When Keith Wade, operations director at Dodge City Petro, held a driver appreciation day this year, he had hundreds of hot dogs to giveaway for lunch and two bands drivers could sit and enjoy. Unfortunately, drivers were in too much of a rush to stop.
"They were here and they’d honk their horns, but it was 1:00 in the afternoon and we had 1,200 trucks just waving at us,” Wade said, adding that the event proved how valuable drivers’ daytime hours have become. “Now if you have a customer appreciation day, you have to do it at night.”
FACTORS INFLUENCING DRIVER STOPS
How often, when and where drivers stop is driven by a number of factors, but one of the most important is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service regulation. The agency issued new rules in July 2013, which have resulted in more daytime driving for the trucking industry as well as more driving on weekdays rather than weekends, the American Transportation Research Institute reported in its study Quantifying Impacts from the 34- Hour Restart Provisions...