PROFITABILITY FACTORS “Think about profitability in your


own companies,” said Kidd, opening the conversation. “You’re all success- ful executives. And as you’re looking at 2014 and beyond, what are the keys to profitability in your companies, other than getting higher prices?” “Recruiting, training and retention


of drivers,” said Williams. “You better be good at all of those or you’re going to be a lot smaller in about a year.” And one way of getting driv-


ers, Williams said, is to acquire other companies of similar operation, citing Heartland Express’s recent purchase of Gordon Trucking. “Finding drivers can certainly contribute to consolidation as well,” he added. Consolidation is less a concern at


J.B. Hunt Transport, observed Harper although the company continues to look at ways to maximize a driver’s efficiency. “We’re continuing to look


for ways for the driver to simply get to drive,” Harper said. “There are so many inefficiencies in the system that hurt the driver’s ability to actually work, and we deal with those on a daily basis,” he continued. “So we’re trying to find what those are and address them as fast as we can.” Kevin Knight agreed with Harper,


adding, “It’s going to take a lot of coop- eration from the customer to help us with that, because we can only do so much. And I would say we’re all prob- ably doing about 85 to 90 percent of what we can do—especially with elec- tronic logging device—to have better information.” Which means it comes down to


“when we can load and when we can unload,” Knight said, and that requires working closely with customers.


RECORDERS ARE THE KEY To Williams, the widespread use of


EOBRs is helping the industry combat inefficiency because of the tremendous amount of useful data they provide. Williams said electronic logging


will accurately show how much time the driver spends behind the wheel. “Everyone keeps talking about the effi- ciency that’s gained with EOBRs, with some saying its two percent and others saying it can go as high as 25 percent.” Whatever the gain, Williams said


a big contributor is that EOBRs force companies and drivers to run legally. Lofgren said the ELDs show you


have to be extremely efficient in this industry. “Getting customers to realize their role in efficiency will be a big key going forward,” Lofgren said. “We’re preaching the message to


customers that, ‘Look, drivers and peo- ple using our equipment as productively as they can are going to be our custom- ers of choice,” said Lofgren. “And we’re already lining them up.”


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28


ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 6 2013


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