I missed this year’s Ontario Trucking Association conference, as I was traipsing about Mexico with Volvo and gaining a better understanding of the industry way down south. But we had the event covered. Assistant editor Daniela Piteo was on-hand, as was Jason Rhyno, our newest contributor. From Jason’s report, which is on the cover of the January issue of Truck News, comes this insight from John Larkin, managing director, Stifel Associates, who spoke on the OTA’s popular Economic Outlook panel. John spoke of shipper-carrier collaboration, and its importance in an era where there’s little opportunity to squeeze out more costs. Go ahead, John, via Jason…

“We can’t really rely on longer trailers – rely on wider or taller trailers or longer combination vehicles – we’re not going to have more hours-of-service to work with, everything is pushing in the direction of less productivity. The real field of opportunity is shipper and carrier working together, and in some cases carrier and carrier working together, to turn equipment quickly.”

The industry can’t afford to have equipment tied up at loading docks for four or five hours, he said. “We have to figure out how to do that more efficiently. If it takes opening the loading dock off-hours, maybe we’ll have to try and figure out how to do that and split the benefits of doing so.”

“This really is the land of opportunity and it’s time for shippers to stop beating the carriers over the head on price and start working with their highest quality carriers to find a way to do things more efficiently and to split the benefits between the shipper and the carrier. That’s really, it seems to me, the enlightened way to do things in this environment.”