Drilling Deep with John Kingston

It was a wild year, with markets so bad at one point that truckers were protesting in Washington against "rapacious brokers" and freight rates at the end of the year that can only be described as eye-popping. So what did that mean for what drivers made? Todd Amen is the President of ATBS, a financial advisory firm that works mostly with owner operators. He joins host John Kingston on the Drilling...

On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, host John Kingston speaks with Scott Stofer of ELD manufacturer Orbcomm about how Canada will be rolling out its ELD mandate in the next few months. Given the amount of cross-border trade, the ELD rule in that country can have impacts on either side of the border. Also on Drilling Deep, Kingston discusses why diesel prices, as high as they are, might actually...

On this week's edition of Drilling Deep, the podcast is joined by Ben Stanley of the IBM Institute for Business Value. That institute recently completed an update on its ongoing five-year look at the future of trucking. It’s called Trucking 2030. He will be sharing his long-term perspectives.   Host John Kingston also will be talking about some numbers in the diesel market that had not been seen f...

On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, James Frith of Bloomberg NEF brings his expertise in battery technology to the show and discusses some significant technological developments in battery technology just in the past few months. How rapid are we moving toward cost-competitive batteries? Also on Drilling Deep, host John Kingston talks about the record that was set just a few days ago: 16 consecut...

Getting the technology down for autonomous vehicles is one thing. Getting the regulation right is another.  On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, Finch Fulton of autonomous vehicle company Locomation sits down with host John Kingston to discuss his new role with the company as vice president of Policy and Strategy. Fulton comes out of the Department of Transportation so he knows how to navigate it...

Werner Enterprises had just about the best earnings performance of any of the truckload carriers in the fourth quarter of 2020, based on the latest numbers released in recent weeks.  On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, host John Kingston welcomes Deutsche Bank's Amit Mehrotra to discuss what's going on with Werner to post those kind of numbers. Mehrotra also takes a look at the changes and marke...

Michael Lemke is a former driver who now studies trucking and in particular driver's health from his position as a faculty member at a Houston university. In a recently-published paper, Lemke makes the case that truck drivers should be much further up the line to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. He joins Drilling Deep host John Kingston this week to lay out his case why he thinks drivers need to be...

When drivers get a chance to give anonymous feedback to their employers, they often use the services of WorkHound, a cell phone based service that can send back their thoughts, good and bad. Founder and CEO Max Farrell joined host John Kingston on Drilling Deep this week to talk about his company's service and some of the things that drivers were saying during the notorious year of 2020. Some of i...

On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, Mike Roeth of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency looks over the tumultous year of 2020 and what it meant for the efficiency of trucks heading down the highway. There were some favorable trends: wide open highways at the start of the pandemic, lower fuel prices in the first half of the year, followed by a more return to normal traffic patterns by...

On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, Chris O'Brien of C.H. Robinson joins host John Kingston to talk about CHRW's recent announcement of a sweeping data partnership with SAS that is targeted at a freer flow of information up and down the retail supply chain.  The partnership, announced this week, was described by both companies as "unprecedented." It is yet another step to bring more transparency...

Parts of the manufacturing world were laggards in the strong freight market of 2020. But on this week's Drilling Deep podcast, Jason Miller of Michigan State University discusses his bullish outlook for manufacturing in 2021 and the impact it will have for the nation's fleets. Also on Drilling Deep, host John Kingston talks about the red-hot diesel market that is sending prices back to where they...

What do you do when you find yourself with $7 million? Maven Machines succeeded in raising that much money this year to invest in its cloud-based freight software, which includes an ELD product and machine learning-driven route optimization. It also hired a lot of people. Its founder and CEO Avi Geller joins host John Kingston on the Drilling Deep podcast this week to talk about where his company...

Sometimes, those on the inside of a company need to turn to an outside perspective. They can always hire consultants for a lot of money. Or in trucking, they can turn to the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics.  On the Drilling Deep podcast this week, David Correll, a research scientist at the center and an expert on trucking, joins host John Kingston to discuss his perspectives on the indus...

