3 Reasons to Stop Texting Drivers From Your Cell Phone

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Texting can be a great way to communicate with family and friends. After all, Americans send over 26 billion text messages each day! But when it comes to official company business, using your personal cell phone for text messaging can lead to issues if you’re not careful. These issues could cost you time, money and ultimately qualified candidates over time. If you’re texting drivers from your cell phone, here are 3 reasons to stop.

The average American checks their phone about 50 times each day. 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. – techjury.net

1. Consistency

Using personal phones to send business texts can create branding issues for a company. Setting clear rules as to who can send texts, and the content they should contain should be a priority for any company using text messaging as an official communication practice. Much like having standard email templates in place for business communications, having text message templates for texting drivers is a good idea.

2. Timing

Using a messaging app from your personal phone could make you seem available 24/7. Though you might curb your overall business communications with candidates to your normal business hours, drivers might not be able to check their phones until you’ve gone home for the day. Once they’ve responded, you might not respond until the next morning. This type of time delay devalues the benefit of text messaging in general. Having an SMS system in place that’s truly a 24/7 solution, will allow for the best execution of this type of communication with your drivers.

3. Tracking Old Messages

If you and your team are all using your personal phones to connect with candidates, there’s plenty of room to lose track of what’s been sent. You could be sending duplicate messages, or worse, conflicting messages and confusing your potential drivers. Without a dedicated system to track all texts from one source, you could be inadvertently sending negative messages to candidates. This might make them decide to look for work somewhere else. And with no tracking system in place, there’s no way to get any usable metrics to find out how well texting drivers is actually working for your company.

As part of your overall communication strategy with your drivers, text messaging can play an important role. But in the recruitment process, texting from your personal cell phone is not always going to be the best idea. Hopefully the 3 things to consider when using text messaging from a hiring perspective will help your team recruit well.

Lastly, if you’re going to use text messaging in any capacity to connect with potential drivers, you need to let them know about it. This will reduce any confusion that might arise when a candidate gets a text message from an unknown number. Additionally, you should have your candidates opt-in to the text messaging system as part of the application process. This way they will know that the texts are coming, and who they’re coming from.

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Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

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Why is Converting Truck Driver Leads So Hard?

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Everyone on your hiring team is always busy. You seem to have a good stream of leads flowing in for your posted jobs. In general, these should be a very good thing for a hiring team. However, you’re just not seeing the conversation rates you’d like. Team members are frustrated because they have to start all over every time a new driver is needed. And your trucks are still sitting empty. In this challenging time where you’re doing everything you can to hire drivers as fast as possible, why is converting truck driver leads so hard?

What’s Your Current Lead Conversion Process?

Do you have an effective lead management process in place? Or even any structured lead management process in place? If yes, that’s great! If no to both, this is certainly the place to start when trying to determine how to better convert your truck driver leads. You can quickly find an online guide to help your team map out a simple lead management process, that you can then tailor to your company’s unique needs. Once you’ve got that figured out, work to follow the stated process. Every. Single. Time.

Once you know you have a great process in place, what are you doing to optimize your process? And what tools are you using to alleviate pain points or roadblocks in the process?

One very important part of a lead management process is scoring the generated leads. Your process should include fast turnaround on scorning (if that’s not already being done for you), and then a quick hand-off to the person/team that contacts the drivers. An effective scoring process helps you focus on the most qualified truck driver leads first. And the those less qualified leads later. Getting leads already qualified from your marketing efforts is a best practice here. That saves so much time sifting through potentially useless lists that should never have been matched with your postings.

hiring truck driversWhat are your lead contacting best practices? How quickly are they being contacted? Once a lead comes in, you need to contact them quickly. If a driver just applied for your job, they’re expecting to be contacted immediately. This way you’re sure that you’re doing your part to get the relationship off to a good start. This also helps to avoid losing top candidates to your competition. Making sure that you have a great contacting and nurturing process for your truck driver leads is a key component in getting the best candidates hired. This is also a great place to augment your manual processes with technology to automate the lead contacting (and recontacting) process more efficient and productive.

Tired of Struggling to Convert Leads?

