Ep. #31: Rebecca Brewster, President of American Transportation Research Institute

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We look forward to working with you To our listeners . That's it . Let's get the show on the road . Okay , welcome back . We are back with another episode of the Freight Pod . I'm your host , andrew Silver .

I am joined today by an awesome guest , ms Rebecca Brewster , the president and COO of the American Transportation Research Institute , and we are going to be talking today about a lot of cool things , a lot of things that are going on in the industry , things that Rebecca and her team have been focused on researching and informing and educating the masses about .

Welcome to the show . How are you doing , rebecca ?

So for context for our listeners , I went to Werner's annual conference a few weeks ago , and one of the things that I was most struck by was listening to Rebecca on stage talk about all the things her team has been focused on , and it was just some very I should say insightful things , things that I hadn't really thought about myself , and I think that our

audience would appreciate . So , before we get into the research , though , let's start with your journey . How did you ? I always like asking how people found their way into transportation , absolutely .

And they sent people on temporary assignments , and so one of my very first assignments was to Moen , the faucet manufacturer . They have their own private fleet , and so I was sent to Moen to do a number of things , including audit driver logs . So that's one of the things I started doing in the industry .

But they were also at that time were installing the very first trip recorders that were used in the trucking industry , so they basically monitored miles per gallon , hard brakes and speed , and that was it , and so they were looking for somebody who was smart enough to be able to take that data and do analyses with it and work with the drivers to improve those

metrics for the fleet . And so , with zero experience in the trucking industry , I quickly learned about hours of service compliance and I quickly learned about you know how do we use data to improve a fleet's operation . So fast forward from there . I spent about four , four and a half years with Moen .

Then I , through some circumstances , moved to a different town where I got a job with a local chamber of commerce where I was doing government , public and governmental affairs work . And so fast forward , another five years .

I moved to , or I was visiting a friend in Atlanta actually and that's still back in the day when jobs were in the newspaper that's how you found jobs , and now I really am dating myself .

I mean , I was that cocky , I guess , as a young person , to think I'm the only person in the world who could do this . So I applied and , as luck would have it , I got the position and so I started in January of 93 with what was then the . ATA Foundation Started in Atlanta .

The ATA Foundation had a very big staff at the ATA headquarters and then they had these regional offices and I was hired for the Atlanta regional office . I mean they were one-person offices , not big like it sounds . But our primary focus back then was really to key in on research needs of the state trucking associations .

So I worked with a number of state trucking associations in the Southeast on any sort of data analysis needs they might have .

Fast forward to the late 90s , we got a new chairman of our organization and he felt that we really needed to revisit how we figured out what research we do , how do we understand what the trucking industry's research needs are , and so we underwent a whole reorganization process and ATRI , the American Transportation Research Institute , is the result of those

deliberations . A couple key differences between us and our predecessor is the result of those deliberations . A couple of key differences between us and our predecessor , but the key one is that we use an external body .

We call it our Research Advisory Committee and the men and women who are on our Research Advisory Committee are charged with annually figuring out what are the trucking industry's top research needs , when are their knowledge gaps in the industry to which ATRA can bring its expertise to bear . So that reorg occurred in 2001 .

Another key feature of it was we created a separate organization , set ourselves separate from ATA , because ATA focuses on advocacy and lobbying . We don't do that . We are a 501c3 . We only do research and education . So whole separate governance . We have our own board of directors , we have this research advisory committee . That all occurred in 2001 .

And then in 2002 , the ATRI board of directors named me president and I've been president ever since and I've been president ever since .

As a 501c3 , that's an IRS designation we're the same as the United Way , so we take charitable contributions to fulfill our mission , and our mission is to provide the research that improves the industry . So that's all we do . We don't go to Capitol Hill , we don't go to state legislators . We don't lobby .

We put our research out there for anyone to use , and so one of the hallmarks of ATRI is we don't charge anyone for our research . We put it on our website . Anybody who has an interest can download our entire portfolio .

So people who do advocate whether it's individuals or trucking organizations like the state trucking associations or the national organizations they can use and do use our findings when they lobby on behalf of the industry . It's just that ATRI does not ourselves lobby .

