Adam Doss’s Santa Rosa-based transportation companies are having a harder time keeping trucks rolling these days, because of a shortage of drivers and weak links in the global supply chain.
Doss Logistics Companies has 10 locations in California and four other Western states. About 90% of its business in the North Bay is hauling beams, plywood and other products for lumber suppliers, compared with only 10% from its Los Angeles hub.
“With drivers, we saw an exodus of baby boomers when COVID hit,” Doss said. “It was a process that should have taken five years, but it happened all at once.”
And new hires tend to have a different “work vision,” he said.
“They do not want to spend 14 hours a day in the truck, and only want to work eight or nine hours, so many trucking companies are having to schedule around that,” Doss said. “We will also see a faster uptick in driver pay.”
But new technology that has made the trucking business more efficient and predictable, such as precision tracking of vehicles, also is helping to work around these worker schedules and preferences for the number of stops they want to take on a route, he said.
Yet there also has been tech added to vehicles aftermarket and from manufacturers under federal and California air-quality regulations that have computerized many functions on big rigs. With a global crimp on the supply of computer chips for a wide range of electronics, the trucking industry also is impacted.
“Most of the trucks that are out there are so electronically driven, that we can’t get parts and we can’t rent trucks,” Doss said. His companies turn over 20% of the fleet annually typically, but this year he’s keeping all 20 of them. “In L.A. and the North Bay we have leased fleets, and when one breaks down we’re supposed to get a rental. But we can’t get it.”
On Nov. 1, Doss announced a 10% general rate increase because of the availability of labor, parts and vehicles.
But an upside to the ever more computerized big trucks that have taken over fleets in recent decades is that it can be something that helps attract drivers, according to Stacey Biagi-Monk of Napa-based Biagi Bros. Transportation & Warehousing.
“We as an industry have not done a good job for getting people interested in driving a truck, telling them that trucks are now auto-shift, that it is more of a no-touch business now,” she said.
The company has been testing two all-electric truck tractors, and Biagi Bros. was featured by the Biden administration for rolling into use one of U.S. transportation’s first Class 8 units. That class can pull about 80,000 pounds of cargo.
While electric vehicle companies continue to roll out large commercial vehicles, Stacey Biagi-Monk said from what her company has seen it may be an idea that needs more work. Her trucks are used to shuttle goods between Wine Country warehouses, because of the vehicle’s limited real-world range of about 120 miles and recharge time of about four hours.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at [email protected] or 707-521-4256.