Then it’s time to take a totally different and personalized approach! One way to improve converting your truck driver leads is to start thinking about the process in a completely different way. Like we do here at Drive My Way. Truck drivers aren’t just leads. They’re people. We have a driver-centric platform that provides matches instead of leads. We focus on matching employers with drivers for each unique job based on the driver’s professional qualifications and personal lifestyle preferences. Unlike traditional job boards, we match at the individual job level. We don’t deliver unqualified lead lists. We focus on quality matches. Which makes the most sense for you, and the drivers.

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How and When to Use Technology to Recruit Truck Drivers

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It seems that we can’t escape technology in our lives, especially in the workplace. As a recruiting professional in a challenging and fast-paced industry, you’ve probably read about how using the latest technology can help you recruit truck drivers. However, having a keen skeptical eye, you also know that using technology cannot solve all problems, and can’t replaced good old-fashioned recruiting methods. In reality, both these things are true. You must use technology for recruiting, but you can’t rely on it blindly either. The trick is learning how and when to use technology to best aid your recruiting efforts.

Enhance and Complement with Technology

It’s true that technology can play a part in all functions of your recruitment efforts. It can help allocate your budget, optimize marketing, capture and manage leads, and onboard new hires. However, if you use technology blindly, that may be worse than not using it at all! You could end up hurting tried-and-tested methods that have worked for ages.

The secret to how and when to use technology is to always have it complement your human efforts, instead of hamper them.

There will always be some disadvantages to using technology, but thankfully your human efforts will be strong in those areas. Similarly, there are areas where humans tend to make more mistakes. Here is where technology can aid or accelerate your process. This way you’re always using technology to enhance your already strong human recruitment efforts.

The Strengths of Technology

Knowing how and when to use technology depends on a good understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll soon recognize that these usually complement human strengths and weaknesses. For example, one of the weaknesses of human effort is a limited capacity. You only have a limited number of recruiters, limited budgets, or limited time.

Thankfully, technology excels at using limited resources to scale up operations that lead to better results.

Similarly, using human effort leads to low accountability. Bill thought Joan was going to complete that task, while Joan thought Adam was accountable for it. Assigning tasks to technology means that the tasks are track-able and measurable. Human effort can sometimes lack consistency and accuracy. We understandably feel tired, bored, antsy, or unmotivated when tackling repetitive tasks. These are perfect tasks to outsource to technology. Unless it breaks down, it reliably completes the same task repeatedly until you instruct it to stop.

And the Weaknesses

However, don’t be fooled into thinking that there are no disadvantages to relying on technology. One of its weaknesses is that technology will be subject to bugs and glitches. This is when the human touch helps. When your automated systems suffer a technical error and don’t function as expected, you can ask recruiters to step in and cover the missing pieces.

Technology also needs constant monitoring and frequent technical support. Instead, people can be autonomous!

You don’t need to constantly monitor their actions or call in a repair crew when they make an error. If you empower your staff, they are capable of constantly self-adjusting. This is in contrast to technology, which is limited in its programming. If you instruct an algorithm to send a message to contact new leads, it will continue to attempt doing so until you tell it to stop. On the other hand, humans are adaptable. We can see when something isn’t working, and instead of making the same mistake repeatedly, we can flexibly adapt our behavior to fit the situation.

Pair both human effort and technology toward their strengths to efficiently recruit truck drivers.

As you can see, humans and technology both have strengths and weaknesses. Usually, the strengths and weaknesses complement each other. This is the secret to how and when to use technology.

Use Technology to Enhance Human Effort

1. Budgets

As we’ve written about before, you can use data to inform decisions about where to allocate your recruiting budgets. Technology can tell you which recruiting methods are successful for which jobs in which locations. At the end of the day though, recruiters have to use human judgment to make decisions about budget strategy and planning and sell this plan to supervisors to get their approval.

2. Finding Drivers

Recruiters sift through the carrier’s jobs and decide which characteristics are important for each job. You need human effort to decide which candidate looks like an ideal match for a particular job. Technology can then help you target the right candidates and meet them where they already exist online. You can also use lead scoring, or matching services like Drive My Way to funnel the top matches into your recruiting pipeline.

3. Contacting and Securing Leads

Contacting leads quickly is crucial to converting them into hires. Technology can help you automate methods of contact and frequency of contact. Mobile-friendly applications and applicant tracking systems are tools you can use to gain contact information or other important data. But there is a danger in overusing technology here. Nothing can replace the human effect. Once you’ve identified top leads, contacting them with a personalized message adds the much-needed human touch.