Then we've got another three folks who are based in Minneapolis and then we've got one team member who works out of her home in State College Pennsylvania . She used to be in New York Pennsylvania . She used to be in New York City . So we used to be able to say we had a New York City branch , but now we have a State College Pennsylvania branch .

And then we have one team member who works out of his home in Sacramento . So we've got Atlanta , minneapolis , sacramento and State College Pennsylvania .

If I said , hey , I really want to know the impact of marijuana on this industry , which I know is a topic you guys have focused on , and I'm like I'm going to give a million dollars to you but I want it spent on this . Is that how that works , or not ?

So when someone makes a charitable contribution to ATRI it goes to our general research fund . Then it's the research advisory committee . That group that I said really sets us apart . That's the group who figures out what research to do . And so every year our RAC members and there are 35 members of the RAC get together .

They review a series of typically 30 , sometimes 35 research proposals that have been developed by our staff in concert with RAC members . Rac members have ideas . The general public submits research ideas to us through our website .

We're obviously very active research stakeholders so we know what's going on in the industry , so we might have some ideas on research proposals . But at the end of the day it's the RAC members who get together every March .

They discuss the merits of each of those proposals for fulfilling a need in the industry and then they vote , and the top vote-getting topics typically five are what we then work on over the course of the next year . And so what's so compelling about that research advisory committee is the diversity of its makeup .

So we have trucking fleets represented big fleets , small fleets and in those fleet representatives we have company presidents , we have safety directors , risk managers , fleet maintenance personnel , and then we have professional truck drivers represented . We have both someone from OIDA and we have one of ATA's America's Road Team captains , so two truck driver representatives .

We have a law enforcement officer who does motor carrier enforcement . We have a federal government representative Right now it's someone from the Department of Commerce we have a State Department of Transportation representative . We have industry suppliers , so like truck stop operators , insurance carriers and a defense attorney in the industry .

So again it's a very diverse group of trucking industry stakeholders who each bring their unique perspectives to identifying topics and then , within those topics , which ones are the most important . So everything you see on our website , all the studies that are published , were identified by a research advisory committee .

They served two years their terms are two years by members of the RAC . That year identified that as a priority topic . So the electrification stuff we're going to talk about , rac said that's important . The marijuana studies we've done RAC said that's important . Our annual bottleneck analysis that we do , listing the top 100 truck bottlenecks One year .

The RAC members said we really need to use ATRI's expertise to figure out where congestion is the worst for the trucking industry . That became an annual . We have a number of studies we do that have become annual , but they all share one common genesis point and that's they were identified as a priority by the Research Advisory Committee .

So I , I guess I I have a real appreciation for , I guess , as you said , the genesis for the researcher doing and that it does have seemingly the industry's interests at mind in that process .

. Because rarely in our industry do you get the opportunity to pull together this many different perspectives on the trucking industry to really understand and I mean it is kind of a deep dive on all these issues that they talk about before they ultimately vote . And one of my favorite examples is right after Trump was elected .

Initially there was talk of getting rid of the North American Free Trade Agreement , nafta , and so there were carriers who had a lot of cross-border business who were concerned about what that would mean , et cetera , et cetera .

So in the room talking about ATRI needs to do a study on this , and then our state DOT person at that time is the freight director from the Texas DOT and she spoke up and she said look , I needed this kind of study five years ago .

She said I'm being asked to make investment decisions now on major corridors and she basically said I'm not sure Atra could get this study done fast enough to address what I , from a state DOT perspective , need to understand .

So I mean it's just that those differing perspectives on these issues that are so impactful for the industry that really make this process rich and make it credible .

And I'm just curious if you feel like the government can create more challenges or is more helpful in terms of the work you all are doing , because do you feel like they get this level of research historically before they're making a lot of the decisions that impact the industry ?

I mean , you know we do a lot of work as well as part of our research portfolio , we do contract work for government agencies both at the federal and state level , contract work for government agencies both at the federal and state level , and so you know a lot of , for instance , on the issue of truck parking , which ATRI's research has identified is a big issue

. Drivers know it's a big . I mean , everyone knows it's a big issue .

