vHub Blog

Whether you own one power unit or oversee several tractors with a pool of trailers, it’s important to know the efficiency of your business. Streamlining your business and cutting out the excess helps you turn a higher profit and keep your customers happy. You want to achieve better fleet utilization, meaning you get more productivity out of your assets and know where to expand to increase your fleet utilization rate.

Waste is rampant in the supply chain, and according to a 2020 survey by the FMSCA, 70-hour drivers spent more than 6 hours waiting to unload or load trailers per week. However, those times could be slashed if the trailers were already loaded and ready for a simply pickup and haul. These drag-and-drop, or haul-and-drop or hook-and-drop programs, depending on who is describing the process, are critical to reducing the wasted time. In fact, let’s consider how much time is going to waste and how an innovative universal trailer pool marketplace — vHub — is getting big benefits for shippers, brokers, owner operators, fleet managers and carriers.

In October 2021, Transport Dive reported that “the truck driver shortage is at its highest point since the American Trucking Associations began monitoring it in 2005.” Amid this worsening crisis, shipping businesses increasingly turn to semi-trailer rentals to solve capacity issues. 

The longer it takes for a load to arrive and get loaded, the higher the cost of shipping and receiving will be for shippers and transportation service providers. The key is to have a way to minimize the waiting time, thereby decreasing the cost of transportation. One way to do this is by utilizing freight trailer pools and power-only trucking. Trailer pools allow truckers to drop off their load and pick up another rather than waiting hours for their incoming shipment to arrive, thus saving time and expenses. 

Shippers have faced blow after blow the last few years between COVID-related shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, inventory shortages, and fluctuating consumer demands. This instability and uncertainty have led to a need for better truck trailer leasing options. Freight shipping, logistics, and supply chain management are the nation's backbone and critical players in local and national economies. The need for innovative services, like semi-trailer pools and access hubs, continued to be a primary issue for transportation service providers. Meanwhile, the American Trucking Associations expects freight tonnage in the U.S. to grow 24% in 2022, pushing revenue 66% higher, reports Supply Chain Digital. Still, that demand means shippers must use all available resources better, especially as stockouts and limited new trailer manufacturing remain disruptions. As a result, more flexibility in truck trailer leases and better trailer sharing and repositioning options have made it a little earlier for shippers who know how to take advantage of these opportunities.

As the world has started opening up again, there were many advances in technology due mainly to the pandemic and the subsequent quarantine to let people continue their careers and lives. The goal is to leverage those upgrades for the freight business. 

Semi tractors are the backbone of the supply chain network. If the shipping and supply chain is the circulatory system of the nation’s supply lines, then tractor trailers are the blood cells that do all the heavy lifting. Like every other industry today, the shipping and transportation markets have seen unprecedented levels of disruption and upheaval. A shift towards a more tractor-trailer drivers for hire approach to securing available capacity has become the norm. Shippers seeking answers to ‘where can I find an available tractor trailer near me’ now have a solution - tractor trailer rentals and improved digital telematics.

The state of the semitrailer repositioning market, like every other aspect of the shipping and transportation industry, was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 Virus during the last two years. Despite this,  the semitrailer repositioning industry is expected to grow by an estimated 5% over six years between now and 2027, according to Mordor Intelligence. 

The need for reliable capacity and transportation services has never been more significant with the ongoing disruption to the domestic and global supply chains, coupled with continuing instability across multiple markets and industries. Trailer pools and trailer drop and hook trucking job options have improved the ease of access within the trucking industry. 

In today’s tumultuous supply chain market, drivers know how to keep tractor trailers full and on the road. Keeping up with the ever-changing market trends and customer demands presents a unique challenge for drivers and brokers. In addition to market volatility, there is an ongoing concern over capacity crunches, driver shortages, and trailer availability.