4. Onboarding Drivers

You can use technology to measure lead velocity and other metrics to help optimize your truck driver onboarding process. However, once you’ve already converted leads to hires, you don’t want to risk alienating them. Human skills here are essential. Listening to newly converted drivers and meeting their needs with your solutions will go a long way toward maximizing retention.

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Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

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Is Your Driver Onboarding Process Efficient?

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One of the challenges facing recruiters is that many fleets are looking to hire the same drivers you are. You’re in competition for the same small pool of candidates. In general, the quicker you recruit, the more likely you are to catch the top drivers. The slower you are, the more likely it is that rivals will scoop up your preferred candidates. A quick and efficient onboarding process is one of the factors which will help you have the edge over your competitors. Onboarding involves the lead to hire process, which is what you implement once you’ve identified a viable candidate willing to sign with you. An onboarding process that isn’t efficient could be costing you drivers.

Lead Velocity

To improve your onboarding process, it’s important to understand a concept called lead velocity. Lead velocity is a way to measure the length of your onboarding. It is a metric that tracks the average number of days it takes to turn a lead into a hire. Lead velocity is different across industries. According to research by the DHI Group, it takes about 25 days to convert a lead into a hire for the transportation industry. This may include employees who aren’t truck drivers, so the number might be a bit skewed. Your own lead velocity might end up being longer than that, depending on your budget and resources as a recruiter. Lead velocity will also vary based on driver type. For example, it’ll take longer to hire an owner-operator than to hire a company driver.

Whatever challenges you face, it’s important that you do everything you can to make sure your lead velocity is as low as possible

Shortening Lead Velocity

Think about what you are doing as a recruiter that is unnecessarily adding length to the lead velocity. Perhaps you’re taking too long to contact leads? Or waiting on drivers to submit their applications? If you have too many leads and not enough recruiters, it can add to lead velocity. Similarly, if you have too many unqualified leads, you’ll lose time searching for the diamond in the rough.

What you really need is a stronger screening method and matching system to help sort through unqualified leads and an overwhelming lead volume

Another solution is to take phone applications. Drivers are understandably pressed on time and will find it difficult to find time to fill lengthy paper or online applications. Consider going through the application with a driver over the phone and even filling it out for them. This shortens your lead velocity if you’re waiting for the ball on the other person’s court.

Onboarding and Orientations

Once your drivers are further along in the recruiting pipeline, there’s still more you can do to ensure onboarding efficiency. Sometimes lead to hire time is affected by a slow orientation process.

Try to schedule orientations often, to allow your hires more options to attend the soonest one

If your closest orientation date is too far away, drivers will be tempted to sign with someone else because they don’t want to wait long to get to work. You can also time your orientations on days of the week that are more convenient for hires. For example, if you notice you sign many drivers on Mondays, then Wednesdays or Thursdays are good days to hold orientation—perhaps both! The very next day is too soon and you must respect that drivers may already have plans. Waiting until the next Monday is probably too late and risks losing that driver to a rival carrier. Offering two orientation dates per week also gives your hires flexibility since they may be unavailable on certain days of the week.

You should also conduct a review of your onboarding process every few months or so. Are there bottlenecks holding the process back? Too many forms to complete or too much time spent on the application? Identify the problem and try to shorten that step. Use metrics to compare lead velocity over different months, different types of jobs, and different locations. Lead velocity is an important component of an efficient onboarding process. Do whatever you can to shorten the lead velocity and you’ll be able to hire more drivers faster.

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The Importance of a Truck Driver Career Path

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truck driver career path

Truckers looking into a new job almost always have a lot of questions about the carriers they’re considering. They want to know what things look like in a month, in a year, in 5 years or even in 20 years. Being able to provide that information to a prospective new employee up-front could give you the edge in getting that driver hired today! So with the driver shortage and the hiring process as it is today, what is the Importance of a truck driver career path for your drivers?

Training to Hire

With all of the talk about the driver shortage, there’s much renewed interest in driving a truck for a living. For those completely new to the industry, the first thing they need to do is get training to get their CDL license.

Whether you offer your own training program, or partner with a local truck driver training school, be sure to let all potential drivers know that you’ve got a job for you once you graduate.

