Weekly Driver Recruiting Report – June 15, 2022

The Weekly Report brings you updated data on recruiting metrics including click, search, and spot rates, plus a new story of the week. This week’s story – California’s new AB 5 law would effectively ban the traditional owner-operator model in the state.

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Numbers at a Glance

June 15, 2022 Driver Recruiting Insights

Would you like to have your own copy of the trucking industry data? All of the information covered in this week’s report for June 15, 2022, is available for your convenience in PDF form below. Click the image to view and download your copy of the Weekly Trucking Insight.

Weekly Report Transcript – June 15, 2022

Hello everyone and welcome to the Weekly Report. For Randall Reilly, I’m Joshua Miller. Before we dive in, if you like our reports, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe so you never miss out on any of our new driver recruiting content.

Now let’s get to this week’s report.

THIS WEEK IN BOARD SEARCHES AND CLICKS

Truck driver searches up 3% WoW, but declined by 9% MoM, and 1% YoY. Clicks were up across the board with gains of 14% WoW, 8% MoM, and 19% YoY.

THIS WEEK IN FREIGHT

Total load postings were up 12% WoW, with all three major segments seeing gains. Dry van postings were up 7%, as was refrigerated, and flatbed shot up by 15% WoW.

Loads were up in all regions, but there was particular strength in the South Central and West Coast regions.

Truck availability rose by 21% WoW as the overall-load-to-truck ratio fell to its lowest level since November of 2020.

Quick note – this latest data reflects a Truckstop.com revision of the truck availability metric back to week 8 of this year. The new measure better represents available capacity. On average, the revision increased the load-to-truck measurement by nearly 22 points since the new measurement of truck availability is lower than the previously reported data.

Spot rates remained flat WoW, but rates for all three segments saw declines. Dry van fell by 6 ½¢, refrigerated was down 3¢, and flatbed dipped by 1¢ per mile WoW.

The total spot rate is just under the record high, however, the rate excluding fuel is still a full 35¢ below the record.

The reason for the overall spot rate remaining flat while each segment saw declines, is that the volume gains in flatbed outpaced the van segments, which are currently seeing far lower rates.

Moving ahead we’re going to be keeping a sharp eye out in the coming weeks as traditionally the next three weeks are among the year’s strongest when it comes to van rates.

But, with supply chain disruptions still confounding seasonal expectations, it has become increasingly difficult to predict the rate certainty for the rest of June.

STORY OF THE WEEK

The California Trucking Association says the Solicitor General’s argument, regarding AB 5 is … just plain wrong.

California’s aforementioned AB 5 law would effectively ban the traditional leased owner-operator model in the state of California. The Solicitor General claimed that AB 5’s requirements are easily avoided and may actually have no impact on carriers or owner-operators at all.

Something which, the California Trucking Association or CTA, calls “head-scratchingly wrong.”

The CTA argue that AB 5’s requirements would not be easily avoided and would have a large impact on both carriers and owner-operators.

And as it turns out, the prospect of AB 5 taking effect is already causing some carriers to limit or outright abandon their operations in California.  If it goes into full effect, the law would require carriers to hire owner-operators as part-time employee drivers and require them to supply their owner trucks, which would cause many problems.

The CTA argues that many owner-ops would not respond to AB 5 by becoming employees, and expect that many would simply retire, or leave the state to work elsewhere, or possibly seek opportunities in other industries.

They feel that many of the drivers who become owner-ops do so specifically because they highly value their independence and flexibility. AB 5 would at the very least diminish this.

Even if the owner-operators were willing to become employees, the CTA says that California’s complicated wage-and-hour requirements would make the current government proposal unworkable.

Classifying these drivers as part-time employees in California would also complicate matters elsewhere as those operators would still be classified as independent contractors in the other states.

These two different classifications would cause complications and headaches for carriers as they move freight into or out of the state of California. That does it for the Weekly Report. Thanks so much for joining us, we hope that the information has been useful and informative to you. As always there is an available PDF download in the description on YouTube and in the body of the page on our Randall Reilly site.

We look forward to you joining us again next week as we take another look back to help you move forward. Until then, have a great week everybody.