The consecutive on-duty rule in the new hours-of-service regulations may eventually force shippers to pay more attention to getting you loaded and moving more quickly, but at least one carrier has already taken steps to shorten the wait.

And the fleet’s drivers—both owner/operators and company—are providing the ammunition they need to convince shippers to change their ways.

The refrigerated carrier Marten Transport, based in Mondovi, WI, feels it has a good reason to act. In its view, the more time Marten trailers spend on the road actually moving freight, the more the fleet earns. Not may drivers will argue with that reasoning. What makes Marten unusual is that it backs up that belief with lower rates for shippers that help keep its drivers moving and higher rates for those that don’t.

Everyone wins with this approach. Shippers win with better rates, their customers win with shorter transit times, the fleet wins with higher earnings, and drivers win with more productive workdays and more leisure time to spend at home.

But getting shippers to buy into the effort takes some convincing.

Generalities about long waits at their docks just don’t cut it, according to the fleet’s president, Randy Marten. Shippers need to be convinced with “hard data” that spells out in detail which trucks waited where and for just how long.

That’s where the people in the seats of those trucks come in. They help Marten collect the reliable information he needs to get shippers to listen. And apparently shippers are listening—the fleet’s average time to pick up, move and deliver a shipment has dropped by almost 25%.

Randy Marten says it’s fine with him if no one else wants to follow him down this road to higher productivity. After all, as he sees it, the competition is already tough enough.

But every driver who has ever endured those endless hours of waiting for a dock hopes that the rest of the trucking industry takes a good, hard look at what this one fleet has managed to accomplish.

This is one idea that could make life a lot better for everyone involved.