But I will give credit to the state DOTs that we've done work for , who recognize this is an issue , who look to ATRI because we not only understand the issue but we have access to a data set of truck GPS data that allows us to show states they know where their rest areas are filling up , but what they don't have empirical data .

That we do is where are trucks parking , where we need more capacity , where it's not carved out already truck parking space , but where there is a clear need for additional capacity .

I mean , if you could get data from every trucking company on a top let's say we're talking about truck parking and you know the more trucking companies who you have access to , their data or their perspectives , I think , the better or more informed your research is going to be . Can you talk to me a little bit about ?

Can you talk to me a little bit about the research process and what advantages , disadvantages you think you have today , and maybe even where you could use more support ?

So when we started that study , the RAC said so many decisions on the public sector side about roadway investment , about tolling you name it are made using modeled costs for what it costs to operate a truck . There's no real world data out there that the public sector can rely on .

So , for instance , we saw estimates in government studies of everywhere from like $14 an hour to operate a truck to upwards of over $300 an hour to operate a truck , and neither of those is a good number .

We had a data collection form fairly detailed , but we were able to take the data , aggregate it and analyze it and come up with an average cost per mile to operate a truck and an average cost per hour . So , for the first time in 2008 , it was based on real world data .

Every year that study and it was so popular and so widely used by trucking fleets as a benchmarking tool that every year we got more people to be involved in it . And this year we just published our 2024 report and it's using 2023 data .

We had the highest number of carriers ever in that study and , as I always say when I'm going around the country , in the world of research , more is better . So the more carriers we have give data , the richer our data set is , the more useful it is for the industry .

So we have in this most recently published report , one truck operators , lots of one and two less than five truck operators , and we have thousand plus truck operators , and so we're able to , in the data set and in the full report .

Break out fuel costs by fleet size , liability insurance , premium cost per mile or hour , because we do both repair and maintenance Every single cost item that we collect in our report because we have so many fleets participating . Now we can break it out by sector .

So in the truckload sector you have this , whereas in LTL you have this , whereas in specialized you have this , and then again by fleet size . And two years ago I think , because we now have so many carriers participating , we offer a special incentive for any fleet that gives us data .

So if you fill out our annual data collection form , which we launch in the spring , you not only get an early copy of the full report and the full report's available on our website now for anybody but we send you a customized report . So we plot out your costs for each of those line items compared to an anonymized group of peer carriers .

So if I'm a tank operator with 25 or fewer trucks , my costs are plotted out against the same sector and size of fleet , which is an invaluable benchmarking tool , and you get it for free just by participating in our research .

They don't do a ton of research , they just say I'm going to go buy a truck . They buy a truck and then the market starts to tank and they're in trouble , or vice versa , where they're turning in their equipment and then the market's turning the other direction . I just think what you're talking about is giving people a very clear playbook on .

These are the costs of trucking . This is what it's going to cost to operate a vehicle , if you choose to do this , and then if people can use that and get some understanding of what their revenue stream might look like , they can make a way more informed decision to come in or not .

And so this latest ops cost report anybody can go download it and compare , benchmark your own costs based on your size and sector , versus the aggregated data set which we present in that full report .

And I think to be able to look at every line item , from insurance to fuel to parking , whatever it may be , and see , hey , I'm paying an extra 10 cents or an extra buck here or there on this specific thing . You can go right to your vendor and say , why am I way above my peer group ? So that's really fascinating , peer group , so that's really fascinating .

From there , let's talk a little bit more about the research process . It sounds like one way that you all do your research is kind of sending out these data forms . But how do you ? Can you talk a little bit more about the research process and what that looks like for your team ?

So probably one of our best known ones every year is what we call our top industry issues survey and that we launch In fact , I'm getting that one ready to launch at the end of this month . Anyone in the industry can do it .

You're presented with a list of I think on this year's survey there's 28 issues critical things in the industry electrification , hours of service rules , fuel prices , the economy , driver shortage , driver retention , driver health and wellness . You pick your top three and people always say I can't just limit it to three .

But this survey forces you to focus in on your top three and then , for each of those three issues that you identify , you're presented with some potential strategies that you think the industry should do to address that issue and you're asked to rank those strategies .

