Pub. 1 2020 Issue 2

Kentucky Trucker 25 KyTrucking.net What do you think will be some of the dominant trends within the trucking industry in the next 5-10 years? Long-haul trucking is a baby boomer business. It was a big thing in the 1980s, but it isn’t attractive now. In January 2020, long-haul trucking passed logging and fishing to become the most dangerous occupation in the U.S. It’s a hard, tough business. That’s why it won’t continue the way it is today. Several large companies have gone bankrupt, and com- panies are buying other companies out. There are not enough drivers, and the driver shortage is not correcting itself. Nobody, especially millennials, wants to be away from home for long periods. Companies like Amazon seem to want to be in the truck- ing industry, and they have the money to do that. But peo- ple don’t want to do long-haul trucking. Long-haul trucking has been going away over the last 20 years, and short-haul trucking has been increasing. Bigger trucks are coming off When I graduated from high school, everyone was trying to get into the trucking business because of deregulation, so I thought that was the right thing to do. Happy Rakestraw hired me to work in an old barn on some old trucks. I was supposed to be part-time, but I worked 90 hours the first week. I told Happy not to make me a fulltime employee. the road, and parcel trucking will continue to take its place. Somewhere in my lifetime, long-haul trucking will be replaced by driverless trucks. But there will always be the need for employees (as passengers) in these trucks. What is the biggest impact of being a KTA mem- ber? What makes it beneficial? There is always power in numbers, and the KTA has lots of shared knowledge. It’s a help that way. Start- ing a trucking company is a difficult thing to do. The people at the KTA answered many questions. If you look back at your professional life, what would be three things that you have learned that you would pass onto a younger member looking at the trucking industry as a career? 1. You have to be committed to your work. Truck- ing is not a 9-5 job; instead, it’s more like 24/7. 2. You have to treat your drivers like part of the family. Know them, treat them well, and know their families. We don’t have a lot of turnover because we are good to our drivers. 3. Trucking is a life choice. You have to love what you do to be in this business. It’s not a clock-in clock-out business. It’s a large industry, but it’s a small community. I know most of the people in it because of the work I’ve done for the last 40 years. I have always been in the short-haul business, and that is the business we have today. If you limit dis- tances to 500 miles, you have a smaller footprint and you can get drivers home on weekends. Our area is from the Midwest into the southeast. Larger carriers expect drivers to be away from home for 14-17 days because they are out for the buck. It’s crazy, which is why those days are over. Their turn- over is 120% because drivers want to be home every night. That’s not possible, but the weekends are. What are some professional moments that make you the proudest? My proudest moment was becoming the owner of Hidden Creek. I worked hard to get here. Now I am the president of Hidden Creek, and I get to make the decisions. I no longer answer to a board of directors.