Dive Brief:
- The American Transportation Research Institute’s annual Top Industry Issues report included several new topics for the first time.
- Those issues included English language proficiency for drivers, 2027 diesel emissions regulations, driver training standards and artificial intelligence in trucking.
- The report, which ATRI has made for over two decades, noted that it helps make the “voice of the trucking industry heard — from drivers to executives and everyone in between — and by helping to identify pathways forward.”
Dive Insight:
In a year full of upheaval in market conditions, trade policies and carrier bankruptcies, it seems only natural to have four new issues emerge on the list. It’s the most new issues for any year since the rankings first emerged in 2005.
Since then, the only repeat list to have more than one or two new issues was in 2012 when three new issues emerged: the electronic logging device mandate, truck parking and driver health/wellness.
The latest list came from responses from over 4,200 industry stakeholders, where nearly 47% were motor carrier executives and personnel, around 30% were professional truck drivers, about 23% were other industry stakeholders that included suppliers, driver trainers and law enforcement, the report said.
For the Top Industry Issues list, the economy was once again the leading concern for the third year in a row. Top-voted solutions were:
- quantifying the impact of higher operational costs, including tariff impacts
- researching patterns and causes of the ongoing freight recession
- studying why the industry's supply capacity has been slow to correspond to changes in freight demand
Other lists as part of the ATRI report focus on different respondent pools. Among the top concerns of truck drivers were driver compensation, truck parking and ELP, while the top issues for motor carriers were the economy, lawsuit abuse reform and insurance cost/availability.
