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Trinady Ledbetter
Transportation
Voss
March 16, 2015
Critical Issues in the Trucking Industry
As we discussed in lecture, there have been many changes/issues that have occurred in
the trucking industry over the past five to ten years. Something needed to be done to relinquish
the abundance of issues in the trucking industry and the American Transportation Research
Institute has done just that. By integrating a prestigious committee of directors and researchers,
ATRI has been able to produce a very current, reliable, and informative article that sheds
knowledge on certain industry issues while also providing ways to resolve these issues. To
commence the start of finding out what these issues are, the American trucking Associations
(ATA) turned to ATRI for help over a decade ago. The idea of giving out surveys to respondents
and having them rank-order issues while also ranking related-strategies came about in 2005.
In the beginning, a top concern for respondents was the rising cost and limited
availability of fuel, along with carriers not being able to identify a stable supply of commercial
drivers. A few other concerns in the beginning of surveying were insurance costs, environmental
issues, driver training, and truck security. Although these issues are still of great importance,
there have been more concerning issues emerge such as the lack of available parking for trucks,
the Electric Logging Device (ELD), and commercial driver health and wellness. A top industry
concern for the first six years of the survey was Government Regulations, which peaked in 2009
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as the number two spot on the survey. When the Great Recession came about, Economy became
a top concern in 2008 and remained as the number one concern from 2009-2011.
Top issues today for truckers are developed through a formula that assigns “quantitative
values to respondents’ rankings of issues facing the industry.” Issues are ranked by a point
system; “most important” it is given three points, when ranked second there are two points given,
and when ranked third, one point is given. Issues that are not ranked by respondents are given
zero points and the total number of ranked points for given issues are summed to produce a
prioritized level of industry concern. The issue with the most points is known as the top industry
concern and receives an Industry Concern Index (ICI) of 100. The Industry Concern Index is a
tool used to illustrate the level of intensity between issues. Like previously stated, along with all
of these issues are also strategies that are ranked by respondents to address their selected issues.
