Commercial trucks (Class 6-8) and trailers operating in the United
States, by vocation and fleet size. It provides a detailed look at commercial truck ownership of 407,80 companies with a combined total of 2,888,480 trucks. Market segments analyzed include: For hire,private fleets, lease/rental and construction/mining/logging. Special care was taken to exclude lighterweight vehicles, buses and off-highway vehicles.
 

A Trucker's Blind Spots

    One of the most serious misjudgments motorists make about trucks concerns a trucker's field of vision. Many motorists believe that because a truck driver sits twice as high as the driver of an auto, he can see farther ahead and can react more promptly to events as they develop. True, the trucker has a better view over the top of any cars ahead of him. But truckers have serious blind spots motorists do not have -- immediately in front, on either side of the cab, and up to 200 feet in the rear.

 

         Blind spots on a big rig

    A trucker cannot see over or through another tractor trailer in front of him any better than a motorist can, and may have a limited view of the road directly in front of his cab. If he's driving a tractor with a long hood, a trucker may not be able to see the first 20 feet of concrete in front of his bumper - plenty of room for a car to slip unnnoticed into a position of danger. Even on some of the more streamlined tractors with sloped hoods or with no front hood (called cab-overs), there can be a blind spot of up to ten feet.

    The blind spots on the sides and in the rear hamper a trucker's ability to take evasive action to avoid accidents, so motorists must be careful to ensure their vehicles will be seen. An often-cited rule of thumb for motorists overtaking a semi-trailer is, if you can't see the truck driver in his side mirror, he can't see you.
 

The Information Gap

    Amazingly, however, the engineering breakthroughs that have enabled trucks to become bigger, more powerful, and safer at the same time, are virtually unknown to the American  motoring public. Very few American motorists understand what it really means to drive a  truck for a living. Just as unfortunately, however, very few American motorists understand  how to operate their own vehicles safely on the same street or highway with heavy trucks.
    They don't understand why trucks act as they do. Consequently, they don't understand how and when to adapt their own driving behavior to the realities of the trucks with which all of us, as Americans, are obliged to share the road.

    It's not just that the information media and the commercial entertainment industry mistakenly portray all truckers as internal-combustion cowboys who trade the security of an office or factory job for the freedom and independence of the open road; what frustrates and infuriates many truckers is the vast distance between that fantasy and the reality that they know -- days, even weeks, away from home and family; shippers who demand on-time delivery regardless of weather delays and road construction; for the independent owner-operator, the sometimes desperate search for the next load; the endless paperwork, the proliferating safety regulations and the tightening grip of new law enforcement technologies.

    Yes, truckers do like the open road. But when the media exploit the infrequent but severe truck accident to generalize about "careless truckers" and "dangerous 18-wheelers," the pleasures of the open road--and the satisfactions of delivering an important shipment on time and in good condition - - quickly lose their charm. With fatality rates continuing to diminish as truck mileage grows, the numbers make it clear that trucks are nowhere near as dangerous as they have been portrayed. Truck accidents do often have spectacular and tragic consequences. But the reality is that truckers are safer drivers than anytime in history. The routine of truck-driver life, however, is less exciting and more dangerous and stressful than outsiders are led to believe.
 
 

The Reality of Trucking

 
    What is that reality? Simply that, in order to survive, today's owner-operators and company drivers not only must be competent behind the wheel but must perform other business tasks that would stagger many executives. On top of trying to build a safety record that will help  them retain their licenses and their customers, truck drivers must struggle with a regulatory and administrative environment that robs them of job satisfaction -- and of the precious time they need to perform their other duties effectively.

    The motoring public knows and cares little about the real life of truck drivers. Truck safety is what worries the typical American motorist. Ironically, however, this very lack of "truck awareness" may be a major contributor to collisions between the two types of vehicles.

    Accidents involving passenger cars and intercity trucks, including over 3,600 fatalities per year, are still occurring at an unacceptable rate. In fact, one death is one too many. Truck drivers do contribute to these accidents. It is now becoming clear, however, that too many drivers of passenger cars unnecessarily endanger themselves by failing to recognize that trucks and cars differ in the way they behave on the road.

    Shippers, too, bear much of the blame. To a disturbing degree, shippers demand delivery  schedules that push truckers to exceed the speed limit or spend too many hours at the wheel  without sleep. In today's intensely competitive environment, truckers know that if they turn down a shipment, a shipper can readily find a replacement, though not necessarily the best  and most responsible one.

   Froma government-regulated utility to a genuine industry made up of customer-driven, free-market business enterprises. We applaud the higher levels of customer service, the lower shipping costs, the rising safety rate, and the steady increase in driver professionalism  that have emerged in this new industry as a result of deregulation and tougher truck-safety legislation.

    At the same time, however, we have become concerned over the widening
    communications gap between truck drivers, shippers, the media, and the general public. We foresee a danger that, unless the media and the motoring public become better aware of trucks and truckers, motorists will continue to treat trucks as adversaries and will engage in highway maneuvers that lead to car-truck accidents. We are also concerned that if shippers continue to demand unrealistically fast schedules at unrealistically low rates, truckers will be forced to defy the speed limits as well as the hours-of-service regulations in a sheer, desperate attempt to survive economically. If these scenarios play out, the car-truck fatality total will continue to rise erasing more than a half-decade of progress in truck safety.

