costs to operate a large commercial vehicle. So…

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Rebecca Brewster: Going to the bottom right-hand corner of this slide, our most recent finding, $2.26 per mile to operate a large commercial vehicle, and that’s across… that’s the average across all sectors and all fleet sizes.

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Rebecca Brewster: It’s actually 1 cent lower than what we saw in the previous year’s report, but if you look at just the fuel cost line item, you understand why we saw the decrease in the overall cost per mile.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you carve out fuel.

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Rebecca Brewster: This most recent report is the highest we have ever seen in non-fuel operating costs since we’ve been doing this, at $1.78 per mile. Unfortunately, as everybody knows, rates have not seen this same trajectory. In fact, they’ve gone in the opposite direction, so as our costs continue to escalate.

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Rebecca Brewster: And rates have gone down, you understand the pain points that everyone is feeling, relative to the state of the economy and how challenging it is to continue to operate.

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Rebecca Brewster: Just this 3-year snapshot, again, carving out fuel, because it is rather a volatile line item in this annual analysis, you can see that our… the industry’s costs to operate have been continuing to increase at a rate that outpaces inflation. So, again, just… just very challenging to

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Rebecca Brewster: So, insurance cost and availability, number 3 issue overall in the Top Industry Issues Survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: High on the motor carrier list, obviously, because they are generally the ones who are paying those premiums.

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Rebecca Brewster: And you can see that, bottom bullet point there. Over the past 8 years, just in our operational cost of trucking research, we have seen the, auto liability insurance premium cost per mile go up 36%.

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Rebecca Brewster: Even among the safest fleets, they too are experiencing these tremendous cost increase in insurance, and so fleets are having to undertake a number of strategies to try to reduce that.

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Rebecca Brewster: But we’ve all seen that cost, whether it’s higher deductibles or self-insurance, but there’s no question that we’ve all seen headlines that fleets are having to close their door because they can no longer afford their insurance.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, this…

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Rebecca Brewster: shows the average profit margin by sector, and if you download the full report, it breaks out each of those individual line items by size of fleet and by sector. So here you see profit margin by sector.

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Rebecca Brewster: This is a slide on which we never want to see red, but unfortunately, you can see the average profit margin among truckload drive-in carriers in our most recent analysis was negative 2.3%.

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Rebecca Brewster: Anyone who participates in this operational cost of trucking research is provided with a customized report, so we will take your costs

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Rebecca Brewster: And plot them out for you against an anonymized peer group of fleets of the same size and sector.

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Rebecca Brewster: I was responsible for emailing those customized reports out to all our participants this year, and I will tell you that I saw a number of fleets that had a profit margin in the negative double digits last year. It’s just not sustainable as an industry, so a very, very challenging operating environment.

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Rebecca Brewster: All right, let’s move on to something not quite so depressing to talk about. Let’s go to, what we’re seeing in terms of driver shortage and driver retention, and what our research has been focused on.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we’re very fortunate at ATRI to have been in the driver survey business for several decades now. So we’ve got a wealth of demographic information that we have married up with federally available data sources and state-level data sources to really look at

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Rebecca Brewster: What has changed about the face of the driver population, and most importantly, what does that mean for our recruitment and retention activities?

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Rebecca Brewster: So, first of all, what does the age of our driver workforce look like? Well, this compares what our driver workforce looked like in 2008, which is the line, versus the bars, what we look like in 2023.

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Rebecca Brewster: We’ve got an average age of truck drivers of 47 years old, which is older than 42 for the entire U.S. workforce.

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Rebecca Brewster: I’m a baby boomer, I’m gonna admit, 47 doesn’t sound that old to me, but the fact of the matter is, you can see, it is an increase, even from where we were in 2008, when our average age of our driver workforce was 45. And the challenge for us as an industry, of course.

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Rebecca Brewster: Is that we’re not doing a good enough job bringing young men and women into driving positions, those on the left side, to replace those drivers who, on the right side are going to be retiring over the next few years.

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Rebecca Brewster: We’re also, not doing as good as we should, in the trucking industry in bringing women into over-the-road driving positions. So, you see, we’ve been fairly stagnant there at about 3-4%.

