Trucking 101

YURIY KUKUY: Around the world, this industry is referred to by many different names, inland distribution, overland transport, over the road, or as I like to call it, trucking. Trucking is a huge part of global trade. It makes up an estimated $3 trillion of the $6 trillion global freight market.

Why does trucking account for 50% of the money spent on global freight? Because just about every commodity that gets moved from one location to another touches a truck at some point in the shipment lifecycle. Trucking is at the start and end of every air and ocean shipment, as well as being a standalone transportation mode all by itself.

Not all shipments go by plane. Not all shipments go by boat, but everything spends time on a truck.

The trucking market is highly fragmented when compared to ocean and air.

In the global market, there are about 10 major ocean carriers and hundreds of airlines. But there are millions of trucking companies.

For example, in the USA alone, the $800 billion per year trucking market is made up of 1.2 million commercial trucking companies. Of which 97% operate fewer than 20 trucks and 90% operate five or fewer trucks.

One of the largest asset-based FTL and intermodal carriers in North America does about $10 billion per year in revenue and has about 18,000 trucks.

This is roughly 1% of the total two million heavy trucks that operate within the USA.

In the USA, 8.9 million people work in the trucking industry, with 3.5 million licensed heavy haul drivers.

Many drivers are owner-operators. Meaning they own their truck or maybe a few trucks and operate it as a business. Often they lease their services to larger trucking carriers and do business under their licenses and insurance as independent contractors.

Although trucking is similar globally, every region has its own nuances, such as size, types of trucks, weight limits, and legal requirements around hours of service for drivers.

This makes regional knowledge and relationships key to a successful trucking product. It helps to explain why the industry is so fractured. It's difficult for any single provider to adapt to all of these regional variations.

YURIY KUKUY: The term trucking encompasses many subcategories of over the road transportation, including but not limited to--

full container load or drayage in the USA, less than truckload, full truckload, and parcel. Often, intermodal transport via rail and barge are also considered to be subcategories of trucking. As they still involve trucking carriers managing the first and final mile.

Let's dive into each of those categories.

Let's start with full container load commonly known as FCL, or for those in North America--

drayage.

As the name suggests, it is the transportation of an entire container full of cargo. This is most often to or from an ocean port or rail terminal.

Containers are transported by tractor units with trailers called chassis. Chassis are designed to match the size of the container so they come in 20 foot, 40 foot, 45 foot, and 53 foot lengths. Commonly they have two axles, but three, four, or more axles are used for extra heavy haulage.

Containers generally unload from the rear so you need dock doors high enough to unload easily. Less common trailers called swing lifts enable the container to be placed on the ground. And tippers allow resin and other bulk materials to be tipped out of the container.

Less than truckload, more commonly known as LTL, is the transportation of shipments that are not large enough to book a full trailer or container. They are instead consolidated with other freight for many customers to fill up a truck. Other common terms used in LTL are cartage and linehaul.

Cartridge is local LTL trucking often to or from an airport or a container freight station.

Linehaul is consolidated LTL freight that is being transported between two cities.

An LTL shipment can touch many trucks in its journey from origin to destination. Often the truck that collects the shipment is different than the one that delivers it.

Long distance intercity LTL shipments are often consolidated and deconsolidated a number of times across both local and linehaul trucks. Sometimes multiple companies can handle a single shipment. This complexity and level of handling often causes more damage losses and delays.

Full truckload, or FTL, is a shipment that can utilize up to 100% of the space in a trailer. For an FTL shipment, the customer is paid for exclusive use of the whole vehicle. Freight is transported from one location to another with no stops in between.

Pickups and deliveries are usually live load and live unload. Meaning that all cargo is loaded or unloaded as soon as the truck arrives at the warehouse distribution center or store.

Within the US, 53 foot dry van trailers are the most common for FTL.

Dry van trailers can hold generally up to 26 non-stackable pallets or 52 stackable pallets. You can haul up to a maximum of 45,000 pounds. Typical FTL commodities include dry food products, apparel, furniture, electronics, anything you see on the shelf of a store.