    This document is the third edition of a comprehensive report designed to provide the news  media, driver educators, other safety professionals, and the motoring public with a better  understanding of the physical forces that affect trucks, the market forces and governmental  regulations that affect truck drivers, and what all of us, including truckers, can and must do to make our highways safer and more enjoyable for all user groups. When all groups understand each other better, we'll do a better job of "sharing the road."

    Trucks are not large cars. They're a different species of highway creature. Whether they're accelerating, braking, climbing a hill, switching lanes or turning onto a side street, tractor-trailer trucks must perform certain maneuvers that drivers of automobiles, or "4-wheelers" as truckers call them, are generally not familiar with.

    A typical tractor-trailer combination -- a power unit pulling a loaded semi-trailer hinged to its rear end -- may weigh up to 80,000 pounds. Depending on the trailer length -- 40, 45, 48, or 53 feet -- the totall length of the combination may exceed 70 feet. On the busiest intercity routes a motorist will encounter double or even triple-trailer combinations sometimes  exceeding 100 feet in length.

    Any motorist who's been stuck behind one of these trucks at a traffic light knows that a semi-trailer combination accelerates much slower than the typical late-model automobile. The truck may have to go through ten gears--a relatively lengthy process--to reach the speed limit. The truck may have two or three times more power under the hood than a car does; but with up to 70,000 pounds of trailer and cargo behind it, a truck engine must move 30 or 40 times more weight than does a car engine.
 

    Most motorists understand that a semi-trailer will take more time and distance to brake to a stop than a car traveling at the same speed. But how much more? In a series of tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a passenger sedan traveling 55 mph came to a stop in 133 feet while a sleeper- cab tractor with a loaded trailer required 196 feet.

   Surprisingly, IIHS researchers also learned that it takes almost as long to stop a "bobtail" -- a tractor running without its trailer -- as it does to stop a loaded tractor-trailer combination. Without the weight of a trailer on its rear wheels, the bobtail came to a stop only after traveling 183 feet.

   When motorists fail to understand the physical forces that act on trucks, the resulting confusion can have grave consequences. Using the example of a bobtail's braking distance, our "instincts" tell us that a lightly loaded truck should have less momentum and a shorter stopping distance than one carrying a heavy load -- and that a bobtail should stop fastest of all. That may be why the IIHS study showed that the fatal-accident rate for bobtails was more than 13 times higher than that for tractors pulling trailers. The absence of trailer weight on the
 tractor's two rear-powered axles drastically reduces tire-to-pavement contact and interferes with the driver's control of the vehicle.

    In its defensive driving course for the professional truck driver, the National Safety Council (NSC) notes that braking distances are increased by two additional factors most people are unaware of: reaction time and brake lag. Reaction time is the number of seconds it takes a driver to recognize a problem and take the appropriate action. The NSC says the average reaction time of most people is three-quarters of a second. At 55 mph, a truck will travel 60 feet before the driver applies the brakes. In Figure 1, we've combined the stopping distance as measured by the IIHS and added an additional 60 feet for reaction time.

    Brake lag, the period of time between the application of the foot valve and the time the brakes react to maximum brake efficiency, is generally unique to trucks. The hydraulic brakes on automobiles and smaller trucks engage almost immediately. In tractor-trailers, however, the air-brake systems that transmit braking power from the tractor to the trailer are subject to a lag that can add many feet to the stopping distance.

    In a separate study, the National Safety Council found that a combination truck traveling at 55 mph with a full load under ideal conditions will travel a total of 335 feet before coming to a complete stop. With hot brakes, the distance will be even longer.[source] Whether one cites the IIHS study or the National Safety Council study on braking distances, the point is clear -- a  tractor-trailer of any kind takes far longer to stop than does a passenger car and motorists  must take this into account while driving.

    One final note about brakes: Cars have self-adjusting brakes, but many tractor-trailers do not, so truckers must regularly check their brakes every few hundred miles.

    Braking characteristics aren't the only way in which motorists may be confused by a truck's actions. Turning characteristics have the same effect. For example, many motorists following a semi-trailer assume that if the truck moves to the left it is preparing to make a left turn.

 
    In fact, tractor-trailer trucks often swing out to the left as the first step in making a right turn. Particularly when making a tight turn at an urban intersection or when pulling off the street into a driveway, the tractor must swing to the left first to prevent the trailer from riding up  over the curb or striking vehicles in the parking lane. Unprepared motorists, however,  sometimes misinterpret this preliminary swing to the left as the beginning of a left turn that will  allow them to pass the truck on the right. When the truck proves to be turning right, the auto is trapped between the truck and the curb in the "right-turn squeeze."

    "One of the most common insurance claims we see are from motorists who get caught in the old 'squeeze' play," says one John Deere Transportation Insurance agent. "We always tell them, when following a truck, observe its turn signals before trying to pass. If it seems to be starting a left turn, don't try to pass on the right before checking to see which way the driver is signalling he's going to turn. It's like that old saying -- 'Do as I say, not as I do.' You should act according to what the truck driver says he wants to do -- not what you think the truck is doing."

    Trucks can neither speed up, slow down nor maneuver as nimbly as cars, so truck drivers sometimes must engage in procedures that seem puzzling -- and often infuriating -- to uninformed motorists.

