I’m going to wade into meslippery’s favourite subject for a moment; paying drivers by the hour. Just how realistic is this? I was surprised to see Lou Smyrlis tweet the following during a speech by Kriska Transport’s Mark Seymour at the recent TransCore User Conference: ‘Paying by the mile is going to have to change: Seymour.’

That’s a pretty bold statement from a fleet executive, especially one as esteemed as Seymour, who currently also serves as chair of the Ontario Trucking Association. I wonder if that remark will bring some heat from his co-horts at OTA?

At any rate, it needed to be said. Driver pay isn’t sufficient and it’s encouraging that the industry’s top executives acknowledge that. Seymour isn’t the first to do so. At last year’s OTA convention, a panel of trucking executives was equally candid about the subject. Moderator David Bradley posed the question: “Drivers have been paid on a productivity basis for most of the industry's history. Now with GPS and possibly EOBRs, you really can get a handle in terms of the driver's performance. Is it time to pay drivers by the hour?”

To which Vaughn Sturgeon of Warren Transport (now Atlantica Diversified Transportation Systems) said: “If you think the driving force is going to continue on without demanding changes, you are fooling yourselves. Canada is approaching 70% of its population in the current workforce. We have a demographic tsunami heading our way. We are going to need to attract new people who are not used to our pay practices. They are just not going to put up with it.”

And then Bruno Muller of Caron Transportation added: “The whole discussion in this industry is how much more can we squeeze out of the driver? We are in for a crash down the road. If you are totally honest and account for what the driver gets paid for the total amount of hours he puts in, the guy is basically working for minimum wage most of the time. I don't think there is any way to soften this. I believe drivers are underpaid not 5% or 10%, I think drastic numbers. And that carries through to the owner/operators. When the economy picks up, we haven't got a chance of competing with other industries. And there will never come a day when we have a computer driving a truck. Take it to heart; we have a problem: Our people don't get paid enough and it's going to hurt us big time down the road.”

Those are some profound admissions from industry leaders. When speaking with our recently crowned Owner/Operator of the Year, Howard Brouwer, he said driver pay is the number one issue facing the industry. And while he tracks his costs meticulously and runs a smart operation, he would welcome the switch to hourly pay.

“It would take a lot of stress off you,” Brouwer said of hourly pay. “The biggest thing right now, with the hours-of-service, is the stress of running the miles in that 14-hour day, especially when you get sitting at a customer’s. The stress level goes sky high. If I sit, I get bored. When I get bored, I get tired. So now you have a bored, tired truck driver on the road. With hourly pay, you can be relaxed and do the job properly because you’re not worried about making up that time.”

This is no secret, but Brouwer says the onus is on carriers to make shippers accountable for detention time. Only then, is hourly pay feasible.

“The trucking industry has to look more at detention time at customers,” he said. “They don’t want to say to customers that ‘You have to pay for our equipment sitting in your driveway,’ but they have to. Customers demand 98% on-time delivery but then you sit in their yard for six hours waiting to get loaded.”

We seem to be at a tipping point. Drivers, for the most part, would welcome the switch to hourly pay. Forward-thinking fleet executives agree change is necessary. But as long as there are fly-by-night operators running with a blatant disregard for the regulations, as is the case today, it will never happen. Fortunately, technology is now allowing for the more effective and efficient enforcement of the rules. Carriers that don’t adhere to the regulations will soon be exposed and squeezed out. CSA 2010, EOBRs, satellite tracking – these are the great enablers for enforcement agencies that should spell the end for non-compliant carriers. Then, and only then, will it be possible to make some progress when it comes to how - and how much - drivers are paid.

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The 25th edition of the Fergus Truck Show came and went over the weekend and already there are rumblings it will be the last. The body’s still breathing folks, so let’s not bury it just yet. It may be premature to be discussing alternative venues in southern Ontario but that’s exactly what many visitors to the show were doing on Saturday and Sunday.

Indeed the show has its challenges. Shrinking crowds and escalating costs are chief among them, exacerbated by a growing reluctance on the part of landowners to rent space needed for camping and parking.

It seems that somewhere along the way, the event morphed from truck show to music festival, yet organizers have heard those complaints and are trying to return the show to its roots.

Many of us were expecting disaster last weekend after the show dropped its full-time staffers and announced it would be run entirely by volunteers. However, things ran smoothly, for us at least, and the volunteers were always ready to help out when called upon. From the moment we checked in, Cassie ensured we had everything we needed and our important Owner/Operator of the Year presentation went off without a hitch.

For that we are thankful. (More on the Owner/Operator of the Year later).

The volunteers worked tirelessly throughout the weekend and at no time did we witness anything resembling chaos or disorder. Well done.

There are always complaints surrounding an event of this magnitude, but most we heard concerned the weather and the dwindling crowds. One ultimately affects the other and it seems Fergus Truck Show organizers just can’t catch a break when it comes to weather. The weather gods were smiling Sunday, however, and you couldn’t have asked for a better day for a truck show.

There were still some breathtaking show trucks on display but the overall truck count was down, way down. The spirit of the show’n’shiners remained strong, however, with countless hours spent primping and polishing their rigs.

For me, truck shows like Fergus are all about the people. Here are a couple stories that stood out from the weekend:

When making the rounds with colleague Adam Ledlow and our video equipment, we ran into Dale Holman, one of the very first Truck News Owner/Operators of the Year. His son Cory was on-site polishing their 94 Freightliner dubbed Generations.

Dale was the first owner of the truck, and he put a million miles on it. His father Floyd then took over and added another million miles. Floyd passed away, and now it’s Cory’s turn to add his million miles to the odometer.

The truck still gets nearly 9 mpg, if you can believe that. On the door you’ll find inscribed the names of three generations of Holmans: Floyd (flanked by angel wings), Dale and Cory. It’s trucking families like that who are the backbone of the industry. Watch for their story on Adam’s Fergus episode of our WebTV show Transportation Matters in the coming weeks.

The other moment that really struck me was when we had a very special visitor to our booth, 10-year-old Jackson Felkar. Jackson is wheelchair-bound and comes from a trucking family, Felkar 5 Trucking out of Dutton, Ont. They haul livestock.

According to his parents, Jackson is an avid fan of Truck News. He gets excited when it arrives in the mail and he even takes it with him to school. Below, you’ll see a picture I took of Jackson at our booth with publisher Rob Wilkins and associate publisher Kathy Penner.

It’s moments like the ones I just mentioned that make going to the truck show worthwhile. If it wasn’t for the show, I wouldn’t have known what ‘Generations’ meant when I passed that white Freightliner on the highway and I wouldn’t have known that the work we do here makes a kid’s day in Dutton, Ont. when the latest issue arrives in his mailbox.

The Fergus Truck Show, and others like it, have their challenges. But let’s not lose sight of the fact these get-togethers are important for a whole bunch of reasons and at the end of the weekend, the memories we take with us hopefully outweigh the inconveniences encountered or the discomfort wrought by an uncooperative Mother Nature.

Jackson Felkar pays us a visit at the Truck News booth at the Fergus Truck Show. His family runs Felkar 5 Trucking hauling livestock out of Dutton, Ont.

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