Access Part 1 and Part 2 of this year in review, stitching together the most-read stories on the Channel 19 blog in 2014, via those links.
No. 3: The story of young trucker Mike Boeglin, aside from being a tragedy in its own right, threw the issues of parking safety and availability back to the fore in the trucking conversation. Boeglin was gunned down and his tractor torched while he was parked in less-than-ideal circumstances staged to deliver to a ThyssenKrupp steel facility. Eerily similar to the murder of Jason Rivenburg in South Carolina that sparked the “Jason’s Law” provision in the MAP-21 highway bill making federal money available to states for truck-parking projects, conversation around spurring states on in efforts to ease parking congestion grew throughout the year. Owner-operators and fleets of size, for once, were generally in agreement on the importance of the issue.
Also, with no reported progress made on apprehending Boeglin’s killer, and his daughter being born later in the year, advocates with the budding Small Business in Transportation Coalition drafted language for a “Mike’s Law” named for Boeglin that would enable federal pre-emption of state concealed-carry firearm laws for interstate transporters.
No. 6: Haul for free? Not hardly, operators noted in this story, which followed a shipper survey that stressed the need for shippers to look for efficiency improvements rather than pass along the added transportation costs resulting from the 2013 hours changes to consumers. Looking for efficiencies = looking for a trucking company that would haul the product for less, ultimately, many readers took it to mean, sparking no shortage of discussion about rates that continued throughout the year as the spot market really began to take off in the spring.
Around the same time, SBTC head James Lamb, also principal behind the Association for Independent Property Brokers and Agents business league, turned some heads with a seminar at the Mid-America Trucking Show on the notion that more broker rate transparency would go a long way toward improving business conditions for independent truckers. Coverage of the seminar ranked No. 12 on the most-read list on the blog. There, Lamb revealed intentions to establish a 12PL (or “12 Percent Logistics”) brokerage, advertising the percentage rate the broker would take, hoping to lead the way in a move toward greater transparency. Readers’ reaction both positively and negatively to the idea was edged out of the top 20 at No. 21 by late-year coverage of the restart change, but many wondered whether transparency would make any difference whatsoever, with greater forces at work in freight markets.
As Del Ray Johnson put it, “I really doubt that big trucking companies need this so-called ‘transparency’ from brokers,” noting their leverage over most in dictating what “we are going to charge to transport their freight. The unknowing owner-operator allows other people tell them what is the number,” with plenty being willing, he added, to run on very, very thin margins. “That, my friends, is the problem, and the solution is an educated owner-operator who runs his/her big rig like a big business.”