    For example, on an expressway or freeway of six or more lanes, motorists sometimes see a semi-trailer truck apparently "hogging" the center lane, even though its comparatively low  speeds would seem to warrant use of the right lane. Actually, the trucker is playing it safe. Using the center lane doubles his options if he has to switch lanes in order to avoid an  accident. Cars can brake--even swerve--with relative ease and safety, because braking is quick. Because trucks take longer to brake, a premature shift to an adjacent lane can set up a crack-the-whip effect in which the tractor and trailer can sway out of control, possibly causing a collision or overturning the trailer. Therefore, from his position in the center lane a trucker can better control his vehicle by keeping both adjacent lanes open as escape routes if trouble develops. By doubling his options in this way, the driver protects himself, his cargo and the vehicles around him. It should be noted, however, that many states require trucks to remain in the right lane except when passing.

    The enormous size-weight difference between cars and trucks is the major reason why car-truck crashes are so dangerous. When a passenger auto and a large truck are involved in a fatal collision, it's the people in the car who are likely to die. The IIHS reported that 98 percent of the people killed in 2-vehicle crashes involving a passenger vehicle and a large truck in 1995 were occupants of the passenger vehicle.

    What these figures mean is that regardless of "whose fault it was," any accident between a large truck and a car is literally "weighted" in favor of the truck. Regardless of how the driver of a truck is behaving, the vehicle itself simply must be respected. Yet most driver education programs fail to inform motorists about the dangers of the car/truck weight differential and provide no instruction on how to deal with it. Motorists go through their driving careers fearing trucks, but without the knowhow that would help them share the road with a greater  measure of safety and peace of mind.
 

 

Building a Climate of Safety

    American motorists don't think about trucks much. The subject enters public awareness onlywhen motorists are on the road sharing space with a truck, or when an accident involving a truck is publicized on television. Truckers, naturally, are more highly aware of their vehicles and their problems. The industry, its vehicles and its drivers operate 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. In 1994, trucks traveled an estimated 109 billion miles on the
 nation's highways.

    As with automobiles, truck safety results from many factors -- drive competence and experience, road quality, equipment maintenance, and effective law enforcement. Truckers, however, must also cope with additional factors that arise in a commercial environment, including shipper demands, rate competition, and fuel and maintenance costs. These costs are much higher for truckers than for drivers of passenger automobiles. Moreover, the urgent  pressure for truckers to pick up and deliver their loads on schedule often leaves little room for shopping or negotiating to get something at a lower cost.

    Despite these pressures, however, and despite a safety problem tha apparently developed at least partially in response to deregulation, the intercity trucking industry has steadily grown safer in recent years. Deaths in tractor-trailer crashes rose 9 percent from 1982, when 4,080  fatalities occurred, to 1985, when deaths peaked at 4,517. After sinking for two years -- to  4,354 deaths in 1986 and 4,256 in 1987 -- the figure rose to a brief "mini-peak" of 4,448 in 1988 and then began a steady 7-percent drop to 3,240 deaths in 1992 before rising to 3,469 in 1993 and 3,626 in 1994. In 1995, however, the total again fell slightly,to 3,576.

    Although any death is one too many, the ongoing drop in truck-related
    fatalities is remarkable in view of the industry's continuing growth, with an increasing number of trucks in service and more mileage being driven each year.

The annual vehicle-miles  traveled by combination trucks increased 68 percent over the period from 1980 to 1995, growing from 68.6 billion to 115 billion miles.

    How was it that more and more trucks were able to drive more and more miles while being involved in fewer fatalities? The answer most likely has to do with a little-understood sequence of federal regulatory actions.

    Prior to 1980, motor carriers had to have "authority" from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to serve a given route and to carry certain commodities. If the ICC was satisfied that a route had enough service, it would not allow new or existing carriers to compete for that business. Rates remained the same for all customers, which were approved
    by the ICC and open to public inspection. Carriers serving a given route could be virtually certain that no additional carriers would be allowed to operate over the same route.
 

Deregulation

    In 1980, the trucking industry became the third transportation industry (following the airlines  and railroads) to undergo economic deregulation. As part of the deregulation process, anyone with sufficient capital to buy or lease trucks could enter the business as a common carrier, i.e., a trucking company accepting commercial shipments from all eligible customers,  and compete for freight shipments. Rates could be discounted, and private rates could be made with individual customers.

    Many of the older, traditionally-managed motor carriers were unable to adapt to this liberalized regime and went bankrupt as deregulation allowed aggressive new startup carriers into their formerly protected markets. Their names included such well known companies as Spector, Campbell Express, and Dohrn.[source] Thousands of smaller start-up companies took their place, hiring away their employees and buying up trucks while cutting rates and transit times in an effort to capture new customers. Motor carriage grew dramatically, and so did customer satisfaction, as shippers began enjoying lower rates and a wider choice of carriers and service levels.

    But deregulated growth also brought a certain amount of disruption: In the effort to compete, carriers hired younger, less experienced, drivers. Squeezed by competitive pressures, these  new firms paid less than the historic wage, resulting in more job dissatisfaction and faster driver turnover (the average is 110 percent a year).[source] Not surprisingly, fatalities from  tractor-trailer crashes went up immediately following deregulation (See Figure 4.)