Be clear about what you expect and what they can expect. That can take a lot of stress off a trainee knowing that if they work hard and get through the training program, their next steps are already mapped out.

Driving for Life

Incentivize longevity. This can be through anniversary certificates or awards. Or even financial incentives that pay out after certain milestones are met.  You can also provide opportunities for continuous education to keep skills sharp. And training to ensure that your drivers are always up-to-date with current technology and regulations.

Be overt about the amount of possible driving options you have for your drivers. Different phases of their lives could change their preferences about time at home vs. time away.

Equipment preferences can change. Or even how much money they need to make at various stages in their lived. Knowing that you’ve got them covered at all steps, is an advantage to help you retain drivers. And this helps drivers feel confident in their role as a driver for your company.

Non-Driving Roles

Sometimes drivers have a need to pull in off the road for good. For whatever reason. But when they’re a good employee and not yet ready for retirement, what kind of truck driver career path might be mapped out in those situations. Often times good drivers can become the best instructors. Or even move into a role in the dispatch office or operations management.

Letting a driver know that these options are available to them along the way might make those transitions from the road to the office smoother when the time comes.

Paint the picture early for your drivers that you have a truck driver career path formulated for them at every stage of their lives. And advertise this on your website and other recruitment materials. For those new to the industry, be clear about your training programs and what comes next. Once they’re ready to hit the road on their own, give great options that fit their lifestyle at each phase. If they grow weary on the road, or can no longer drive, communicate other options for them outside of the 18 wheels. Doing this can instill an additional sense of loyalty to you from your drivers and help you to retain the best drivers.
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ultimate guide to retaining truck drivers

Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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How to Hire and Retain an OTR Driver

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otr driver

Hiring and retaining drivers in the trucking industry can be a tricky business. It can be even more difficult to hire and retain over the road (OTR) drivers because you want these drivers to be the best in your fleet. OTR driving represents the most challenging type of driver work, so you want to hire and retain the cream of the crop for this elite cadre. Since it can be a challenge to fill these jobs, you’ll want to think about smart methods to retain them and reduce turnover as well. Here are five tips on how to hire and retain OTR drivers.

1. What to Look For

As we have written about before, good hiring starts with narrowing the candidate pool to those who are the best fit for the job.

There’s no doubt about it: OTR drivers are the best in the business and their work is more challenging than local runs in many ways.

You should look for strong behavioral characteristics that will predict reliability, flexibility, and communication in your talent pool. Yes, these are good attributes for any driver in your fleet, but they suit the OTR job particularly well. Look for someone with strong independence and ability to manage and maintain their own workload and commitments with ease. Demonstration of organizational skills, and the ability to adapt to quickly changing situations is a plus.

Good communication skills are essential, as OTR drivers will be coordinating with fleet managers, dispatchers, and reps from shippers and receivers. Attention to detail is another must, since drivers need to be responsible for reporting their logs with accuracy and consistency. Finally, a knack for learning new skills is especially useful for OTR drivers. Remember, they may have to adapt to quick changes and be adept at mechanical troubleshooting and working with new technology and equipment.

2. How to Conduct the Interview

If you’re interviewing a candidate, they have already passed your first round of evaluation for the job. Clearly, they possess the minimum qualifications and experience, and display some interest for your fleet and the OTR job. During the in-person interview, it’s your job to ascertain whether they are well suited for the OTR runs, or just the other local runs in your fleet. You can start by learning more about their personality and character. Look for the attributes detailed above and ask about specific instances or experiences where they demonstrated those traits.

Apart from the typical behavioral interview, you can also mix it up a bit. You can ask about how they would react in hypothetical situations or what they liked or disliked about previous jobs.

Having an open conversation about career goals, work-life balance, and home-time is incredibly important.

Remember that you’re trying to determine fit and maximize retention. Maybe this candidate isn’t the best for this job if they’re about to start a family, or if they’re looking to move on to a different fleet in just a few months. Consider inviting the driver’s partner or spouse to the interview to discuss important topics openly. Don’t forget to ask about issues which especially impact OTR drivers, like equipment breakdowns or real-time monitoring.

