Relief for Supply Chains Hit By Truck Driver Shortages? Automate at the Edges, Not Over the Road.
Paradoxically, truck drivers are both scarce and underutilized. Optimizing drivers’ time can address both problems.
The truck driver shortage problem that has dogged supply chains for many years is contributing to transportation bottlenecks that are constraining businesses as diverse as construction companies and furniture manufacturers. In some cases, the bottlenecks are preventing companies from fulfilling orders.
But research carried out by the MIT FreightLab suggests that harnessing untapped driver capacity could ease the driver shortage problem and relieve the strain on overtaxed supply chains. We analyzed the working hours of some 4,000 over-the-road (OTR) truck drivers across two large carriers in snapshots from 2016 to 2020. This analysis, along with industry data and conversations with logistics professionals, indicates that drivers, and hence the trucks they operate, are underutilized.
We estimate that long-haul, full-truckload truck drivers spend, on average, 6.5 hours per working day driving their vehicles. Yet according to federal law, they are allowed to work a maximum of 11 hours per day.
If drivers are underutilized, how much time do we need to add to their average working day to make up for the national shortfall in their numbers?
Based on American Trucking Association statistics, the national driver deficit represents about 3.4% (conservatively) of the estimated population of 1.8 million American freight truck drivers. Adding just 12 minutes to these drivers’ working days — having them haul loads 6.7 hours per day rather than the current average of 6.5 hours — is equivalent to recruiting enough drivers to make up for current shortfalls.
Where can the extra 12 minutes of revenue-earning time for truck drivers can be found? Here are some suggestions drawn from our research.
1. Expand the American supply chain’s “open hours“ to 7 days a week
Our analysis of drivers’ weekly work cycles reveals that most long-haul truck drivers reach our estimated utilization cap of 6.5 hours per day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays of every week, but not on weekends. The analysis also suggests that high-price environments incentivize drivers to work more hours, but that they can typically only find those extra hours on weekends. The implication here is that shippers and receivers who feel starved for truck driver capacity could quickly unlock more driver hours by staffing their own facilities to receive freight trucks on weekends — especially if the price is right for drivers.
2. Expand the American supply chain’s “open hours” to 24 hours a day
We also studied the daily cycles of American truck drivers’ working lives, and discovered that the “dwell time” they experience — time spent waiting to be loaded or unloaded at their customers — is significantly higher when trucks arrive outside a window from roughly 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. While some shippers and receivers have sought to address this issue by operating their warehouses 24 hours per day at full operational speed, many do not. In fact, enough currently do not that the increase in dwell time experienced by drivers arriving outside of this window is observable across all our carrier- and broker-supplied data sets.
3. Automate the American supply chain at its edges, not (only) on the road
Automating certain inbound logistics and warehousing activities could add revenue-earning hours to drivers’ working days. For example, among the workers in short supply are warehouse guard shack personnel who check drivers in and out of freight facilities, logistics coordinators who handle incoming truck paperwork, and the pickers and lumpers who load and unload the trucks. Technology is already available around the world to streamline many of these roles.
For instance, technology that reduces truck driver detention times through contactless pickup and delivery for truck drivers is currently being tested through an initiative of the Consumer Brands Association. Inside the warehouse, the use of robots and co-bots for picking and moving items from the trucks to the warehouse shelves and vice versa is already available. All of these emergent solutions have the potential to reduce the time drivers spend waiting idly at their customers, and also to the lessen variable cost of staffing up to full-speed 24/7 warehouse operations.
Twelve minutes is not a lot of time, but multiplied by the number of OTR drivers in the US adds up to a significant number of working hours that could be added back into American supply chains. This will not solve the driver shortage problem, but it could bring urgently needed relief to many companies that can’t find enough trucks to deliver their products.
Dr. David Correll is the co-director of the MIT FreightLab, where he leads the Truck Driver Initiative, which studies ways to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of life of American over-the-road truck drivers. For more information, please contact the author.