    In 1985, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published a landmark study, Big Trucks  and Highway Safety, that highlighted the growing safety problem in the nation's trucking  industry. The study made the issue of truck safety a major news story, aroused public  concern, and created momentum for truck-safety legislation in Congress, starting with a 1985  requirement for mandatory front-wheel brakes, which a few older tractor units still lacked.

    Other regulations that followed included

        Routine drug testing in the late 1980s.
        Ban on radar detectors, passed in 1993.
        Mandatory reflective striping on all new trucks, passed in 1993.
        Alcohol testing, beginning in 1995.

    These regulations may have helped reduce accident frequency and severity. However, the most dramatic and effective change occurred in 1990, when the truck-driving profession began facing strict new federal regulations on the requirements for obtaining a Commercial Driver's License (CDL).

    For decades truck drivers who had lost their licenses for repeated traffic-law violations had  been able to keep driving by using backup licenses issued by another state. Some problem  drivers routinely carried a half dozen or more licenses, surrendering one when convicted but  promptly returning to truck driving under the license of a neighboring state.

    Under the 1990 CDL program, states continue to issue licenses, but all state motor-vehicle  departments are now linked in a nationwide computerized data base that alerts each of them instantly whenever a driver loses his license. If a driver applies for a license in a neighboring  state, the application is rejected automatically. If the driver is employed, he loses his job. If he  owns his own tractor-trailer, he loses his insurance, and no shipper will tender him a load. He  is out of business.

    The CDL program closed a major loophole, forcing out of the industry a small number of "problem" drivers who had been involved in a disproportionate percentage of accidents. The vast majority of drivers unaffected by the new CDL law tend to be law-abiding and  professional, with a very low incidence of accidents. Because the entire trucking industry now  reflects this more professional driver profile, trucking mileage has grown substantially while the actual number of truck-related accidents has gone down.

    The disruptions that occurred in the 1980's, including the temporary "spurt" in fatalities following deregulation, continue to hurt the industry's public image to this day, despite a dramatic turnaround in the industry's actual safety record. Perception tends to lag behind the facts. Ironically, additional legislation may be needed to address the crushing driver shortage and bring fatality rates down even further.

    What motorists don't know about trucks is relatively simple compared to what motorists don't  know about truckers. But the man behind the wheel (and it still is a man in most cases) is as much a key to understanding trucks as the vehicle itself. He's a special breed, but increasingly he's not the breed that the media and popular entertainment portray.

    For about half the intercity truck drivers in the nation, driving a truck is in some ways similar  to working in a factory, office, warehouse or retail store: The hours and the salary are regular.  These are the drivers who work for large, corporate motor carriers that have enough freight to move that they can set up regular schedules over fixed routes on which a series of drivers take charge of the truck over successive stages.

    For example, a driver for such a carrier might spend eight hours driving the 350 miles from Chicago to Cleveland and then go off duty, sleep in a motel or a company dormitory and drive another company truck back to his home terminal the next day. A fresh driver takes the truck the next 300 miles to Syracuse, to be relieved by a third driver who terminates the run 300 miles away in New York City. These truckers work like railroad crews, never venturing  beyond a fixed territory. Their whereabouts are always known, they rarely spend more than
    one night away from home, and they get regular paychecks. These drivers are employed  largely by so-called Less Than Truck Load, or "LTL.," carriers like United Parcel Service or Yellow Freight Lines. Each intercity truck is filled with hundreds of parcels which, on arrival, will be "broken down" in a terminal dock and then reloaded on smaller trucks for delivery to many destinations.

    The other half of the nation's intercity truckers work in an entirely different fashion: They stay with the same trailerload of freight all the way from a single shipper's dock to a single  receiver's dock, regardless of the length of the trip, which may be a gruelling 3,000-mile coast-to-coast itinerary. Sleeping in motels or in a sleeper-cab just behind the driver's seat, they work their way across large sections of North America to deliver their loads. These  truckers work almost exclusively in the full-truckload segment of the transportation business.
    Each trailer carries a full load from one shipper to one receiver, such as a load of paper from a paper mill to a printing plant or a load of canned vegetables from a food-processing plant to  a grocery chain's warehouse.
 

    Many of these long-distance drivers are employees of large carriers -- J.B. Hunt
    Transportation of Lowell, Arkansas, and Schneider National, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, being the best-known examples. But the majority are independents --"owner-operators"-- who drive their own tractors and sometimes their own trailers. Some deal directly with shippers; others  lease their services and their tractors to a common carrier so that they can stick to their  specialty -- driving -- while the company goes about the buusiness of finding customers and negotiating rates. These drivers do not receive regular paychecks; they are paid much like piece workers, collecting a specified fee per mile or percent of revenue, and sometimes collecting a bonus for on-time delivery or other service "extras."

    Trucking firms increasingly are turning to the use of owner-operators as a means of reducing costs during both good and bad business cycles. The owner-operator shoulders the capital cost of the tractor and sometimes the trailer. He pays for his own fuel, maintenance and insurance. As business increases, trucking firms can readily add more owner-operators to meet demand. Conversely, when business slumps, if they employ owner-operators, they can downsize without having to pay expensive severance costs or other benefits. When business  remains stable, or grows at a moderate pace, carriers feel confident enough to hire their own drivers and add to their fleets, but even then they like to keep a certain number of independents under contract in order to adjust to sudden fluctuations in demand.