3. Hiring and Onboarding Process

Once you’ve identified a strong candidate, be sure to make a job offer quickly. Remember, the number one reason that drivers decline jobs is because they got scooped by another carrier sooner. You need a quick process for any hire, but especially for the elite OTR drivers. Once you’ve made the hire the story isn’t complete. Your work in retaining that driver starts from day one. Before they start the job, enroll the driver in your orientation and onboarding process. If your fleet doesn’t have formal onboarding, you should really consider implementing one.

Onboarding does a lot more than familiarizing your drivers to company policies and employees. Basically, onboarding will start doing the slow work of embedding the driver into your company’s culture. Remember that most drivers are looking for a meaningful job which speaks to their values and needs.

If your company can start signaling that its values are in line with the driver’s values, it starts to build long-term loyalty and a sense of belonging.

Remind your drivers that they are essential to the success of your fleet and that your company is here to be good to them. Building this relationship will go a long way toward retention.

4. Conduct Employee Surveys

Retention efforts start with the first day but must also be continually reinforced. A great mechanism for improving OTR driver retention is conducting periodical employee surveys. Surveys have a dual function: they help evaluate employee satisfaction and give you the opportunity to give feedback to drivers. Measuring employee satisfaction will give you constant data on what kinds of things employees enjoy and which needs aren’t being met. Include options on the survey for employees to detail their preferences if something isn’t working out for them. Collecting data on employee preferences isn’t enough—you should advocate for your drivers’ preferences as much as you can. Ideally, you’re able to effect some change that impacts drivers. Even if you aren’t, the drivers will appreciate that you tried your best.

While conducting surveys, take the opportunity to pass along feedback to your OTR drivers.

It is a misconception that drivers aren’t interested in hearing feedback from their fleet.

If a driver expresses frustration about negative feedback from the company, it more likely has to do with how that feedback was given. Including positive feedback along with suggestions for improvement is a tried and tested method. Drivers want feedback on their performance to have a sense of accomplishment and to have guidelines and direction for improvement.

5. Training and Professional Development

Retaining OTR drivers means giving them reasons to stick around longer with the company.

Your drivers care about independence and freedom, but also professional success.

If drivers believe they’ll be doing the same OTR run with you for years, they are going to start looking elsewhere. Any retention program has opportunities for further training and professional development. Training could be for more advanced certifications and permits. Maybe your drivers are looking to add hazmat or tanker endorsements to their belt.

In addition, see to it that your company offers leadership and teamwork workshops. These help build strong transferable skills—they benefit any employee regardless of the type of work they do. These opportunities help OTR drivers build more skills that they can use in their current job. Rather than taking these skills from your workshops and then running to a different fleet, drivers will feel grateful that you invested in their professional development. This fosters a sense of loyalty and identity to the company and makes it more likely that drivers will stick around with you longer.

ultimate guide to retaining truck drivers

Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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How to Combat Truck Driver Turnover

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Trucking carriers and drivers are both intimately familiar with the extent of truck driver turnover that exists in the industry. Many trucking carriers have experienced a “revolving door”—constantly needing to hire new drivers because current drivers are leaving the company. Many drivers have also worked for several companies within the span of a few years and very few find a stable driving job that allows them to build a long relationship with the same company.

Turnover negatively impacts both drivers and carriers, yet it persists in the industry. It isn’t just limited to a few companies either but is widespread throughout the industry. Solving the driver turnover problem is a matter of understanding the causes and implementing a few solutions laid out below. Here’s everything you need to know about combating truck driver turnover.

Causes of turnover

To combat turnover, we first need to understand its causes. There are several reasons for turnover that are unique to the trucking industry. Instead of documenting all possible causes, let’s examine some of the most common and important ones for recruiters and fleet managers.

The Driver Shortage

First, turnover is directly related to the CDL driver shortage.

The shortage means there is increased competition between companies for the same small pool of drivers.

Trucking companies can incentivize drivers with higher pay, sign-on bonuses, and other benefits. Offering these benefits is the best practice for each individual company, as we have written about before, but ends up being bad for the industry as a whole. The recruiting process tends to be very quick. As a result, drivers know they could find work very quickly with another employer.

It may be easy to believe that drivers are simply going from job to job looking for the best quick deal they can find. However, it is important to remember that they are just like any other employees—at the end of the day, they are looking for a great job that also lasts for a long time.