And the beauty of the survey is and so then at the end we aggregate , analyze the data and come up with a top 10 for the industry and then , if you download the full report , you'll see the top 10 overall . And then we break it out how do professional truck drivers rank the issues versus ? How do motor carrier personnel rank the issues ?

Professional truck drivers rank the issues versus how to motor carrier personnel rank the issues . We even had enough participation in this last year's survey from law enforcement to say here are the top three issues as ranked by law enforcement personnel Among drivers . We even break out here's how owner-operators rank the issues versus .

Here's how company drivers rank the issues , because even among the driver population there are different priorities there . As you might expect , fuel prices is high on the owner-operator side because they're feeling that pain at the pump whereas it doesn't show up on the company driver side . The top three issues .

But on both sides of the driver equation the lack of available truck parking is an issue . So again , sometimes it's a survey , sometimes it's a more detailed data collection form , like the operational cost of trucking , and then other times we access publicly available data sets .

So a lot of the work that we've done on what it would cost the industry and the country to electrify . If tomorrow we flipped a switch and every vehicle were battery electric , what does that look like ? We relied on federal data sets for that Data out of the Department of Energy , other data sets that talk about the grid sufficiency .

So we access stuff that anyone could access . And one of the things I'm very proud of that we do in our reports we're very transparent . We'll tell you where the data comes from and we will explain our methodology .

There's not a single Atri report out there that doesn't have a section entitled methodology , so we're very upfront about where we source the data and how we do the analysis .

But we also have a lot of folks who just make a one-time contribution . They download a study . They say , wow , this was so helpful to my business . Here's 50 , $100 . And so you know we get annual contributions . We wish everybody would commit to an annual . That would make my life a whole lot easier .

But that doesn't dismiss the fact that a lot of these one-time contributions come in and they're very helpful for us . So , and again , we've made it real easy for folks to give on our website you can make a credit card contribution to ATRI and we appreciate contributions of all sizes .

But when we hear our studies cited on Capitol Hill at a congressional hearing by members of Congress , I mean it's one thing if it's a trucking industry witness who you would hope and expect to be familiar with our research .

But when a member of Congress says according to this study from Hatchery and then we see the end result of that is some change for the good in terms of legislation for the industry , I mean if we could get more of those hits . And again , as we started this conversation , we don't lobby .

You're not going to see us on Capitol Hill saying you need to change X rule , but we put our data out there because we want to inform people , to make decisions with data rather than emotion .

You had to wait two more overnight periods if you were going to utilize the 34-hour restart . It was a nightmare . I mean really it was not good for the industry . And we had more drivers in our driver data collection saying these rules are making me more tired , I'm away from home more because I've missed that one overnight period .

And then on the flip side , the other side of that is , if you are having drivers to get used to the 34 hour , having to be stopped in their berth at 5 am and now they can get on the road , guess what happens ? They're getting right on the road when the worst car traffic congestion is just getting started .

So we were putting drivers so with our GPS data and other data sets we were showing that you are now forcing truck drivers into the traffic stream at the worst time for them because of that increased exposure to car drivers .

So a whole host of problems with it , from making drivers more stressed , more fatigued , to exacerbating the truck parking issue , to increasing truck drivers' risk of an incident because you were putting them into the traffic stream with everybody else . All that research made its way into several AFRI reports and ultimately that rule was changed .

Just one other example of sort of how we're making a difference and you know , one of those pride points for me I mentioned earlier our list of the top truck bottlenecks and you know , sometimes this is when it's good to be , as we like to say , internally a gadfly , where you just keep harping on a topic .

And so every year we publish this list of the worst truck bottlenecks and it's not survey data . It's not truck drivers saying I hate this location because of the traffic congestion , I hate this location . It generates from truck GPS data . We have this large data set of GPS data that comes into us , truck GPS data .

We have this large data set of GPS data that comes into us and we use that to measure traffic congestion at over 300 locations around the US , and so we take a full calendar year of GPS data .

We look at how slowly trucks are operating and how many trucks are impacted , so speed and volume go into a calculation to come up with the 100 worst places to operate a truck

. When we first started doing this analysis a number of years ago , there was a location in Chicago . It used to be called the Circle Interchange . Now it's called the Burn Interchange . It was the number one truck bottleneck in the country for three years in a row . We keep publishing the list .