    The owner-operator has his own reasons for this arrangement: It offers him a higher level of independence than full employment, plus the possibility of earning more money -- either by working more hours or by locating more lucrative accounts. Many owner-operators admit they like the life, especially the chance to drive a variety of routes and "see the country"  rather than shuttle between the same end points several times a week.

    Among both classes of truck drivers, the overwhelming majority are middle-aged and male.  During the 60s, 70s and 80s, much of the trucking industry's growth was fed by the widespread availability of young drivers created by the Baby Boom (1946-64). Truck drivers were recruited largely from males between the ages of 21 and 35, and from the late 60s until the early 90s men in this age group were abundant. Now the numbers of new applicants are dropping, the median age level is rising, and carriers are finding recruits in
 shorter supply.
 

Tighter Safety Regulation

    Deregulation of trucking in 1980 loosened the rules governing the ownership and management of trucking companies. But as government relaxed its control over the commercial activities of the trucking industry it tightened its control over the vehicles  themselves as well as over the drivers. Company drivers and owner-operators now complain that paperwork is so overwhelming that it interferes seriously with their ability to stay on the road and deliver the shipper's load.

Drivers spend as many as 20 hours per week on paperwork, inspections, and other non-driving activities. The most demanding task is the driver's log that all truckers must carry  with them in the cab in order to prove they have not exceeded the mandatory federal limit of 10 hours at the wheel before 8 hours of rest. Although the log only takes about an hour and 45 minutes per week to maintain, entries must be made at 15-minute intervals around the clock, meaning the truck driver must record his work activities as meticulously as an attorney,  accountant, or other high- salaried professional--and must do so while driving his truck.

    In addition to the government-mandated log, all truck drivers must devote time to clerical and record-keeping functions demanded by the carrier or the shipper. Because most drivers are paid by the mile rather than by the hour, this time is not compensated. Complying with governmental and carrier/shipper documentation requirements and inspections can take as many as 700 hours a year from a trucker's potential driving time.  While most regulations do help reduce accidents, they also take valuable time out of the trucker's workday--and worknight. Truckers support safety regulations in general - accidents cost them money as well as peace of mind--but they become understandably concerned that
    additional compliance documentation may confiscate an unacceptable amount  common to company employees and Owner-Operators. Owner- Operators have additional administrative duties dictated by their role as operators of small businesses: They must buy their own insurance, finance their own trucks, make regular insurance and loan payments, prepare their own fuel-tax forms, arrange for their own maintenance and vehicle supplies, fill out their own accident reports and prepare all the forms and permits necessary for each state through which they travel--in addition to any other applicable local, state, and federal employer paperwork.

    Owner-Operators must also understand and process the waybill, the "ticket" under which each load travels and which the carrier (or Owner-Operator) uses to collect charges from the shipper. For an Owner- Operator, clerical work requires a minimum of 270 hours of work per year, or 34 working days, even if such owner is operating only one vehicle. Over the last 10 years, the typical paperwork load of drivers has grown by about 20 percent.
 

    Despite the growing work load and demand for high-quality drivers, trucker incomes have  remained flat since deregulation.

    Other factors have pushed trucking rates -- and hence driver wages --down  since deregulation. Railroads are also deregulated and have grown stronger, raising their service levels while cutting rates. On long- distance runs -- 750 miles or more -- "intermodal" trains carrying truck trailers or containers on flatcars enable shippers to deliver a truckload damage-free to a distant customer at almost the same speed as a truck but at a cost 20 to 25 percent lower. Truckers once had the intercity merchandise market almost to themselves,  leaving the railroads only with slow-moving bulk commodities such as coal, grain and
    chemicals. Today, railroads compete vigorously and successfully for high-priority merchandise traffic, exerting a continual downward pressure on the rates motor carriers can charge for the same shipment. In such a punishing competitive climate, trucking companies often lack sufficient revenue to raise driver pay. The American trucking industry today is caught in a brutal contradiction: It has developed the best drivers in its history, but it can't get enough of them.

    These competitive pressures also have resulted in an equally serious problem: The industry employs excellent drivers, but the realities of the marketplace can sometimes compromise safety. Because of intense pressures from shippers to deliver loads fast, many truckers face a dilemma: exceed the speed limit and/or the hours-of-service rules or risk losing business. Truckers and their companies are often told that if they deliver a shipment late they will not be tendered additional business by a shipper or will be allowed to haul loads only if they accept a lower rate.
 
 

 

Driver Fatigue

    In a 1992 Journal of Public Health Policy article, "Long Hours and Fatigue: A Survey of Tractor-Trailer Drivers," a team of six investigators reported on interviews they had conducted with 1,249 semi-trailer drivers at inspection stations and truck stops in Connecticut, Florida, Oklahoma and Oregon.

    The investigators said 31 percent (386) of the drivers admitted having driven more than the weekly hours-of-service limit of 60 hours over seven days or 70 hours over eight days. Another six percent of the drivers reported they had not violated the hours-of-service law during the current month but had done so during the previous month.

    In addition, 19 percent of the drivers stated they had fallen asleep at the wheel one or more times during the past month, and two-thirds acknowledged having under-reported their actual hours of work in their log book during the previous year. Falsification of logs is, in fact, so common -- and verification of log entries so difficult for USDOT officials -- that truckers dismiss the log as their "comic book."