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Rebecca Brewster: And if you have followed ATRI’s research over the years, you are familiar, hopefully, with our crash predictor model. And in that research, we analyzed, in the most recent crash predictor model, we analyzed over 580,000 individual truck driver records.

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Rebecca Brewster: To identify the behaviors that are most predictive of a future crash. So, not what is a driver doing that immediately precedes a crash, but what is there on that driver’s motor vehicle record, MVR, that has the strongest statistical relationship to a future crash involvement?

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Rebecca Brewster: In that study, we identified that women truck drivers outperform, in terms of safety, their male counterparts in every one of the statistically significant behaviors. So there’s a real strong safety reason why we want to bring more women into driving positions, but clearly we’re not…

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Rebecca Brewster: We’re not… we haven’t found the silver bullet to do that yet.

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Rebecca Brewster: So the research then explores a whole host of other metrics about the driver workforce, but then we explore and go into detail about two pathways to get new individuals into driving positions, and

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Rebecca Brewster: On this first one, we looked at young people who are aging out of the foster care system across the United States. And if you take no other data point from my presentation today, please take this one with you. And that’s the bullet point under financial instability.

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Rebecca Brewster: The average annual income of a young person aging out of the foster care system is $7,500 annually. That, in my opinion, is a national disgrace. And we can do a whole lot better by those young men and women for whom life has handed them a rougher road.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we’ve got incredible opportunity in the trucking industry to provide summer internships and jobs and opportunities for those young people to learn about the industry, get integrated into the industry before they age out of the foster care system, so that they can find a home with us.

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Rebecca Brewster: The full report goes into details about connecting those dots between the trucking industry, through the state trucking associations and other organizations.

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Rebecca Brewster: And the foster care system.

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Rebecca Brewster: This other pathway we explored is a little more challenging, without question, and that’s individuals who are formerly justice-involved.

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Rebecca Brewster: And but there are fleets who have successfully integrated these individuals into their driving workforce. There’s obviously a lot more vetting that has to go into the selection of those individuals. But again, it is another way, like with young people aging out of foster care, that the industry can give individuals a leg up and a place to call home, and good-paying, steady work.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, let’s talk about that, the need to bring more women in. So, there’s no question…

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Rebecca Brewster: that, there are challenges that women face, particularly in the over-the-road space. So in this study, we wanted to look at what are the challenges women face, what’s unique to women drivers, and what can we as an industry do to mitigate some of those challenges.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, first of all, we did a driver survey.

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Rebecca Brewster: men and women, we had almost equal representation in the survey response between men and women, and the first question was, why did you want to become a truck driver? And so you can see the orange bars are the responses from women.

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Rebecca Brewster: The independence it affords me, I enjoy driving, and the pay is competitive. And in fact, that competitive pay was, mentioned throughout the research, in the survey, in the focus groups, in the interviews we did with women drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: The ability to become financially independent was a common theme among the women who participated in this research for why truck driving jobs were so attractive to them.

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Rebecca Brewster: But there’s no question, there are challenges. And so, in the survey, we asked both the men and women, how frequently do you encounter these challenges?

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, for among women respondents, it’s no or limited access to exercise facilities, and that includes women who, when they park their truck for, you know, whenever they’re going to get their mandated rest, they don’t feel safe enough

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Rebecca Brewster: where they’re parked, getting out to just even get steps to get some exercise in around their truck. So that’s a situation. Lack of available truck parking, we know it’s number two overall among all drivers. And then, I’ll use this term one more time, national disgrace.

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Rebecca Brewster: no or limited access to restroom facilities. The fact that we have had state legislatures introduce bills to require shippers and our customers to provide bathroom access to our drivers

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Rebecca Brewster: is ridiculous. That… that should not be happening. And clearly, that’s gonna stand in the way of our ability to

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Rebecca Brewster: Certainly recruit, but definitely retain women into driving positions.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, with all of Atri’s research, we don’t just identify what the problems are, we

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Rebecca Brewster: come up with some solutions that the industry can deploy. And so, if you are a fleet that is interested in bringing more women in and making your workplace better for women drivers, I would encourage you to download this study and go to the back of it, which is this industry action plan. This is just a snapshot of it.

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Rebecca Brewster: And for every single challenge identified, we offer a solution. Discrete steps that motor carriers can take, that truck driver training schools can take, to make their schools more accessible to women and ensure greater success among those women CDL applicants.