Well , in true Chicago fashion , took longer than it should , went way over budget , cost a whole lot more , went way over budget , cost a whole lot more . But we hit a high point this year because this year on the 2024 list is the first time that the burn interchange is not in the top 10 . I mean , while it's under construction .

I mean that speaks to , I think , years or decades of hard work that your team has put in establishing trust and rapport with the industry itself and the regulators or government that manages . So kudos to the team . That's very cool .

And there is a belief in the industry , and certainly on the part of our research advisory committee , that if you didn't have the federal excise tax attached to the cost of a new truck , people would more likely purchase new trucks which are going to have more safety features on them and certainly are going to have newer engines and the latest emission controls on

them , so that we could do a lot to clean up the environment just by encouraging people to buy newer equipment and so . But there's no question that that 12% is a big part of the highway trust fund . It's not the biggest part of the highway trust fund that's the fuel tax , but it is a piece of the highway trust fund .

That's the fuel tax , but it is a piece of the highway trust fund . And so if you eliminate the federal excise tax there is certainly a hit to the federal highway trust fund . So one of these studies is to do an analysis to look at . You know what does that mean ?

You know , does it make enough of an impact in terms of improving emissions by putting newer equipment on the road to offset that loss to the highway trust fund ? So that's one of them and this is how I think shows sort of the diversity of input of our RAC members .

We have another one that's going to update research we published in 2020 that looks at the impact of nuclear verdicts on the trucking industry . So anything over as we defined it in our initial study in 2020 , anything over $10 million we called a nuclear verdict .

Now , the fact of the matter is , if you're a small operator and you get handed down a verdict of $500,000 against your trucking fleet , that's a nuclear verdict . I mean , it's a big deal .

But for purposes of this research , we define nuclear as over 10 , although , quite frankly , our research the published report in 2020 , talked about anything a million and over , and then we followed that research up with one on small verdicts and settlements . So anything under a million .

So we have data and reports out there looking at the impact of both the small ones and the big ones on the trucking industry .

Well , that 2020 report gets cited so much , gets used so much , particularly at the state level , to start to get some tort reform legislation in place , things looking at like phantom damages and seatbelt gag rules and a whole host of things that are used in cases against trucking fleets that drive those verdicts up .

So , and the last year of data in our currently published report was 2019 , and now we're in 2014 . So we're going to update our RAC has said let's update that with the latest case data . Also , now that we have seen some states put forth and successfully pass lawsuit abuse reform legislation , has that made a difference ?

And so we're starting the data collection to build out that data set to build on our initial , initial one , so that we can see what's happening in the world of nuclear verdicts .

And then it's like what do we care more about ? And I understand I guess what you're suggesting is your team will do all the research . Do you then , at the end of that study , make a suggestion ? Is there a ? We think this makes more sense . I know you don't lobby , but I'm just curious at the end of that research , what is kind of the summary ?

You know it's a benchmarking tool , you can use it . So that's not one where we say , you know , go invest in new equipment or go find a new insurance carrier that's for a fleet to determine equipment or go find a new insurance carrier that's for a fleet to determine .

But , for instance , we've done several studies looking at how we fund the highway transportation system , and so there are states , and even at the federal level , where they're looking at a mileage based user fee .

Some people call it a roadway user charge , a ruck tax , a vehicle miles travel tax , and we looked at what the cost would be to the industry and to the country if we substituted the fuel tax for a VMT Very , very costly .

A whole lot has to go into the infrastructure to build out that system before you even start to collect the first dime for the roadway from that tax . But one of the things that people raise all the time in conjunction with this is well , everybody's moving to electric cars and so they're not paying the gas tax anymore , so they're getting a free ride .

So we then did subsequent research to look at how you could institute and put in place a tax on electricity , on kilowatt hours used to charge vehicles . That would start to capture some of that lost revenue from the gas tax . So we don't think it's enough to just say it's a problem , and here's what the problem looks like .

We do put forth data-based recommendations in many of these studies .

