WHAT DOES THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE DO?
You might subscribe to our newsletter. Or you may have heard National Transportation Institute President Leah Shaver on the Hire Road podcast or Transport Topics’ Newsmakers. Maybe you’ve seen us mentioned in Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes or USA Today. Or even listened in while Leah hosted Sirius XM’s Road Dog Trucking.
But do you know what services the National Transportation Institute provides?
We’ll give you a hint: it’s a lot more than talking about how to improve the trucking industry. Our work centers around benchmarking. That is, we aggregate data (lots of it) and assess trends in the market that impact a company’s ability to hire. This gives our clients a window into their own pay and benefits, showing them how they stack up against the competition and where their competitive advantage lies.
To that end, we offer twelve different surveys. Each one is geared towards informing companies of what the market is doing.
You’re probably familiar with at least two of our products. Our National Survey of Driver Wages is the National Transportation Institute’s oldest and best known survey. In fact, aggregating data on driver pay trends was what launched the National Transportation Institute into existence 26 years ago! The information that it provides – covering sign on bonuses, safety incentives, retention bonuses in addition to base pay – is still imperative today.
For as vital as the National Survey of Driver Wages is, though, sometimes firms need to dig a little deeper. This is where city-centric data comes in.
Since 2016, the National City-Centric Driver Pay Survey has become our most popular product. This one tracks pay at (you guessed it) the city level by job description and company type. It covers mileage, annual, and hourly earnings for local, regional, over-the-road and dedicated fleets, at the city level, for 600 different markets. And because the market can change…rapidly, we update this survey every quarter.
There’s a reason why the National Transportation Institute monitors pay trends at the market level. For one, why compare yourself with companies in the Northeast corridor if you’re based out of Utah?
But we noticed something else over the past five years. The economy is changing, and as shippers move warehouses closer together, length of haul is shortening. There’s real potential to make driving jobs more appealing, and that means looking at data at a regional level.
Of course, doing this work means that other topics are going to come our way. No issue that is pertinent to a driver’s experience is off limits. For example, as Congress debates the merits of allowing younger CDLs to traverse interstate boundaries, we are aggregating data on hiring age within the industry.
These are only two of the twelve surveys that we offer, but our offerings extend beyond reports.
After receiving the data, some firms decide they could use a little more guidance. Through our consulting work, we’ve helped businesses create consistent pay structures, more robust (and better utilized) benefits, and company culture that truckers gravitate towards.
We’re proud to have helped trucking firms during good years, bad years, and…complicated years. If, after reading this, you feel that you could use a little more support, don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love to help