    These findings are serious. Numerous studies have documented that driver attention begins to lapse noticeably after about four hours at the wheel and declines very steeply after eight  hours. A 1983 USDOT study found that in 41 percent of serious tractor-trailer crashes, driving  in excess of 15 hours without rest was the probable cause and was a contributing cause in  another 18 percent of crashes.[source] A 1987 IIHS study showed that drivers behind the wheel for more than eight hours are almost twice as likely to have an accident as drivers who are rested.

    A Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) study released in early 1997 showed that time-of-day may be a more important predictor of fatigue than continuous time behind the wheel. Other recent studies have shown that inattention due to fatigue occurs more frequently when drivers work through the night in opposition to the body's normal circadian rhythm. And, while 19 percent of the drivers in the study reported in the Journal of Public Health Policy admitted having dozed at the wheel, the researchers pointed out that this figure is probably low because people quite commonly doze for a few seconds and awaken without realizing they were asleep.[source] So, almost three fourths of tractor-trailer drivers surveyed acknowledged that they violate hours-of-service limits even though they know they are fatigued. The Federal Highway Administration has announced its intention to review and revise the current hours-of-service rules.

    Why do so many of America's professional truck drivers stay at the wheel so long?

 

    The Journal of Public Health Policy investigators reported:

        When violators were asked for common reasons for driving more than 10 hours in one day, which can be legal in some circumstances, one-third (283) cited tight  schedule, 31 percent (260) cited needing the money, 12 percent (98) cited traffic  jams and 10 percent (87) cited inclement weather.[source]

    Two thirds of the drivers, in other words, said they violated the rules essentially for economic  reasons: They had to break the law in order to make a living or to please a shipper -- which  amounts to the same thing. Although several technologies for monitoring driver hours are available, the public-health investigators felt that a reduction of the economic pressure on the trucker would more effectively reduce the driver's incentive to drive past the point of fatigue.

If drivers are accurate in their reports, carriers and shippers are contributing to the problem by assigning unrealistic pick-up and delivery deadlines and penalizing drivers for late arrivals, the investigators wrote. Changes in the hours-of service regulations to put more burden on the carrier and the shipper should be made... Carriers and shippers must go beyond merely having a policy against violating hours-of service rules; they must take effective action to prevent
violations when giving driving assignments, to monitor the logbooks to detect violations, and to discipline drivers who do break the rules...Effective actions are urgently needed to protect the public from the risk posed by the many tractor-trailer drivers who spend illegally long hours at work and behind the wheel. These actions must be directed toward the carriers and shippers, who set
 schedules that cannot be met even under current regulations, as well as the
 drivers themselves.

    Recently, a new factor has arisen to exacerbate the driver-fatigue problem. In many parts of the country, local and county officials have rejected requests by truckstop owners and developers to open additional rest-stop facilities where long-distance truckers can sleep, eat, shower, shop, make phone calls, and have their vehicles serviced. Lack of safe, comfortable and reasonably priced rest stops makes truck driving unnecessarily difficult and increases the likelihood that a driver will push himself past the fatigue point in an effort to find a place to pull
off the road and sleep. The reason for the rejection of building-permi applications for new or  expanded truck stops seems to be the NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") movement, which increasingly tries to banish commercial and industrial activities from any location near residential property. In some cases, local residents have claimed that truckers, and perhaps  truck-stop personnel as well, represent a "bad element" that will lower property values. In others, residents claim that property values will be diminished by truck noise and exhaust and by the 24-hour operation that is essential in the truck-stop industry. Although some of the objections to truck-stop construction have merit, others are erroneous. In both cases however, failure to expand truck-stop capacity is a threat to driver well-being and hence to safety on the highway.

    In the last several years, some safety advocates have called for new regulations requiring the use of monitoring devices to track sleep periods. These devices have merit, but only if and  when their costs can be substantially lowered. The problem of fatigue will only be effectively  solved when unfair shipper pressure is sharply reduced.

    Tight scheduling is exacerbated by another serious problem truckers face: unloading.
    Industry sources say it is common practice for a trucker to arrive at a receiver's dock on time,only to find the receiver's personnel too busy to unload his truck and the dock foreman expecting the trucker to unload the trailer himself. Typically, receivers do not offer extra pay for driver unloading.[source]

    This demand can be a real problem if, as often happens, the trucker has already used up his federally mandated allowance of working time and is obligated to rest before going on the road again. If he adds to his fatigue by devoting additional hours of manual labor to  unloading, he must set back his schedule even further before committing himself to his next  revenue trip. Federal regulations correctly fail to discriminate between time spent behind the  wheel and time spent working on a loading dock. Both activities are classified as "hours of work" that must be compensated by "hours of rest."

