The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) announced Wednesday traffic congestion on United States' highways added $94.6 billion in costs to the trucking industry in 2021.
Determined through ATRI's latest Cost of Congestion study, that total is the highest level yet recorded through its ongoing research initiative. But between you and I, I'm surprised it isn't higher.
Highway congestion is a major problem across the U.S. and can be crippling to a truck fleet. Downtime is agonizing enough as it is, but at least trucks sidelined for service events wouldn't otherwise be on the highway. Trucks sitting still in highway backups and detouring their way across the country to reach destinations hours, if not days, later, reduces carrier profitability and slows our national supply chain.
"Over the last several years, our industry has experienced some of the most dramatic increases in operating costs, including fuel, labor and equipment,” Michael Lasko, vice president of EHS and Quality at Boyle Transportation, says in response to the ATRI report. “Imagine how those costs are magnified by sitting still in traffic.”
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ATRI says its 2021 figure was a sharp uptick from 2020 — expected to the pandemic — and equates 1.27 billion hours of lost productivity. ATRI also says the increase in costs reflects the dramatic post-COVID economic recovery, "with high GDP growth and freight demand borne from record levels of consumer spending." The trucking industry also wasted over 6.7 billion gallons of diesel fuel in 2021 due to congestion, ATRI says, resulting in more than $22.3 billion in additional fuel costs.
But perhaps the most alarming statistic from ATRI's report is that level of delay equates to more than 460,000 commercial truck drivers sitting idle for one work year.
