J.B. Hunt asks shippers to help save time

J.B. Hunt executive Craig Harper had the attention of the state's transportation industry earlier this year, telling members of the Arkansas Trucking Association that he needed help spreading an important message to shipping companies.

"You've got to get the driver in and out of the facility," Harper, the former chairman of the association's board, said at the annual business meeting. "With hours of service, the driver can no longer make up for all the waste in the supply chain."

J.B. Hunt has distributed that message to a broader audience, publishing a white paper titled "660 Minutes: How Improving Driver Efficiency Increases Capacity." The 10-page document outlines the effect of federal hours of service rules on available driving time and what it means for businesses like J.B. Hunt, which reported $6.2 billion in revenue in 2014.

The Lowell-based company highlighted wasted time for drivers that revolved around the pickup and delivery of freight, identifying areas it believes shippers can help the transportation industry attain more value from the 660 minutes of driving time permitted per day. According to the white paper, those companies must start thinking about a driver's time as an hourglass because of federal laws.

"Whereas in the past a driver could, much like a stopwatch, start or stop his or her clock depending on the activity, a driver today cannot log time waiting at a shipper location or making a delivery as 'off time,'" the white paper states. "Once a driver begins his or her safety check at the start of the workday, the clock is running down without pause."

The white paper cited a study by BB&T Capital Markets, which found drivers spend an average of 390 of their 660 minutes of driving time behind the wheel. J.B. Hunt also presented its own "favorable day" scenario in the document with a driver behind the wheel for 535 minutes during a driving shift.

The day still included two hours of available time that could have been spent driving but were forfeited. Contributing factors included excess time spent waiting for freight to be loaded or unloaded, inflexible pickup and delivery times, and inconsistencies in loads and lanes.

J.B. Hunt estimated that waste equaled 100 lost miles each day, 25,000 a year or 36 unavailable loads per driver per year. If a fleet consisted of 100 drivers, that would equal 3,600 unavailable loads. It's a "huge amount of capacity that is no longer available to the marketplace," according to the white paper.

Identifying collaborative solutions to the issue was the topic of a day-long session at the University of Arkansas Walton College of Business earlier this year.

Shelley Simpson -- J.B. Hunt's chief marketing officer, executive vice president, and president of integrated capacity solutions and the trucking division -- said during the event that the company wanted customers to gain a better understanding of where they could make changes to help open up capacity.

Expediting the loading and unloading times was one example highlighted in J.B. Hunt's white paper. So was providing on-site driver accommodations, which could trim the time needed to locate a parking spot at the end of a shift. More flexible pickup and delivery times were key as well, which experts agreed could go a long way in helping to ease the capacity shortage in the industry.

"We as shippers have to open up our distribution operations seven days a week," Wayne E. Skinner, senior vice president of customer logistics services at Kellogg Company, said during the conference. "We have to do it or we're going to get stuck. It's all about time with these drivers."

Improvements could lead to more than a 33 percent increase in productivity per truck per year, according to the white paper. Tracy Rosser, Wal-Mart's senior vice president for transportation, believes it also would create a driver-friendly environment and improve relationships with carriers.

Wal-Mart has a private fleet of 7,500 drivers but also contracts with carriers to move freight.

"If you have a driver-friendly environment, you're more likely to get a truck and driver to move freight," Rosser said. "That will help."

J.B. Hunt emphasized that point in the white paper, outlining ways for customers to become a "shipper of choice" for transportation companies. Characteristics include providing consistent freight, maintaining a flexible delivery window, creating positive conditions for drivers and working with the carrier to generate a more efficient network.

The American Trucking Associations warns that the current driver shortage could reach 240,000 by 2022.

"We have a market that is declining internally because of the driver shortage," Butch Rice, chief executive officer of Stallion Transportation Group in Beebe and chairman of the Arkansas Trucking Association board, said during the association's business conference. "Customers better have partnerships developed with their carriers. When their product doesn't move, that's a problem."

The white paper is one of five J.B. Hunt has posted on its corporate website since 2011. Others have been published on a leaner supply chain, natural gas and private fleet conversion. Last year, a white paper on industry challenges warned shippers of a looming rate increase.

J.B. Hunt mentioned the potential for more at the end of its latest white paper, saying a "wave of regulations likely to hit 2015 through 2018 will prompt serious capacity concerns and rising cost pressures." But J.B. Hunt also believes its shippers can create strategic partnerships with carriers by "treating driver hours as a perishable commodity on a running clock."

"If you can drive the waste out, we all win," Harper said this spring. "The driver gets more miles, makes more money, more freight gets moved. That's how we all win."

Information for this article was contributed by Chris Bahn of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

SundayMonday Business on 07/06/2015

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