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Rebecca Brewster: And even if you’re a woman who’s considering a career as a driver, or you’re already driving, there are steps that you too can take to overcome some of these challenges. So it’s chock-full of great information, and I would encourage you to download that one.

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Rebecca Brewster: So here’s another workforce shortage that has been identified through our annual surveys over the year, and certainly our research advisory committee identified this as a challenge, and that’s, who do we get to work on our trucks, and how do we attract those people, and how do we keep them in the industry?

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Rebecca Brewster: And so, for this research, we surveyed people who are in diesel technician positions already, the shops that hire those individuals, and the training programs that they go through. And so, a couple of findings from that.

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Rebecca Brewster: So you can see that, in 2026, 66% of the diesel tech shops did not have enough technicians. They were understaffed.

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Rebecca Brewster: The turnover rate at 16.5 is certainly lower than what we see among the driver population, but the fact that, you know, a large percentage of the staffs don’t have enough people to work on equipment shows that we have definitely a need for additional technicians.

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Rebecca Brewster: Training is a challenge. Of course, we know one of the biggest barriers to entry for young people coming into technician positions is the cost of the tools. But even when they come in to those jobs.

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Rebecca Brewster: Many times, they’re coming without prior training, and so, you can see 62% of the first-time techs didn’t have training prior to coming onto the job.

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Rebecca Brewster: And that on-the-job training comes at a cost of hours and about $8,200 in trainee wages.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we found that even those who had prior training, more than 30% were not where they needed to be in each of the 20 core skill areas that have been identified by our partners at the Technology and Maintenance Council at ATA, TMC.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then,

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Rebecca Brewster: pay, clearly the number one driver of why we are able to attract, technicians, but there are other things that those individuals look for, and that includes the variety of work. How clean and comfortable is the shop in which they’re working? What does their work environment look like?

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Rebecca Brewster: And are you, as a fleet that works on your own trucks, or as a diesel technician facility, are you providing incentives for those individuals to get additional training and certification? So if you do hire and employ technicians, I would encourage you to download this one.

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Rebecca Brewster: All right, truck parking. Depending on the year, sometimes it’s the number one concern among drivers, and driver compensation is two. This year, I think, because of what’s going on in the economy and the freight recession, compensation number one, but truck parking’s still a big issue for drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: It shows up on the motor carrier list, but I believe it needs to be higher than at number 9 among motor carriers, because it is so impactful to our driver population.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we’re very fortunate at ATRI to, for a number of decades now, to have been working with a truck GPS data set. Hundreds of thousands of freight trucks, the data comes up into us in near real time.

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Rebecca Brewster: This is a week snapshot of what our data looks like, so you can see how robust the data set is in terms of coverage around the U.S.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we’re able to use this data to study the truck parking issue, and have done so for a number of state departments of transportation.

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Rebecca Brewster: So this is what that looks like. So… so on the previous slide, red was to show you how expansive our network is.

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Rebecca Brewster: Here, red represents parked trucks. So these are two public rest areas. On the left side, it’s on I-80 in Iowa, and on the right side, it’s outside of Indianapolis, and red is parked trucks, and so inside of those rest areas, you would expect to see trucks parked.

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Rebecca Brewster: But look at the entrance and exit ramps to both of those facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: you see red. Trucks are parked on the ramps. And in the Iowa example on the left, if you come back to the right of that rest area, there’s an interstate interchange, and you’ve got trucks parked there, too.

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Rebecca Brewster: So imagine the recruitment activity to bring more women into the industry, where we say, you might have to sleep on an interstate interchange overnight where there’s no restroom facilities, and your truck’s just going to be pulled off the side of the road. It is clearly a very big issue for this industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: Our research advisory committee has recognized that, and in this study, our most recent one on truck parking, we wanted to really focus on what are state DOTs doing

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Rebecca Brewster: to expand truck parking capacity through their public rest areas and other facilities. So, not what are our partners in the private truck stops doing, but this is really focused on what are the states doing. So, we were very fortunate

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Rebecca Brewster: to work with ASHTO, that’s the organization that represents the 50 state DOTs, to collect a series of data points on truck parking.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, first of all, a couple of points from that. At the average rest… or at rest areas across the country, the average number of truck parking spaces is 19.