    When a short-handed dock foreman opens a newly arrived loaded trailer, the exhausted trucker usually retains the services of one or more "lumpers" to get the cargo unloaded so his or her truck can get back into service as soon as possible. These lumpers may be college students, employees of other businesses moonlighting for extra income, or other temporary workers screened by the receiver for suitability. Some are ex-truckers recruited for their familiarity with dock work who have given up the rigors of long or intercity hauling. Others may be unemployed men who loiter in the vicinity of truck docks waiting for temporary duty as emergency unloaders. Although the largest and most professional motor carriers, such as  J.B. Hunt and Schneider National, reimburse their drivers for hiring lumpers, many truckers,  particularly owner operators or employees of small fleets, pay for lumping out of their own pockets in an undocumented cash transaction they cannot show as an expense on their income-tax returns to qualify for a deduction. If a lumper is not available or is deemed prohibitively expensive, the trucker "goes along with the system" and unloads the truck. If he is a law-abiding driver, he then extends his rest period, possibly missing a profitable
    backhaul. If he is less than law-abiding or, as is more likely, under severe economic stress, he pushes himself to deliver the next load in spite of fatigue and inadequate rest.

    Ironically, prior to deregulation, trucking firms could levy "detention charges" if a driver was delayed at a loading dock past a certain time period and pass them on to the shipper. Deregulation thus enables shippers and carriers to defer detention costs to the driver under another name: fatigue.

    Efforts by shippers to police themselves have, to date, been largely cosmetic and ineffective. The National Industrial Transportation League, an association comprised of mostly large shippers, adopted a "Code of Ethics" in 1992.[source] The Code addresses loading procedures and reasonable delivery schedule in vague terms and adherence is voluntary.
 

 
    Just as with automobiles, truck safety is the composite result of many variables -- the driver's competence and frame of mind, road conditions, and the presence of potential hazards, including excessive traffic or lengthy construction zones. Truckers must cope with additional pressures, such as shippers' demands, the sometimes debilitating effect of bad drivers, and  the impact each run has on the bottom line, i.e., billing rates, fuel and maintenance costs, and  customer/shipper satisfaction.

    Intercity trucking has grown increasingly safe since its founding in the early 1920s as highway technology has grown into today's vast network of four-lane, stoplight-free interstates and tollways. Safety legislation combined with advanced technologies has made the truck safer -- more durable, stable, maneuverable, and more comfortable to operate. Mandatory drug  testing and the new Commercial Drivers License program have made the driver himself more professional in his attitude and training and statistically safer in his performance.

    Yet the more than 3,000 persons killed in truck crashes each year -- 98 percent of them in automobiles  -- tells us that more needs to be donee, and the growing number of studies of driver fatigue suggest some possible solutions. It may be time for legislation that penalizes both carriers and shippers for assigning drivers a "mission impossible" that forces them either to speed, to drive while fatigued, or both -- in order to earn a living. And shippers  who desire the speed, flexibility and high service levels of intercity motor carriage may have  to accept a least a modest increase in rates to assure that good drivers will remain available to carry their shipments.

    To sum up, the safety record of the American truck-driving profession today, while dramatically better than it was five years ago, nevertheless has traveled only about halfway to its destination. The first six years of improvements came largely through the elimination of  poor drivers by the new Commercial Drivers License program. Improvements in the coming years will happen only if the remaining good drivers are able to raise the level of their performance, and that will require some basic reforms of the system.

    The question is, how can this be done?

 The parties who create the environment in which the trucker must operate, including carriers, shippers, law-enforcement agencies, government,  and the motorists who share the road with intercity trucks.

    TRUCKERS

    Drivers of intercity tractor-trailer trucks need to understand that they must share the road. A small but significant minority of truckers still display a contemptuous attitude toward other motorists out of a mistaken belief that their skill in operating large vehicles and years of  driving experience entitle them to use the road in ways not permitted to drivers of lesser skill  and experience. Some truckers insist they can maintain control of their vehicles at speeds well  above the legal limit. Some of them may be correct. What these truckers forget is that accidents occur when the speed differential between vehicles becomes too great. Because the highways are common property, open to all licensed drivers and all licensed motor vehicles, truckers must operate their trucks not at the maximum level of performance for their vehicle alone, but at the optimal level for a traffic stream made up of vehicle types ranging from motorcycles to motor homes and driver types from teenagers to grandmothers. Truckers must also make maintenance a top priority.

    MOTORISTS

    Drivers of passenger cars, motorcycles, pickup trucks, school buses and recreational vehicles must understand they need to adopt attitudes and strategies for sharing the road with large trucks. The much larger size and weight of a tractor-trailer truck does not mean it is the motorist's enemy. In fact, it is a specialized vehicle with special performance characteristics  that wise motorists must observe and respect. The truck cannot stop as quickly as a car, nor can it change lanes as easily. Although truck drivers sit higher than car drivers, they cannot see as much as motorists believe and cannot react more effectively than drivers of small vehicles. Yielding lane space to a truck should not be viewed as "giving in" to an "aggressor". In most cases it is simply the prudent and safe response to the different sizes of the two vehicles. Motorists need to remember, too, that trucks, unlike cars, are always on a commercial mission -- delivering freight for a customer -- and the driver of a truck is at worrk when he's behind the wheel. His livelihood depends on getting his truck to a certain place at a certain time.

    Are there any practical steps that drivers of passenger cars can take in order to share the road with big trucks? Absolutely! The following eight unsafe car-handling practices are the leading threats to safety--theirs and motorists'.

    THE CONSTRUCTION-ZONE CUT OFF

    A car passes a truck at high speed--and then cuts back in front of the truck--in order not to be trapped behind the truck in a speed-restricted, single-lane construction zone. This maneuver  forces the truck driver to use emergency braking. In 1994 two construction workers were killed on an Indiana highway when a truck in this emergency braking situation swerved into them.

