In ways both direct and indirect, COVID-19 has largely enhanced opportunity for independent owner-operators in “power-only” trucking operations. That is, hauling with motor carrier authority and without the necessity of bringing an owned trailer to the freight arrangement. While COVID has not been an overall positive by any stretch, it has had at least one positive.

COVID-19 Derailed the Trucking Community

While power-only arrangements with large carrier-affiliated brokerage divisions have been common for years, non-asset brokerages and shippers such as Amazon are increasingly getting into the game. This is a way to more seamlessly meet freight transportation needs. It may also deliver some of the benefits of power-only business models to contracted carriers. Those include detention reduction with drop-and-hook freight opportunities, better utilization for better profit, trailer ownership cost avoidance, and more.

Parking ease is among the highlights owner-operator Kenyette Godhigh-Bell sees for power-only operations on layover between loads, a benefit also earmarked by a sizable number of respondents.

Parking “is one of the biggest perks” of a power-only operation, she said. Godhigh-Bell has tended to specialize in the region in and around Atlanta in recent times, hauling mostly for Amazon. The congested area’s few proper truck stops are pretty well full most times of the day, and definitely in the evenings and overnight. Bobtailing after a drop at the end of her day, though, as she detailed in late November, “last night I went to Chipotle and you just park in the parking lot with two spaces. That is one of the huge benefits, for me.”

Even as she spoke, she’d been sitting in Amazon’s overflow lot at a facility in Eastpoint, Georgia. She sat with other bobtails, where she had been for a 10-hour break. “I have more mobility as a bobtail,” she said. “You’re not as weighed down” as with a trailer. “You can get around.”