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Rebecca Brewster: As you might expect, where there’s more land available, places like in the South and Midwest, we have somewhat higher numbers, and in places where it’s a little more constrained, like in the Northeast, you see lower numbers than that.

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Rebecca Brewster: What are you as a state doing to think outside the box? Are you looking at other state-owned facilities to expand your truck parking footprint? And you can see that, 64% of states have done so.

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Rebecca Brewster: And among those that are looking outside the box, they’re, allowing overnight truck parking at their fixed way stations, they’re converting some park and ride lots to truck parking facilities, and even closed welcome centers, they’re now allowing drivers to park there.

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Rebecca Brewster: What’s interesting about the way station one is, when we have talked anecdotally to truck drivers about it, and to state trucking… state DOTs about their success with that.

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Rebecca Brewster: There’s often this sort of

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Rebecca Brewster: fear or concern among drivers about spending the night where law enforcement hangs out, so… for fear of just generating an inspection, but… but I do applaud the states that are thinking outside the box to identify where they might be able to expand truck parking.

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Rebecca Brewster: We know from our years of researching this issue, what are the amenities that drivers really are looking for most? And so, in terms of safety features, we ask the state DOTs, how many of these safety features do you provide at your rest areas?

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Rebecca Brewster: One of the ones that frustrates me here is you can see that fewer than 50% of states have regular patrols at their rest areas.

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Rebecca Brewster: Think back to the women,

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Rebecca Brewster: survey results where women said, I don’t even necessarily feel safe walking around my truck when I’m parked somewhere.

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Rebecca Brewster: It seems to me, and I’m not in law enforcement, but it seems to me your state highway patrol or State Police are traversing past these rest areas anyway.

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Rebecca Brewster: And it seems to me that a simple, you know, adding just a pull-through of that rest area regularly might give that added police presence where people might start to… car drivers and… but importantly, truck drivers might feel a little safer about being at those facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: All right, probably the best known research output of our truck GPS data set is our annual list of the top truck bottlenecks.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, for this research, we take an entire calendar year’s worth of truck GPS data, and we look at two metrics. We look at speed and volume, so how slowly are trucks operating, and how many trucks are impacted at each of, in this analysis, 328 locations around the U.S.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we look at speed and volume to come up with the 100 worst places to operate a truck.

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Rebecca Brewster: The, so there are 100 dots on this map, if you can believe it. The flags are the top 10. The states in green, including where Mark and Steve are in Texas, and where I am in Georgia, are the states with the most of those top truck bottlenecks.

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Rebecca Brewster: Texas likes to be bigger in everything, including traffic congestion, and so 12 of the nation’s top truck bottlenecks are in Texas.

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Rebecca Brewster: With, 8 of those 12 in the Houston area.

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Rebecca Brewster: So here’s the top 10 worst places to operate a truck based on congestion. I always, every year we release this list, I have to remind the media. It’s called a truck bottleneck list because that’s where ATRI’s data generates from, but the fact of the matter is, these are congestion choke points for everybody, cars and trucks.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, leading the way at number 1, Fort Lee, New Jersey. Not a place that jumps out at you if you’re not familiar with it as a big traffic hotbed, but that is, in fact, the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge that connects New York and Manhattan.

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Rebecca Brewster: It is also a toll bridge, and so for a large tractor-trailer to go from New Jersey over into New York on the George Washington Bridge, it is tolled at over $100 per trip into Manhattan, so…

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Rebecca Brewster: Very challenging situation.

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Rebecca Brewster: I live in Atlanta, we’ve got 3 in the top 10, I guess that makes us winning, sort of. And I can look at one of them out my office window here and watch the traffic build on it every single day. It really is just a challenging situation.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you go to the website, to the bottleneck list, you can sort the list by state, so you can see where the choke points are, where you live.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, like I mentioned with the women driver research, we don’t just identify the problems, we hope that our research is used to drive solutions for the industry. And we know, in fact, that states look at and utilize the bottleneck analysis to make infrastructure investment decisions.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we have a poster child, if you will, of how important that is. So, when we first started doing this annual analysis, the burn interchange in Chicago was the number one bottleneck in the country for 3 years in a row.

