Today, the Biden administration released details on its Trucking Action Plan to Strengthen America's Trucking Workforce. The plan is informed in part by testimony by MIT FreightLab Co-Director David Correll to the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee on November 17, where Dr. Correll shared insights from his Driver Initiative research, including the alarming statistic that, due to serious underutilization of US truck drivers, "40% of America's trucking capacity is left on the table each day."
The action plan seeks to add trucking capacity by helping states expedite commercial driver's license (CDL) applications, expanding apprenticeship programs, and through targeted recruitment.
FreightLab research in this space, which has drawn data from more than 4,000 truckers, has found that just 18 minutes of added drive time per driver per day could close the trucking capacity gap. Ongoing research seeks to improve driver efficiencies through reforming, standardizing, and upgrading processes at warehouses, some of which Dr. Correll recommended to the House committee.