Back a few years ago, we began exploring regional haul because we thought it was playing a bigger role in the movement of goods in North America. In fact, in April of 2019 NACFE published a report, More Regional Haul: An Opportunity for Trucking? In that report we identified 10 trends that were affecting the growth of regional haul. Even before the pandemic, we saw ecommerce as a contributing factor to the growth of regional haul. The COVID-19 pandemic with its stay-at-home orders accelerated a trend that was already occurring.
And while ecommerce purchases may have slowed from their pandemic high, it is likely that ecommerce will continue to play a significant role in how people and businesses purchase the items they want and need.
Another big factor in the move to regional haul, according to our report, was driver hiring and retention. More and more drivers are wanting to get home on some sort of regular basis and regional haul allows them to be home at least on the weekends, if not every night. If the industry hopes to find a long-term solution to the driver shortage, we need to find a way to make it more appealing to young people who have very strong ideas about work-life balance and who expect to use cool technology on their job.
Then, Run on Less – Regional allowed us to refine our definition of what is included under the regional haul heading. While we had broad categories like A-B-A (out and back, the same place every time), hub and spoke (different destination each day, out and back) and A-B-C-D-A (multiple stops during a day), we learned that within those categories there are different duty cycles making regional haul more all-encompassing.
Fast forward to today and we continue to see evidence that regional haul is a growing part of trucking. Programs like the Department of Energy’s SuperTruck 3 are looking at the total freight system and there has been much discussion by key players defining regional haul as middle mile.
Call it what you want, but regional haul/middle mile is that segment of trucking where goods move from regional distribution centers into local warehouses and retail locations. Some of us old-timers will call it nothing new (we called it hub and spoke), but we all admit it has grown in size and importance. While last mile—the segment of trucking that get goods from those local warehouses and/or stores to the customers front door—seems to be getting all the media attention these days, regional haul/middle mile may provide fleets with an opportunity to improve their overall efficiency.
This is true, in part, because regional haul/middle mile is well suited for the early adoption of electric vehicles. (Side note: young people are likely to define electric trucks as cool technology.) The return to base nature of regional haul/middle mile operations coupled with the predictability and consistency of the routes takes away another one of the big concerns many fleets have about adding electric trucks to their fleets—how they will get charged.
Through Run on Less – Electric, taking place this fall, we are hoping to add to the knowledge base about how electric trucks can help fleets improve the bottom line while at the same time benefitting the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
From out vantage point regional haul and electric trucks are a winning combination not only for fleets, but also for shippers, drivers and the environment.
Michael Roeth has worked in the commercial vehicle industry for nearly 30 years, most recently as executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. He currently serves on the second National Academy of Sciences Committee on Technologies and Approaches for Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium and Heavy-Duty Vehicles and has held various positions in engineering, quality, sales and plant management with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.
