Economy, regulations, and truck parking top ATRI’s top 10 list of issues for 2025


For the second straight year, concern over the state of the nation’s economy was the highest-ranked industry issue for trucking executives, according to an authoritative survey of industry issues by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI).

This year’s ATRI list includes the Economy, Truck Parking, Lawsuit Abuse Reform, Insurance Cost, and Availability, and rising four spots from last year, Battery Electric Vehicles.

“Without question, this has been another tough year for the trucking industry,” Gregg Troian, PGT Trucking president and a member of ATRI’s Research Advisory Committee, said in a statement. “Our costs continued to climb while freight demand struggled. But each year we can count on ATRI’s analysis to not only quantify the issues, but more importantly, (state) what we can collectively do as an industry to address each.”

This year’s ATRI list saw the state of the Economy and the lack of available Truck Parking retain their top two rankings on the overall list, respectively. However, growing concern over the proliferation of “nuclear verdicts”—unusually high jury awards, often above $100 million—led to Lawsuit Abuse Reform rising to the No. 3 spot this year. The largest climb in ranking this year came in Insurance Cost and Availability, which rose eight spots to be the industry’s fourth concern overall. Rounding out the top five this year was Driver Pay.

The continued focus on transitioning the nation’s truck fleet to battery electric—and the aggressive timelines and significant cost for doing so—drove Battery Electric Vehicles into the industry’s sixth overall concern, up four spots from last year.

Economics explains why transitioning to electric truck fleets is so bothersome to trucking executives. Rules governing battery-electric truck sales are set to take effect for model-year 2027.

Aggressive timelines for transitioning the nation’s car and truck fleet to zero emission vehicles was another worry of fleets. Costs of purchasing battery electric trucks to replace Class 8 trucks purchased in 2022 is estimated to be over $116 billion.

While planned deployment of medium- and heavy-duty vehicle electric charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure is scheduled to begin from 2024 to 2040, trucking industry officials are warning of a cost of approximately $1 trillion. That’s according to the Clean Freight Coalition (CFC) in what it called “a groundbreaking study” conducted by industry consultant, Roland Berger Group. 

That $1 trillion in costs compares to trucking industry revenue of approximately $896 billion, according to this year’s State of Logistics report.

Over 45 percent of ATRI survey respondents were motor carrier executives and personnel, while truck drivers represented 31 percent. Among truck driver respondents, Truck Parking, Driver Compensation and the Economy were the top three concerns. For motor carrier executives, it was the Economy, Lawsuit Abuse Reform and the Driver Shortage as the top three concerns.  

More than 3,700 trucking industry stakeholders participated in this year’s survey, including motor carriers, truck drivers, industry suppliers, driver trainers and law enforcement, among other groups.  

ATRI’s annual Operational Costs of Trucking research documented industry cost increases of over 22 percent over the past two years—the highest recorded costs in the research’s 16-year history.

There are a number of economic uncertainties for the rest of this year. They include fallout from the three-day International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) strike at East and Gulf coast ports, the November presidential election and the significant impacts from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

Among strategies to combat rising truck costs were, in order of ranking:

  • Identify and promote reforming and/or repealing ineffective and burdensome regulations that increase industry costs. That was cited by 51.2 percent of respondents, who believe the best strategy for mitigating the negative impacts of the Economy is to lessen the industry’s regulatory burden.
  • There is also a push for renewing the 2017 federal income and corporate tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025. This is a priority of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Reducing economic pressures through tax relief is the preferred strategy of 30.7 percent of respondents.
  • Among provisions was a reduction of the corporate tax rate from 39 to 21 percent. Lower taxation and an overall reduction in regulations is a traditional gripe privately among trucking executives, who believe they are subject to unusual, costly and inefficient regulatory burdens at both the federal and state level.



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