Let's review a few different types of setups for FTL shipments.

Some FTL shipments use a team truck.

This is when a single truck has two drivers so one can continue to drive while the other is resting. Team trucks are used to expedite transit or to provide extra security for high value loads.

Reefers, or refrigerated trailers, are temperature controlled trailers that keep freight at a specific temperature throughout transit ranging from frozen to room temperature. For example, reefers are commonly used to transport food products and flowers.

Flatbed trailers are utilized when freight doesn't fit standard truck dimensions and cannot be loaded onto a dry van trailer. Common commodities that move via flatbed include farm equipment and construction materials.

When determining whether to ship cargo via FTL or LTL, it is important to keep a few facts in mind. LTL freight will usually be the most cost effective option when only a few pallets need to be shipped, all within standard dimensions, and transit time is not urgent. As mentioned above, LTL shipments touch a few different hubs and may stop multiple times throughout transit.

FTL freight moves from the origin to the destination location with no stops in between. If a shipment is urgent and services more important than cost choosing a dedicated FTL dry van trailer is the best option.

Parcel delivery functions similar to LTL. A single shipment will move on multiple trucks, including both linehaul and final mile cartage. Parcel is often used for residential delivery or when the commodities being shipped are too small for LTL.

Intermodal rail and barge are other modes of transportation that fit within the scope of global trucking. They are services operated by trucking companies as a way to reduce cost and long haul moves. Both have a drage leg at the beginning and end of the move.

YURIY KUKUY: Let's talk about some of the major developments and challenges that are impacting the trucking industry, which has been evolving rapidly over the past 20 years. On the tech front, it is now increasingly common to have a GPS tracking unit in the truck. And for companies to require drivers to use mobile devices to push load updates and collect PODs, which are proofs of delivery.

Real-time tracking has become the new expectation from clients and many large carriers have invested and adapted.

However, given the fragmented market there are still a lot of old school offline trucking businesses. Technology investment in the trucking industry is also highly fragmented. Leading large carriers to develop proprietary tech and leaving small carriers to piece together subpar solutions.

As you can imagine the trucking industry also has a huge impact on the environment. In turn, concerns about that impact are increasingly affecting the industry. Growing number of ports and cities are requiring trucks to meet higher emissions standards and implementing clean truck laws that ban older, less efficient trucks from entering the port.

It is also becoming increasingly feasible power large trucks with electricity or biofuels, which has the potential to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. Better technology on this front combined with strict local emissions standards may begin to force large trucking companies to convert more and more of their fleet away from diesel and towards these cleaner fuel sources.

Another major challenge facing the trucking industry is the aging driver population.

Currently there are not enough young drivers coming into the industry to keep up with the demand. This is due in part to the high barrier for entry. Buying and operating a truck is expensive, especially given the previously mentioned emissions regulations required in newer trucks.

In addition, driving a truck is a demanding occupation. Drivers commonly drive 14 to 16 hours per day, up to 5 to 6 days per week.

Extensive travel may prevent them from spending as much time with their families as they'd like. And the facilities available to them on the open road and at ports and warehouses can rarely compete with the comfort of home.

This challenge may be mitigated in the not too distant future by another expected technological development--

autonomous vehicles. However, the timeline for that technology remains uncertain and autonomous vehicles are unlikely to remake the industry within the next 10 years. Early self-driving trucks are also unlikely to be completely autonomous.

Point to point legs on long straight roads are a lot easier to automate and are likely to be the starting point for automation. But those trucks would still require a driver to navigate trickier legs of the journey.

Alternatively, a single driver might pilot multiple trailers. Most of which are semi-autonomous but follow the lead of the human driver. This potential strategy is known as driver light as opposed to driverless.

Overall, the trucking industry is evolving and modernizing quickly. It's also experiencing large scale consolidation as more and more of the smaller players are absorbed into larger companies with better access to technology and more competitive wages for drivers. Personally, I'm very excited to see how the industry continues to change over the coming years.