    THE SIDECAR SQUEEZE

    A car in cruise control inches past a semi-trailer rig at a speed slightly faster than the speed of the truck. The car's position makes it impossible for the trucker to take evasive action if an obstacle appears ahead.

    THE RIGHT SIDE BLIND

    A car rides in the trucker's blind spot or passes on the right. Here, too, the trucker confronted with an obstacle ahead cannot take evasive action without striking the car--which he cannot  see.

    THE RIGHT TURN SQUEEZE

    A car tries to pass a truck and beat it to a right turn, often ignoring the truck's flashing right turn signal. The truck gets to the corner first, and the trucker cannot see the car, because it is in his blind spot. The truck turns, and the car gets caught in the "squeeze play."As in the previous blind-spot incident, the truck driver is not legally at fault, but the incident will end up on his driving record anyway.

    LANE BLOCKING

    A constant-speed driver blocks a lane, forcing faster vehicles, including trucks, to brake, or perhaps to undertake a dangerous passing maneuver. Motorists should check their rear-view  mirrors frequently. If traffic is building up behind, they should pull over and let the flow of traffic adjust itself. Lane blocking is particularly dangerous on hilly, curving, two-lane roads, which offer few opportunities for passing. On the Interstate, slower traffic should stay in the right lane, so that truckers will not have to brake, downshift, change lanes to pass, or accelerate unnecessarily.

    SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP

    A car passes a truck, then slows to turn off the road, forcing the truck to brake, downshift, then go slowly back up through the gears to regain momentum. This situation calls for courtesy as well as safety. Knowing he's about to slow down anyway, the motorist should  follow the truck and then turn.

    IT'S LONGER THAN YOU THINK

    A motorist fails to notice that the truck ahead is pulling double or triple trailers. Failure to understand the total length of the rig may lead the motorist to underestimate the distance  needed to pass the truck. Incredibly, motorists being passed by one of these LCVs--Longer Combination Vehicles--sometimes fail to note the presence of a second or third trailer and try to cut in behind the first trailer. This is an easy mistake to make when the individual trailers are separated by long drawbars that leave substantial daylight between adjacent trailers.

    SIZE-SPEED ILLUSION

    An optical illusion causes a motorist to underestimate the size and speed of an approaching truck. A truck may appear "small~ because of its distance from the motorist. At the same time,  because of its size, a truck often appears to be traveling at a slower speed than it actually is.  Imagine the last time you saw a jumbo jet landing at an airport. It appeared to be traveling at  a slower speed than the 200-plus mph it was actually traveling. A substantial number of car-truck collisions take place at intersections because the driver of the car does not realize how close the truck is or how quickly it is approaching.

    SHIPPERS AND CARRIERS

    The companies that hire truck drivers to deliver freight must understand that their business practices directly affect the driver's performance, not to mention the safety of both the drivers and all who share the road with them. If shippers or carriers specify a delivery time which clearly requires a driver to exceed the speed limit or the hours-of-service laws, shippers or carriers should be held accountable for any criminal or financial consequences which ensue if the driver breaks the law. Such accountability should include legal and financial liability for deaths, injuries and property damage, including loss of or damage to freight. Even when shippers do not demand unrealistic delivery times, some drivers still speed or drive past the point of fatigue because cramming their schedule with additional loads is their only way to stay financially solvent. Carriers must also vow to keep rigs in top shape and to take equipment out-of-service for repairs immediately when warranted. Most do, but given the high stakes, there is no excuse for anyone to take shortcuts when safety is involved.

    LAW-ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES

    Police officers must enforce vehicle-safety regulations effectively but fairly. Weigh stations should be re-equipped with the latest generation of high technology digital scales, and  shippers and carriers must be held accountable for overweight trailers and poorly secured loads. Law-enforcement agencies also need to work more closely with the business community on the commercial development of electronic monitoring equipment designed to record and display the number of hours each driver spends behind the wheel. These devices, some of which already are in production, should reduce the incidence of driving while fatigued,eliminate the hours now consumed in maintaining paper logs and will reduce widespread driver cynicism toward the currently unenforceable logbook system.

    GOVERNMENT

    Legislators should develop laws to shift some of the driver's current legal responsibility and financial liability to shippers and carriers. Such legislation might include waybill language committing the shipper to affirm that the contracted delivery schedule does not call for excessive speed or driver hours, as well as shipper liability for fines incurred when drivers break the law in an effort to meet a shipper or carrier's unrealistic timetables. Some lawmakers and safety advocates have proposed mandatory on-board computers as a means to monitor driver performance and reduce incidents of fatigue. Such computers have merit in reducing the time a driver now spends in maintaining a paper log, but they will likely have little or no effect on reducing driver fatigue because they do not address the underlying causes of fatigue such as low pay and unrealistic delivery schedules. More over, the cost of these computers (as much as $2,000) is still too high for most Owner-Operators who operate on razor-thin profit margins. Finally, all states should better educate its residents on how to share the road with large trucks.  All states should also include questions on truck topics on their drivers' license exams, including truck braking distances, blind spots, and maneuverability. Few states currently include any questions on trucks in the drivers' license exams. If state governments require that their driver training manuals provide instruction about trucks, motorists will gain vital information they need to begin Sharing the Road.