ORLANDO--The American Transportation Research Institute unveiled on Monday during the American Trucking Associations Management Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla. its list of the top ten critical issues facing the North American trucking industry.

The changes to the federal commercial driver hours of service rules that went into effect July 1 caused the issue to top the survey of more than 4,000 trucking industry executives, truck drivers, trucking industry suppliers and those with government.

Continued concern over the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, commonly known as CSA, caused that issue to rank second this year, after ranking first in 2012. Worry over the implications of a driver shortage resulted in that issue ranking third in this year’s survey while concern over the economy lessened, causing that issue to slip one position to fourth place. Continued economic growth, coupled with CSA and hours of service changes may be contributing factors to the driver shortage according to some in the industry, according to ATRI.

ATRI President and COO Rebecca Brewster noted all of the issues on the new list were on last year’s though some have changed position.

The remaining top 10 issues of concern are:

5. Electronic logging mandate

6. Truck parking

7. Driver retention

8. Fuel supply/prices

9. Transportation infrastructure/congestion/transportation funding

10. Driver health and wellness

In 2005, when ATRI released its first such survey the top issue of concern was fuel costs, followed by the driver shortage, insurance costs, hours of service and tolls/highway funding rounding out the top five. The rest of the top 10 were tort reform/legal issues, government regulations, congestion, environmental issues and truck security.

The ATA-commissioned survey results will be used by the federation to better focus its advocacy role.

ATRI is a not-for-profit research organization that is part of the ATA.

You can get a copy of the full report from the ATRI website.