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Rebecca Brewster: At that time, the governor of Illinois was Governor Quinn, and Governor Quinn’s office issued a press release and said, we’re going to fix what used to be called the Circle Interchange, it’s now called the Byrne Interchange. We’re going to fix that interchange, specifically citing the fact that they did not want to have the nation’s top truck bottleneck.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, that construction was finally completed last year.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we took our GPS data, we looked at what the truck speeds were before the work was undertaken, and what the truck speeds were once that construction project was complete.

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Rebecca Brewster: And we saw a nearly 25% improvement in truck speeds. So, when states can use an empirical data set like ATRI’s GPS data set and bottleneck List to identify where the problems are and make the investment, there is a payoff in improved mobility.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, the bottleneck analysis looks at individual locations. In this analysis, we look at the entirety of the national highway system to understand how impactful congestion is to the trucking industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, first of all, let’s understand this. $109 billion cost. That’s not to the economy, that’s not to the supply chain, that’s the cost that the trucking industry absorbs every year as a result of congestion.

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Rebecca Brewster: To me, the most impactful of those data points and metrics to come out of this research

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Rebecca Brewster: 1.2 billion hours of delay, which is the equivalent of 436,000 truck drivers going nowhere for an entire year.

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Rebecca Brewster: You know, we don’t have, driver shortage numbers as high right now because of the economy.

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Rebecca Brewster: But that will go back, and what we have, based on congestion, is the equivalent of 436,000 drivers going nowhere.

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Rebecca Brewster: Alright.

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Rebecca Brewster: Drivers have identified detention and delay. It’s always in their top 10. It’s a frustrating situation for drivers, and so it’s a topic we’ve studied at ATRI for quite some time now.

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Rebecca Brewster: In this latest study, we looked at, has detention changed over the past 10 years, that we’ve been surveying this data?

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Rebecca Brewster: And unfortunately, it’s gotten worse. So, when we’re talking about detention here, we’re talking not the first 2 hours, that is sort of industry standard operating, practice where you allow for 2 hours to be loaded or unloaded. This is anything beyond the 2.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so you can see that nearly 40% of all stops included detention of more than 2 hours.

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Rebecca Brewster: For reasons that aren’t necessarily real clear, women drivers are held up more frequently than their male counterparts.

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Rebecca Brewster: This slide really doesn’t do justice to the amount of analysis that went into it, and so I would encourage you to download the full report to really understand how impactful this is.

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Rebecca Brewster: But when you add up everything from your driver’s lost productivity to the fuel that’s wasted because they have to idle to stay warm or cold while they’re waiting.

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Rebecca Brewster: The opportunity cost, really, the revenue that’s lost because you miss appointments and that business is lost, to the fact that even when you do charge your customers detention fees.

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Rebecca Brewster: It’s not covering all the expenses that you as a fleet, incur from that detention. Add all that up to, $11.5 billion cost from detention.

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Rebecca Brewster: But it’s not just a cost issue or an economic issue. There’s a safety side to this as well. So it’s fairly intuitive that,

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Rebecca Brewster: truck drivers, after they’ve been detained for a long time, are going to drive faster to make up for lost time when they leave that facility. They’ve got schedules to keep, they’ve got hours of service rules that are pressing on them.

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Rebecca Brewster: So we wanted to test out that hypothesis with our truck GPS status. So we looked at a number of facilities, not by name, but by types of facilities where detention typically occurs, and we looked at the driving behavior of drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: before those who were detained and those who weren’t. And so it is true, leaving the facility, drivers are driving faster if they’ve been detained.

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Rebecca Brewster: What we didn’t expect to find is that those same drivers were driving faster going into those facilities.

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Rebecca Brewster: And what we hypothesized is those drivers know these are facilities where they’re going to be held up.

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Rebecca Brewster: So they’re going to try and jump in the queue earlier and get there faster. So, again, just an added, challenge associated with detention, because now we’re creating a… we, or our customers, are creating a safety issue for the industry and for those drivers.