There have been a few cases recently against large trucking companies that frankly seem almost asinine that the carrier is being held responsible , where someone might drive across the median or multiple lanes and hit the driver and the truck company is somehow held responsible . No-transcript .

When you have X number of verdicts of this amount against trucking fleets , that ultimately closes them down , at the end of the day , you , consumer , are going to pay more for every single thing , because that's a very hard . There's such a disconnect for the average individual who doesn't think about the cost of transportation .

Even nuclear verdicts aside , they don't think about the cost of transportation when it comes to what they see on the show . They don't understand that . So that research would be very challenging to do . But what we can do is highlight and we did this very well in the 2020 research some of the things that are behind this growth in verdicts .

For instance , third-party litigation financing .

People don't even know this is going on , but they're essentially outside investors who are putting up upfront capital for plaintiff's attorneys to fund a case so they can bring in expert witnesses , do focus groups , whatever it takes to win that case , hedging their bets that they will get a payoff if the verdict goes in the plaintiff's favor , and so they're basically

putting up the upfront funding to build out a case on the promise of a certain percentage in the final take .

Now again , we have seen states Montana actually pass legislation that says , if you have third party litigation financing , that says , if you have third-party litigation financing , you have to disclose that to the jurors so that people know on the jury .

part of defense attorneys in the industry . But you're seeing others too who are just starting to , I believe , connect the dots between these tremendous verdicts where , like you said , in many cases there's nothing the professional truck driver or the trucking fleet could have done to prevent that crash .

My problem is really with some of these recent cases where it's abundantly clear that the carrier did nothing wrong and could not have prevented it and the issue came from the other side , and yet , because the money list sits with the carrier , they get , they end up with the short end of the stick and it's just wrong .

So I guess a question I would ask you know , part of your job is to effectively articulate these challenges and the results of your research to the masses , and I guess part of mine now with this podcast , is to help do the same .

So is there anything that the industry could be doing , knowing that there are carriers , brokers , shippers here listening , decision makers within those companies listening here listening , decision makers within those companies listening is there anything we can be doing to , I don't know , help ?

I don't want to say support or like put an end to this type of stuff or I don't know . Do you understand , kind of what I'm getting at ? No , I do ?

And so if you're not involved with your state trucking association , get involved with your state trucking association , because they are on the front lines pushing legislation in oftentimes in very challenging states where you know the plaintiff's bar has a lot of its members elected to the state Senate or state house , and so it's challenging because obviously they're going

to protect their business model .

On the fleet side , a certain percentage of your trucks have to be zero emission by a certain date , and so it's the very aggressive timelines associated with these things that really have the industry concerned . The industry wants to do what's right and clean up its emissions , which it has already done a tremendous job of .

But it's these aggressive timelines and California is not alone . The Biden administration very aggressive in this space , and a number of states have adopted the CARB California Air Resources Board , the California model for their states as well . So it's a challenge . So , as such , our research advisory committee said we need to really understand this issue .

So we've published now four different studies on this topic . The first one looked at again using federal data from the Department of Energy what are the emission reduction impacts you can get compared to a traditional diesel truck class A internal combustion engine ? What do you get from battery electric ? What do you get from fuel cell electric .

What do you get from other approaches ? And what we found is a battery electric class A truck .

If you look at the full life cycle emissions so that's all the emissions generated from mining the materials to make the batteries , to the emissions generated from making electricity to power those vehicles , to the emissions generated in disposing of that vehicle Full life cycle emissions you get only about a 30% reduction in emissions with a battery electric truck .

And yet when you look at the price comparison you know you're looking at $180,000 for a traditional Class 8 internal combustion engine truck versus almost $500,000 for a battery electric Class 8 vehicle . So that was study number one , sort of what are the emission impacts study time out before you go on to the other studies .

What we found is , again using federal data , publicly available data that if we flip the switch , every single vehicle in America was battery electric tomorrow . It would take just over 40% of our current electricity generation to power all those vehicles . And then I know , and then know , and then that seems practical it gets crazy .

Um , depending on what state you're in and that state's electricity generation and the number of vehicles in that state , that percentage is up or down .

In california , which is the state leading this way leading the way it's 57 percent of california's current electricity generation would be required to power every single vehicle in California if they were battery electric and that's California where they have rolling brownouts all the time to conserve electricity .

