Interesting take, but I have to ask you, how can can driver Skin Skinny work any faster than Chub Chubs? The law says he can only drive 105 kilometres per hour. He can only work so many hours per day, and so many hours per week. Those hours are electronically monitored and correlated with GPS locations. Other than loading and unloading where it only matters in flat deck work, there is no way for Skin Skinny to get in any more miles than Chub Chubs. Given that both drivers are operating within the legal parameters, if Skin Skinny really appears to be more efficient than Chub Chubbs, then maybe the real question is "what corners is Skin Skinny cutting?". The alternative is that Skin Skinny is operating outside the law.
What needs to be understood is the days of the 100 MPH dispatch are gone. No longer can the inefficiencies of the supply chain be absorbed by the driver's log book.
You are probably correct that in the immediate future customers will not pay carriers by the hour. However, as carrier, I will have established an hourly rate for my services, and I will apply a time frame within which I can get your job done. My flat rate to you will be my estimated time to complete the task times my established hourly rate.
As an example a trip from Toronto to Vancouver takes roughly 45 driving hours. On a trip like that I shoot for $135.00 per working hour. What's the going rate for a tandem reefer trip from Toronto to Vancouver? Depending on the customer, I'm getting between $6,000.00 and $6,500.00.
For far too long shippers have been asking carriers to do them a favour by getting a load to destination no matter what. So much so that it has now become SOP. Every day, every load, the shippers now ask that of their carriers. The reality is the carrier itself can do nothing with that request unless they ask the driver. So the driver, for whatever reason or coercion, agrees that he will fulfil the request. Lots of drivers over years and years have died fulfilling that request. Now along comes a bunch of rules that detail speeds and times and processes that drivers must adhere to else they will find themselves on the wrong side of the law. To cap it all off, a government says since you people have not been able to police yourselves for the past 75 years, we're going to do it for you ... enter the e-log.
I'll assume by your moniker that you're a freight broker. Last minute trucks for last minute, hurry up and get there, loads are going to be a thing of the past. Eventually your customers will hire you not for your ability to pull a rabbit out of your ass, but for your ability to acquire and keep a steady and consistent carrier base that can flow with the ebbs and tides of their business. You're role in the supply chain, like mine, like a shipper's, like a receiver's, is changing rapidly, and this industry really doesn't care if you like it or not.
Compare the new face of road transportation to that of the airline industry. You can't call up Air Canada and say I have a passenger in Toronto that wants to leave for Vancouver right now so send over a jet. By the same token you will not be able to call up a carrier and say I have a load to go from Toronto to Vancouver that wants to leave right now, so send over a truck. You'll simply be told that the next available driver will be ready to leave in six hours.
Get out of the 20th century folks. Embrace the future because it's real, and it's here.
WOW, did I ever get off topic .... anyways that is my soapbox speech for the day