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Rebecca Brewster: Lot of attention now, finally, long overdue attention being paid to the issue of cargo theft. If you watched 60 Minutes, you saw, not too long ago, an episode where Guy Fieri had a…

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Rebecca Brewster: cargo of tequila, his branded tequila stolen. That 60 Minutes episode aired on a Sunday night, and on Wednesday, ATRI released this study on cargo theft, so great timing on our part to really capitalize on a topic that’s getting a lot more attention.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, we calculated, using carrier data on what’s being stolen and how much it costs the industry, a total of $6.6 billion,

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Rebecca Brewster: per year, lost to cargo theft, that equates to $18 million a day. That is a pretty significant cost of cargo. Some states where we know this happens more often than not, with products, we know it happens with more often than not.

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Rebecca Brewster: Again, this doesn’t do justice for all that is contained in the full study, and I would encourage you to download the full study, because it has a number of steps that fleets can undertake at the driver level, at the facility level, to really cut down and mitigate the risk of your cargo being stolen.

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Rebecca Brewster: But the research does recommend three things we as an industry need to do, or need to advocate for. The first is, we’ve always been focused in the industry on a safety culture.

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Rebecca Brewster: But we also need to adopt that as a security culture as well. This is really everyone’s responsibility across our organizations to really make sure we’re all thinking what we can do to reduce the ability for these folks to steal our cargo.

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Rebecca Brewster: Two, we need to raise the profile and the criminal penalties associated with cargo theft, so that law enforcement has more teeth and skin in the game, and so we’ve got some model state legislation that can be introduced and recommends introducing that to do just that.

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Rebecca Brewster: And then we’ve got to have a federal-level data collection reporting agency so that we really start to understand collectively, law enforcement and the industry, where, when, and how this is happening, and can start to implement some changes there.

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Rebecca Brewster: All right, these are the topics our, Research Advisory Committee identified for us for this year, research priorities, and a number of these are underway.

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Rebecca Brewster: The rising insurance costs, so remember it’s number 3 overall as a concern. In 2022, ATRI issued a study that looked at how impactful the continued rise in insurance cost is.

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Rebecca Brewster: And more importantly, what are fleets doing to mitigate and minimize those impacts on their fleets? We’re updating that research now.

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Rebecca Brewster: Entry-level driver training, we got the ELDT rule in 2022.

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Rebecca Brewster: And this study is really looking at, are we now, through that ELDT rule, adequately training new entrant drivers so that they are as safe as they can be on the road?

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Rebecca Brewster: So on that managing the insurance cost study, we have just launched a data collection for that one.

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Rebecca Brewster: And, like those customized reports I described that participants in the Operational Cost of Trucking research get.

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Rebecca Brewster: If you are a fleet that provides data for this study, we will likewise give you a customized report that plots out your insurance profile versus, compared to peer… anonymized peers of the same size and sector, so…

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Rebecca Brewster: Please, pass this along to the right folks in your organization who can provide this data to ATRI. We really are hoping to get really robust participation from the industry.

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Rebecca Brewster: I’m very fortunate, actually, to get the opportunity to talk to audiences about our research. I love doing that, but the fact of the matter is, all this work is done by the men and women with whom I get to collaborate with every day, and so I always like to give a nod to our team.

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Rebecca Brewster: These individuals are very, excited and come to work excited to work on your behalf, and so I appreciate their,

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Rebecca Brewster: Dedication to… to providing you with the best research possible.

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Rebecca Brewster: Wow, Rebecca, great stuff! We’d love to participate. How can we do that? So, you’re in luck. I’ve got another QR code for you, and as,

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Rebecca Brewster: Steve mentioned at the beginning, everything I just described to you is done with charitable contributions. That’s how we get this work done on behalf of the industry. So, please consider making either an individual, contribution or one on behalf of your organization.

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Rebecca Brewster: Last year, we had 164 contributors to Atri, either fleets, industry suppliers, individuals, associations.

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Rebecca Brewster: But 164 out of an industry of 8.8 million people, I think we could do a whole lot better. So, I hope you find value in what we do. I hope you’ll consider making a charitable contribution to support ATRI,

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Rebecca Brewster: And I want to thank Steve and Mark for the very generous contribution we have from Vertical Alliance Group. That really means a lot to me, gentlemen.

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Rebecca Brewster: So that’s it for me. Thank you for the opportunity. I’m happy to answer questions, and obviously visit our website and download our research from truckingresearch.org.

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Steve Kessler: Oh, fantastic, Rebecca. There is one question that popped in. I believe it was around the area when you were talking about access to rest areas and rest washrooms and so forth, and Mike has asked, just curious if you might have any numbers reflecting Canada.

