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As if gas prices, insurance rates and a shortage of drivers wasn’t enough, trucking companies are facing another bump in the road — trailer shortages. 

Since last year, the U.S. trailer industry has been dealing with a major backlog. According to one estimate, the industry is short 100,000 units. A federal mandate’s impact on the way the industry operates is seen as one major reason for higher demand.

The shortage of trailers is paving uncertain roads for trucking companies in the Central Valley. 

Serafin Quintanar is director of used truck and trailer sales for Velocity Vehicle Group, which owns six locations in the state under the name of Central California Truck and Trailer Sales, including Fresno. 

Quintanar said they currently have used trailers for sale, but all new trailers coming in already have buyers. He said the shortage started during the pandemic as plants shut down and parts used to make new trailers became scarce. That led to increased demand for used trailers — also hard to come by.

Greater demand has led to increasing prices. 

“Anything new coming in is already contracted out to sell, and buyers have been waiting because of delays, and their anxious to get them,” Quintanar.

Prior to the pandemic, a custom order for trailers could be fulfilled within three to four months, but more recently, Quintanar said they can’t even put in new orders. Many get cancelled.

With the current shortage, Quintanar said it will take about a year to fulfill an order. 

In 2018, California began enforcing the use of electronic logging devices (ELD) for commercial motor vehicles, including trucks, to automatically record driving time, engine data, miles driven and more.

A federal ELD mandate became effective in 2019, and to date, all U.S. states have adopted the mandate. 

Because of limits on how long a driver could be on duty, trucking companies began doubling up on trailers to maximize their drivers’ duty time. 

“Instead of someone sitting there waiting for their trailer to be unloaded before they took off, they instead just drop off a trailer, pick up an empty or loaded trailer already waiting for them, and keep going,” Quintanar said. 

At Quali-T-ruck Service, a trucking company in Fresno operating since 1967, owner Dale Mendoza said the trailer shortage has led to prices tripling since the pandemic began. 

Mendoza said that since ELD began being enforced, the company is engaging more in the mentioned practiced, dubbed “drop and hook.” 

“We have more trailers dropped at all our different customers’ locations,” Mendoza said. “You make a drop for customers, they unload it, and we just pick up an empty trailer — and we are out of there. We can do that in an hour versus sitting there three to five hours waiting to load and unload.” 

Mendoza said that it used to cost $14,000 to $16,000 for a standard 48-foot, 102-inch, flatbed steel trailer. That same trailer today costs about $37,000. 

For a bigger trucking company, the wait for a trailer could be as far out as six to nine months, but for a smaller company like Quali-T-ruck Service, the wait could be long as a year and a half. 

Along with the rising trailer prices, Mendoza is concerned that rising fuel prices and fuel surcharges could put independent trucking companies out of work.