You cannot tell the supply chain don't charge your vehicles , sit still for a little bit because we want to run our air conditioner . You just can't do it . You know the supply chain can't shut down because the electricity isn't there to power the vehicles .

Then there's the whole issue of where you're going to source the materials to build these vehicles and if you follow the materials that go into batteries and where they come from . Currently it comes from a lot of folks who are not necessarily friends of the US and it comes from a lot of countries that are not necessarily the best actors .

In fact , much of the cobalt that goes into batteries comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo , where children are being used to mine that I mean you know , so I mean there are a whole host of just sourcing issues related to it . And then Rebecca Brewster's soapbox issue , the lack of truck parking .

If again tomorrow every tractor trailer were battery electric , we'd have to have a charger at every single truck parking space . And we know there aren't enough truck parking spaces as it is , initial cost to put a charger at every one of those truck parking spaces is $35 billion .

That's just to put the charger in place , not to maintain it , not to put electricity to it , just to put the charger in place .

Using cost estimates out of the state of California for those chargers $35 billion $35 billion is the national number , or just in California that's the national number , that's the national number , just to put them at the current 313,000 truck parking spaces around the US .

So let's just say I'm fortunate enough to find a charger , I pull up to the charger , I plug my truck in and I I turn my truck off , plug it in and it starts to charge . My ELD now says I'm off duty , not driving .

I might be done charging in a couple hours , but I have no intention of moving my truck because I'm going to stay there and get my full hours of service break if I'm in for my eight . So I don't care how many trucks are behind me waiting to use that charger , I'm not turning my truck back on and moving it . So you know that creates a log jam .

And then , last but not least , there is currently a federal prohibition in law that you cannot commercialize public rest areas and of the 313,000 truck parking spaces there are , about 40,000 of them are at public rest areas .

So with that current federal prohibition , you cannot sell electricity at those 40,000 spots , which means we're basically going to carve them out of the capacity if we're going to require that these spaces have chargers and battery electric for battery electric trucks . So whole host of problems there . So that was our second study .

Third study was just a deeper dive on California's issues and I wish I could rattle off the California numbers as well as I can rattle off the national ones . But it really looked at California's challenges . And then the most recent one is because I hate for us always to just be sounding the alarm bell without offering up some good options .

This latest study looked at the potential for renewable diesel to meet this lowering of emissions at a much lower cost , without all these challenges that battery electric brings us and so on . That very first one where I talked about the emissions reductions using federal data battery electric class A vehicle gets you about a 30% reduction .

Renewable diesel gets you over 60% , so more than twice that of battery electric and renewable diesel . You drop in the tank you have . Now you can put it in your internal combustion engine . You don't have to have new trucks , you don't have to have new fuel infrastructure .

You just have to have the availability of renewable diesel , which is different from biodiesel . Biodiesel is petroleum diesel , a fossil fuel , with a biocomponent of it anywhere from 10% to 99% , but it has petroleum diesel in it . Renewable diesel is fuel made completely from a renewable source . So canola oil , corn oil , used cooking oil .

They are also experimenting now with making renewable diesel from algae , because you know you don't want to take from the food stock , necessarily from pulp waste products . So you know if we can develop the market for this renewable diesel .

It allows the industry to get to these zero emission goals at a lot less expensive price and without building out a tremendous national infrastructure .

Something like the hours of service rules and if you are charging and you restart your truck just to move a parking space , that doesn't count against you , or something of that nature could help a little bit .

But it seems to all pale in comparison to the one of the first points you made about , say , in California , requiring 57 percent of their current electricity just to power these , these , the trucking industry . Do you know by chance today , what percent of California's electricity is used to power the industry ?

The timeline for shuttering that facility has been moved back already . So that's one problem . Their second biggest generator of electricity isn't even in California . It's owned by , I believe , the city of Los Angeles and it's actually based in Utah and it is a coal-generated power facility that then power is sent to California .

You know nobody likes coal-generated electricity , so you know it's lifetime . Who knows , you know how much longer it will go . So if California is focused on this and they're going to transition to wind power generation or solar power generation , that's not even factored into this 57% .

