Fuel prices raising questions about trucking’s future

By Candace Jarrett
Morning News Reporter
Published: May 28, 2008

FLORENCE — The soaring price of diesel fuel — more than $4.60 a gallon from $2.50 a year ago — has stripped the profit from hauling and raised concerns regarding the trucking industry’s future.

“It’s breaking the trucking industry,” said Lee Riding, a driver for Denton, N.C.-based Furr Transport. “The two biggest costs associated with trucking have always been fuel and wages. It used to cost more to pay the trucker, but now it cost more to fuel the truck.”

Diesel used to be the cheaper way to fuel vehicles. Ridings said he doesn’t understand why the trucking industry isn’t being supported more right now.

“I’m 55 and all my life diesel fuel has always been 25 percent to 30 percent less than regular unleaded fuel,” he said. “So why now is it 25 percent to 30 percent more than unleaded? I don’t get why the government isn’t doing more to protect what transports almost everything people need to live.”

Seventy percent of the nation’s freight tonnage is transported on trucks on the nation’s highways. And there are more than 350,000 independent diesel-powered tractor-trailer operators in the United States.

Billy “The Trailer Man” Lowe, who has a trailer business in Darlington, said independent trucking eventually will become a thing of the past. He said large carriers — such as J.B. Hunt, Yellow Freight and others with fleets in the thousands — have a much longer reach than small truckers.

“You don’t see a lot of trucks driving around now without a name on it like a Wal-Mart or something,” he said. “Those independents that are hauling for hire can’t make it.”

Frankie Perkins, owner of Perkins Transfer Service on West Lucas Street in Florence, is an agent for companies, connecting trucks drivers to loads that are ready to be transported. He said large fleets are better able to minimize their debt, which is considered the number of miles a truck runs empty, not collecting revenue, while trying to get to the next load.

“They don’t get paid for debt,” he said. “They don’t get paid when they’re not carrying anything, and even larger carriers that used (to) be OK with one in their fleet driving empty after dropping off a load and then driving far to the next pickup, now try to make trips more efficient. The shorter the distance between loads, the better.”

Perkins said truck drivers are at the point where they have to park their trucks.

“The trucker has to think about how much money he’ll make after he puts fuel in the truck,” he said. “Trucks have 200-gallon to 300-gallon tanks and you multiply that by the average price of a gallon of fuel, $4.75. Then you take freight cost, at about $1.80 per mile, to carry the load, with only a 60-cent surcharge, and see what the trucker’s making.”

A surcharge is an option that helps truckers offset the cost of fuel. More and more trucking companies are charging businesses mileage to drop off their products, but that can be a bit harder for small truckers to enforce, especially with the abundance of truckers looking for loads.

“With a lot of shippers, you still have some companies trying to haul freight very cheap,” Perkins said. “People call me looking for loads close to each other because of the fuel cost.”

Some lawmakers are looking to aid the trucking industry, which is watching for the support. Web sites for such group as the Owner-Operated Independent Drivers Association, http://www.ooida.com, and http://www.thetrucker.com, post updates on laws and issues concerning fuel costs.

An amendment has been included in the federal Defense Authorization Bill, which stipulates that for any Department of Defense contract for truck transportation or service using fuel, the motor carrier or broker must pass any fuel surcharge on to the person responsible for paying the cost of fuel and requires them to disclose that surcharge.