Weak freight market has had varied impacts on driver wage trends

Weak freight market has had varied impacts on driver wage trends

This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Enterprise Fleet Summit on Wednesday.

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: How understanding wage data can help enterprise fleets stay competitive.

DETAILS: Two years ago, companies were dishing out driver wage increases like candy on Halloween. Leah Shaver, the president of the National Transportation Institute, which gathers huge amounts of data on driver compensation, talks about the trends she is seeing in driver pay in these tougher times.

KEY QUOTES FROM SHAVER:

“We call it the driver roller coaster because as freight adjusts we typically see an adjustment in what’s happening with pay.” 

“Wage gains in the last few years have been really impactful in the fixed rate, per mile or per hour. Recently they have been mostly appreciated by folks who train and do things like hazmat. I think the pickings are going to be pretty exclusive to incentives, like for safety, productivity, fuel and tenure-based bonuses.”

“We’re losing 5,000 drivers a month to the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse. That will be a long-term industry issue.”

“Company drivers are not feeling the burn. Most of them said they are feeling the upside, especially if they get to take advantage of some company incentives. The independent owner-operators are feeling it.”

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.