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operating,” says Petersen. “We have seen little disruption.”
Kerry Byrne, president of Cincinna- ti-based Total Quality Logistics (TQL), says his company made sure its contracted carriers had access to a low-cost ELD option ahead of the mandate through a partnership with San Francisco-headquartered KeepTruckin.
“Shippers began to make changes to their own operations, facilities and policies to give carriers more exibility and to be viewed as a more desirable location to pick up or deliver
to,” he says. “ e keys to keeping fresh produce or any time-sensitive commodity moving e ciently are optimizing loading processes, reducing excessive dwell times, and increasing lead times to carriers as much as possible.”
Time is of the essence when it comes to moving perishable fresh fruits and vegetables, and one way to get around that is teaming drivers to share the load.
“We have increased our use of team drivers for our produce loads,” says Kazan of Target Interstate Systems. “ at, along with our use
of trailer interchange and drop-and-hook operations, has helped with our load planning and transit times.
“Trucks are still quicker than intermodal, and drayage companies typically don’t do multiple pickups or drops,” he says. “ e ELDs have made long-haul supply chain management more challenging than before, but we have been able to nd an equilibrium and manage the challenges e ectively.”
Byrne says team drivers can be an attractive option and they have been used for his compa- ny’s customers in many instances.
“Team drivers do tend to be at a higher rate than a single driver, but given our carrier network and volume of shipments, we do our due diligence to nd the most cost-e ective solution given our customers’ requirements,” says Byrne. “ e cost of a team is almost always less than the potential cost of late fees, damaged customer relationships or lost busi- ness.”
Allen Lund Company saw a record number of new trucking companies join the group in 2018 becuase of the higher and more attractive prices brought about by the regula- tory change, which took out capacity. Kenny Lund had thought there would be an increase in team drivers, as well, but says that hasn’t been the case.
“It’s mostly single drivers, and that’s because it’s more e cient — you can’t cover double the miles with two drivers, but you do double the cost,” says Lund. “Team drivers haven’t been the answer to it; it has been being more compliant, staying more profes- sional, understanding the exemption, using the ELDs to your favor rather than cursing them and ghting against them.”
EXEMPTIONS ARE GAME-CHANGING
Lund refers to exemptions that are a crit- ical piece of the puzzle, as a wide range of industries, including fresh produce, were vying for ways to cope with the new rules.
“In produce, there already was an exemp- tion,” he says. “ ey needed the truckers, otherwise the product goes bad. So they gave an exemption of 150 miles to agriculture to be able to get product from the farms into the packing sheds or into the processing areas.
“ ey asked for some clari cation on that as to what is the point of origin for produce — is it the eld or is it somewhere else? ... What they came back with was extremely favorable to those hauling produce — they said any point of origin for produce where it didn’t change form basically.”
42 / SEP TEMBER 2019 / PRODUCE BUSINESS
He says this means the ELD doesn’t need