Trucking companies are experiencing an all-time lack of qualified drivers while their cargo volumes increase every 
day. Every company is different, and so are individual drivers. The simple pressure of industry demand is forcing long haul operators to pay either top dollars or recruit apparently inexperienced drivers – both of which are not helpful in taking the companies out of the mess.
So, how to be a driver magnet?
Step 1: Hire on Values
One of the leading trucking organizations, Kriska group of companies always hires on values and also invests to train the new-hires. They believe in the principle that skills can be taught, which gives them access to a greater number of potential hires. These comprehensive training programs are conducted to assure the fact that all the new hires meet the company standards before they start working, irrespective of their experience. Kriska’s deferred profit-sharing strategy also creates a sense of partnership between staff and business.
Step 2: Identify Good Drivers
Sieve through the dirt to find gold. Companies need to know which drivers they need to keep within the organization, which can’t be done if they don’t know each of the drivers personally or haven’t kept a track of their accurate records. Given that most OTR or long haul trucking companies have hundreds of drivers, it is quite impossible to monitor the drivers manually. Fleet management system helps in this case, having automated and regular reports on the activity of drivers etc. It is important to find those ‘gold nugget’ drivers.
Step 3: Find out the Needs of your Drivers
There are obviously those universal demands like good pay, time-off’s etc. However, there are also various things that individual drivers may require. Companies should either conduct a primary research or have one-to-one communication with their staff. In this process, companies end up getting the valuable insights on what helps in driver motivation and retention and the staff feel valued and happy that they are regarded as a key part of the company.
Step 4: Improve Working Conditions Further
Rim Yurkus, the CEO of Strategic Programs Inc., Denver had rightly said, ‘the payment of forty-two cents a mile tend to look quite different when the driver is having a good day rather than when he is having a bad day.’ When the company already has a collection of good drivers, and has an idea about the drivers’ expectation, the company should then take action. The action would vary with different responses from different drivers; however the common outcomes could be offering a competitive pay scale, keeping equipments in excellent conditions, better work-life balance etc.
Step 5: Know How to Spare the Rod
Many successful trucking companies believe that behavior cannot be corrected as well by discipline and documentation as by education, employee development and employee training. Companies should train their staff and provide them with the equipments, the environment and schedules which will help them meet the expectations and demands of the company. It is also important to clearly communicate with the staff about the company’s expectation and listen to their expectations as well.
Maybe, the best question is not, ‘how can companies find more drivers?’ but is, ‘why can’t companies retain the good drivers they already have?’ and if companies spend an estimate of around $5000 on recruiting and training a new driver, then it makes a perfect sense. It is time companies up their game, and make suitable changes to improve driver retention.
If you want to learn more effective ways and methods to maximize your truck driver retention efforts, join this session Effective Driver Recruiting in a Difficult Market by expert speaker Mark Dixon to be held on Thursday, July 21, 2016.
