80,000 MORE DRIVERS? OR JUST 18 MINUTES? | Brake Check

For years, trucking has been told it has a driver shortage.

But what if the bigger problem isn't how many drivers we have?

What if we're wasting the ones already here?

Research led by Dr. David Correll at MIT FreightLab found long-haul drivers averaged roughly 6.5 hours of actual driving in an available 11-hour driving window. When Correll compared utilization with the industry's then-claim of an 80,000-driver shortage, the math produced a wild alternative:

Roughly 18 more productive minutes per existing driver per day could theoretically create comparable additional capacity, Not 18 more hours....18 MINUTES.

So where the hell is the rest of the driver's day going?

Detention, Appointment delays, Loading, Unloading, Congestion, Parking,

And hours of a professional driver's life that somebody else controls.

On this episode of Brake Check, we put the policy AND the data in the same show.

OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh joins us fresh off TenFour D.C. on the National Mall to talk about what truckers actually told Washington, what FMCSA heard, broker transparency, detention, parking, diesel, bad actors, CDL enforcement and why OOIDA continues challenging the industry's driver-shortage narrative.

Then Dr. David Correll of Telegraph, formerly with U.S. DOT and MIT FreightLab, brings the receipts.

We ask him to revisit the famous 18-minute calculation for TODAY'S trucking market.

Is it still 18 minutes?

How much productive capacity are we wasting?

How much money does detention really cost?

Are railroads taking freight from trucks?

And if Washington gets ONE chance to increase trucking capacity, should it put more people behind the wheel...

OR GIVE THE DRIVERS ALREADY HERE THEIR DAMN TIME BACK?

Because maybe trucking doesn't need another recruiting funnel.

Maybe it needs to stop wasting the professionals already moving America.

SOUND OFF: What's the most time you've lost at a shipper or receiver WITHOUT getting paid for it?

And the bigger question:

DRIVER SHORTAGE...OR DRIVER-TIME SHORTAGE

#Trucking #DriverShortage #TruckDrivers #OwnerOperator #OOIDA #Detention #Freight #TruckingIndustry #FMCSA #BrakeCheck

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