Highway haulers turn hopeful: competitors in the trucking industry anticipate increased cargo demand in 1991.

• Author: Ripley, Kate

Competitors in the trucking industry anticipate increased cargo demand in 1991.

Intense competition, high fuel prices and traditionally narrow profit margins ate away at the bottom line of Alaska's trucking industry in 1990, but many companies reported stabilized or even increased revenues.

Alaska's economy in general appears to be bouncing back from the recession of the mid-1980s; the housing market is getting stronger daily and population figures have climbed. The positive economic indicators are not lost on Alaska's road freight carriers.

"The trucking industry is an absolute reflection of the general economy - if you got it, a truck brought it," says Frank Dillon, executive director of the 350-member Alaska Trucking Association. The association's membership grew from 130 last year, in part due to a pro-active legislative agenda and more services for members, according to Dillon.

The trucking industry directly benefits from increased demand for goods and services, especially if that demand is related to the oil industry, Dillon explains. With several multimillion-dollar maintenance and repair projects scheduled over the next few years to fix pipeline corrosion or enhance oil-well output on the North Slope, 1991 and following years could hold good prospects for carriers. All of those projects require trucked materials, Dillon says.

The industry entered 1990 a little uncertainly after the 1989 boom that followed the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Many trucking companies benefited from hauling cleaning equipment and supplies or waste materials related to the spill that dumped nearly 11 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound. The year in retrospect seems a turning point of sorts for the trucking industry, which weathered lean years following deregulation in 1985.

Although long-term maintenance projects on the North Slope are promising for highway freight carriers, several drawbacks in 1990 hindered profitability. "The competition in Alaska is extremely keen," says Dillon. "That kind of keen competition and a totally deregulated atmosphere we're in in Alaska sometimes makes it difficult to make a lot of profit."

The high cost of fuel following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last summer and the subsequent war in the Middle East affected all fuel users. As did many other transportation businesses - airlines and barge companies, for example - trucking firms found themselves charging customers fuel surcharges to help pay higher fuel bills.

Even so, many companies will not recoup all of that expense, says Blaine Ghan, terminal manager in Anchorage for Lynden Transport, a statewide general freight company. "We always expect to grow, but it's been so weird with the economy and oil prices," Ghan explains.

The company charged a fuel surcharge to customers as high as 11 percent on full truckloads and 7.5 percent on less-than-truckload, or LTL, shipments. Although Lynden is expected to eliminate the surcharge at some point, it won't recover all that it lost, Ghan says.

Overall, 1990 was a good year for Lynden. Ghan says, "During the oil spill our freight volumes were tremendous. ... When we looked at 1990 and...