On this week's Drilling Deep, Thomas LaSalvia of Moody's Analytics REIS looks at the market for warehouse space additions being driven by the growth in e-commerce. And he finds that even as demand for it is soaring, the supply of new space is keeping up and it's keeping rents relatively soft. Also on this week's podcast, host John Kingston looks at the sharp increase in oil and diesel prices in th...

Weston LaBar is the CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association. That's the trade group that represents the drayage community in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.  On this week's edition of Drilling Deep, LaBar joins host John Kingston to discuss the group's recent call for the Federal Maritime Administration to step in and suspend the drayage and demurrage charges that have soared as operations...

The earnings season for the third quarter has wrapped up and Todd Fowler of KeyBanc has a few things to say. Fowler is the lead transportation analyst at KeyBanc and he shares his perspective on the numbers on this week's edition of Drilling Deep. What companies did things that were notable? And what did the earnings say about the future? Also on Drilling Deep, host John Kingston talks about the r...

Ryder is a major seller of used trucks. So it was notable that in its quarterly earnings report, it said the amount of money it was getting from the sale of used trucks was better than its estimates and that the market had been a pleasant surprise for them. To talk about the market for used trucks, Chris Visser of JD Power joined host John Kingston on Drilling Deep. Visser is head of the research...

On this week's Drilling Deep, P. Sean Garney of Scopelitis Transportation Consulting looks at the recent federal guidelines for hair testing to determine if a driver, or a potential driver, has drugs in their system. And Garney wonders: will this ever get off the ground to become an industry standard? He'll talk about why he's skeptical. Also on this week's episode, host John Kingston looks at how...

On this week's Drilling Deep, host John Kingston brings in his colleague Mark Solomon again to talk about the state of the US Postal Service. Mark was a guest on Drilling Deep not all that long ago to talk about the same subject. But the amount of new controversy that has arisen since then means it's time to revisit this key cog in supply chains. Also on Drilling Deep this week, host John Kingston...

On this week's Drilling Deep podcast, Andrew Cox of FreightWaves talks to host John Kingston about how strong the peak season is going to be given two big factors: the pandemic and what that has done to spending patterns, and the growing tightness in driver capacity. Kingston will also talk about a possible turn in the diesel market. That shift in economics may occur because of things that data is...

Soon after Dave Ables took over as president and CEO of Dart Transport, and as the first days of the pandemic receded into a strong freight market, he knew there was a problem: retaining and attracting drivers. So the Minnesota-based company put through an increase in compensation on several different fronts. It wasn't just a straightforward increase in pay. There were other steps taken to ensure...

With a freight market this good, why would anybody want to sell a logistics business? But there are people who do and people or companies that want to buy. On this week's Drilling Deep, Peter Stefanovich of Left Lane Associates talks to host John Kingston about how strong the market for properties is these days and whether the pandemic has made any changes in what's getting moved. Also on this wee...

Governments are strapped as a result of the pandemic, the nation's infrastructure isn't any better than it was at the beginning of the year and states are faced with keeping their roads in good shape. What's the solution? On this week's Drilling Deep, host John Kingston speaks with Bob Poole of the Reason Institute about bringing the private sector into the mix to turn toll roads into privately-ow...

Jeremy Reymer is the founder and CEO of DriverReach, but he's also a member of the research advisory committee for ATRI, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations.  He's the guest this week on Drilling Deep, and he's got a good perspective on one of the reasons why the driver market is so tight: CDL schools aren't pumping out ready-to-drive candidates like they used to, all because of...

Tim Hindes is the CEO of StayMetrics, a company that offers data and recommendations to trucking companies on retaining drivers. But StayMetrics has also shared insightful data with the industry on the level of retention and his firm has a new data series, the Stay Days table. Coming several months into the pandemic, it's a fascinating look at whether drivers stuck around through the heavy demand...