That's 57% of what they're currently able to produce with the nuclear and the coal-generated electricity . So I mean there are a whole set of dominoes that come tumbling down if you change the state's power mix .

You know , because so many I get more questions after my presentations . People come up to me and say I've never heard of renewable diesel . You know , where can I buy renewable diesel ? What does it cost ? Do I get the same MPH with renewable diesel that I do with petroleum diesel ? I will tell you the answer to that last question .

From fleets that are running renewable diesel They'll say yes , same MPH , and actually they're having some reduced maintenance challenges . So that's the good news . But again , it's availability of renewable diesel challenges . So that's the good news . But again , it's availability of renewable diesel .

Almost all the renewable diesel that is being produced now is being sold in California because the state of California , because it does lower emissions , the state of California subsidizes the price of renewable diesel to bring it down closer in parity to petroleum diesel .

And , at the end of the day , if the ultimate , ultimate goal is to reduce emissions , you can't argue with the federal government's own data that says , across its life cycle , a battery , electric Class 8 truck gets you about a 30% and a Class 8 vehicle using renewable diesel gets you about twice that will get you about twice that .

So I hope and encourage people to download the full reports and read them and understand them , because obviously our team has invested a lot in them and I want you to understand the data we used and I want you to understand the methodology .

But if you're going to be meeting with your state legislator or your federal delegation , we've got really nice one-page summaries of all of these .

The renewable diesel it's actually four pages but it's still a nice color brochure with all the key findings the CO2 emission reduction impacts and then the charging infrastructure We've got really nice one-page summaries of all of those available .

You can download , put it in the hands of the decision makers that you're meeting with to help tell the trucking industry story and what's the reality of these decisions are .

I appreciate you doing it , but , if I remember correctly , one of the things that I heard them speak about then was there are shippers even asking we're not requiring , but like giving preferential treatment to providers who have the battery electric .

Was that something you're familiar with as something that's taking place now , where shippers are trying to , you know , help their own societal impact ?

And so you know where they can look to fleets who are using zero or driving towards zero emission vehicle use , whether that's renewable diesel or battery , electric or fuel cell , electric , whatever the case may be , you know that's obviously a bonus for them as well , but it's important that they too understand the reality of what the trucking industry is up against

in terms of these timelines and mandates .

You pick your top three , you rank strategies . But the beauty of it is is that if you look at that list of 25 to 30 issues and your top bugaboo issue isn't there , you can write it in . And over the years we've had issues get on the top 10 because they've been written in by enough respondents . Driver compensation is one of them . Drivers wrote in .

Driver compensation came on the top 10 list . Broker issues challenges with double brokering , whatever the case may be got written in by enough folks , made it to the top . It didn't make it to the top 10 , but it's on the survey now as an issue you can select from .

So and even though there are issues on the survey that you can select from , people are so passionate about them they write them in too .

So you know battery , electric truck mandates we see that's on there and then people write it in battery electric truck mandates so that one will launch the end of August and hope to have our biggest participation yet I think last year we had over 4,000 participants in that survey .

And that's really looking at the impact of car driver distraction on the trucking industry's safety record , and it plays out in a whole host of things , because not only does it drive up your insurance premiums when a car driver rear-ends you because they were distracted , but it also has the potential to lead to one of those nuclear verdicts that we talked about .

So I mean , it's so hard to often separate these issues . They all sort of have tentacles one and the other . And then , for the first time ever on the survey , we saw zero emission vehicles come in at number 10 . And we've talked about all the research we did there .

What's interesting to me is the issues that have dropped out of the top 10 or that sort of hover in that 11 through 13 . Driver distraction is one that if it's not in the top 10 , it's typically in the 11 , 12 , 13 .

We saw transportation infrastructure drop out of the top 10 last year , I think , and I think part of that was because at the end of 21 , we got the infrastructure bill signed into law and even though people weren't yet seeing the impact of 21, .

We got the infrastructure bill signed into law and even though people weren't yet seeing the impact of that , it was sort of a collective industry sigh of relief , like we finally have , you know , some long-term funding to invest in our infrastructure , to address the bottlenecks , to deal with these issues .