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Steve Kessler: That we are poorly equipped with both rest areas and washrooms.

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Rebecca Brewster: So, we did… we do not, but I… that’s not the first time I’ve heard that about Canada, and so, certainly, you know, we were…

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Rebecca Brewster: helped in our research by the fact that, we have a law in the U.S, the Jason’s Law Report, which required… Congress required Federal Highway to initially study this issue.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so there was a,

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Rebecca Brewster: a precursor activity that sort of set the DOTs up to understand how important it is to provide this data, so it might be an opportunity in Canada to think about something similar that would.

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Steve Kessler: I do.

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Rebecca Brewster: Push the provinces to start to collect this data and really start to understand where there are shortfalls.

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Steve Kessler: Very good, Rebecca. One thing I would like to do here,

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Steve Kessler: You know, we’ve talked about a number of, obviously the industry concerns, and, I’m gonna pop up a little, poll here.

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Steve Kessler: Obviously, we are all about training, and I think training can have an impact on a lot of the areas that we talked about here.

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Steve Kessler: Our focus is almost always on safety training, so…

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Steve Kessler: Frequent and consistent safety training could decrease accidents and incidents, which may help you avoid some of the lawsuits out there. But also, good training records can help you be defendable should you get that lawsuit. And I think the other area certainly is,

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Steve Kessler: you know, proper training can have a positive impact on insurance also, hopefully helping you put your best foot forward with a great, frequent, and powerful safety program. So, if you have some interest in…

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Steve Kessler: How we might be able to help with that. If you would reply to the poll question, we’ll reach out and tell you how we might be able to help you with that.

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Steve Kessler: And also, for those of you out there that are certified directors of safety under the NATME program.

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Steve Kessler: If you’ll let us know, we’ll make sure you get an attendance certificate, for having joined this, and, you’ll be able to retrieve, I think it’s 2 tenths of a NAPME recertification point, so…

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Steve Kessler: that’s my kind of commercial for the program. Rebecca, I don’t see any other questions popping in.

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Steve Kessler: But thank you once again for great information. We’re getting a lot of thank yous out there. You should see those popping into the chat.

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Steve Kessler: keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll say it again to everybody that’s still on here. If you have the wherewithal to donate even a small amount of money to ATRI, please do that.

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Steve Kessler: What they provide to us, knowledge, so we understand more about what’s going on out there, but also, they are very good at offering suggestions and solutions to some of the issues that we all face out there every day.

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Steve Kessler: So, once again, Rebecca, thank you all.

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Steve Kessler: And, well, let’s see here. This one, thing here came in from Karen.

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Steve Kessler: Says, you think certain areas of congestion are bad now. Let me see what this says. If they mandate electric vehicles, imagine how much more, any area could be congested if a tractor-trailer runs out of juice. Has that been thought about? I mean, I suppose it probably has.

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Rebecca Brewster: Yeah, so when there was such a push to transition the trucking industry to battery electric, we did a number of studies, and they’re all available on our website. One of them looked at how many more trucks you would need

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Rebecca Brewster: Because you would lose cargo weight because of the.

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Steve Kessler: Right.

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Rebecca Brewster: batteries.

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Rebecca Brewster: And so we calculated, like, you’d need a 33% increase in the number of trucks just to be able to haul the same amount of freight. So, so even assuming these trucks could stay charged, and, you know, that’s a whole issue.

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Rebecca Brewster: Just the sheer increase in volume of trucks would be problematic for a congestion standpoint, because you’d need that one… many more trucks just to haul… keep status quo.

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Steve Kessler: Yep.

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Steve Kessler: It’s, something that we’re still gonna have to work on a while, I think, to, make that part of how we move freight around the country, so…

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Steve Kessler: Once again, Rebecca, thank you very much. Appreciate your time and the efforts of ATRI, and gosh, I hope we can, have you on the program next year for, we’ll see what, the issues are, coming up in the next year. I will look forward to it. Thank you very much.

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Rebecca Brewster: Thank you.

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Steve Kessler: Thanks to everybody that joined us, and look forward to invites to whatever future webinars that we’re gonna be presenting out there. Thanks, everybody, and we’ll, hope y’all have a great rest of the week. Thank you.