Misattributed Challenges

Secondly, drivers may face unforeseen challenges on the job which they attribute to the company rather than the industry. This may be especially true for newer drivers who haven’t experienced problems like equipment break-down, canceled loads, bad weather, difficulty with shippers or receivers, and a host of other problems every trucker encounters.

It’s easy to blame the company rather than the nature of the job when these obstacles arise, especially if the company hasn’t been supportive or understanding.

At the same time, sometimes carriers really do deserve the blame for the driver’s low job satisfaction. Recruiters may have misrepresented the job details during the hiring process. Maybe drivers didn’t ask the right questions or recruiters failed to mention important details. Perhaps the recruiters over-promised benefits like pay and home time, or the company has been under-delivering. Either way, the result is the same: drivers feel cheated by the company and are motivated to look elsewhere for a better job. It’s important to remember that retention starts with good recruiting.

Combating turnover

While there is no cure-all to rid 100% of driver turnover, there are a number of things your company can do to increase retention and keep more drivers month after month.

First, recruiters need to go after the right drivers.

Yes, you want to find good talent, but it’s even more important to find the right fit.

If you think about it, by relying primarily on financial incentives, rival companies can lure away top talent with enticing pay packages. However, if you find the right drivers for you, they’ll stick around with your fleet longer regardless of what the competition can offer. Let’ say only 35% of drivers you hire in January stay till December. Recruiters and fleet managers need to find out which company characteristics persuaded those drivers to stay.

Get creative with potential solutions. Maybe your company offers daily or weekly home time that works well for younger drivers on regional runs. On the other hand, maybe your company is better at attracting veteran drivers who don’t mind OTR runs with home time twice a month. Whatever the case may be, the drivers that stay with your company are the ones who are a good fit. Find out what characteristics they share, how they match your fleet’s needs, and recruit more like them.

Start with Recruiting

High retention starts with good recruiting. Targeting drivers based on the characteristics that make them a good fit is the first and most important step. With this approach, recruiters won’t need to over-promise benefits which the company can’t deliver. There would be no reason why recruiting wouldn’t be a transparent process. Recruiters should aim to paint an accurate picture of the miles, runs, hauls, and regions needed. Be upfront and honest about pay and benefits, especially if they aren’t as generous as what other companies can offer. Think about it—sooner or later the drivers will know for themselves. When they do, they’ll decide whether they want a better deal or not. Why not save time for everyone and reduce turnover by finding a good match ahead of the game.

Build Company Culture

Finally, you’ll want to build some loyalty by forging the right company culture. Pay, benefits, and home time are all important, but not as strong as identity and a sense of belonging.

If you satisfy a driver’s need to feel important, appreciated, and valued, they may overlook a lower pay grade or weaker benefits package.

Engaging in driver appreciation is something that can be done every day and every week, by every employee of your company. Driver engagement surveys are a great way to discover what’s keeping them happy so you can keep doing it, and to show drivers that you really care about them as people and not just as employees.

Driver turnover is a monumental problem facing the industry, and directly stems from the driver shortage problem. Carriers and drivers both suffer when the employees aren’t a good match for the company. Combat your turnover problem by starting with good recruitment. Target drivers who are the right fit and be transparent about job characteristics and benefits. Build loyalty with drivers through engagement and appreciation.

ultimate guide to retaining truck drivers

Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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What to Evaluate When Assigning A Team Truck Driving Partner

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team truck driving partner

Employers put a lot of time and effort into hiring on new drivers and are always looking for ways to maximize the return on those hires. One way to keep trucks on the road longer each day is to leverage truck driving teams. Carriers often invest in the best trucks and equipment, pay premium rates, and give priority loads to team drivers. In return, they need each team truck driving partner to be stable and hard-working.

Some teams are already established and join a carrier with their team truck driving partner. But not always. Some carriers choose to play match-maker and seek to put together teams from their current roster of drivers. In those situations, carriers find that selecting the right teams to drive tandem takes some additional driver assessments. Here are some key things to evaluate when assigning team truck driving partners.

Compatibility

When putting together team truck driving partners, compatibility is key. The drivers’ personalities need to be compatible.

If the drivers have too many significant differences, they’re going to have a difficult time driving as a team.

In addition, their personal habits must be similar. If one loves driving to loud rock music, and the other needs quiet to keep their concentration, it’s going to be tough spending extended hours in the cab together. If either driver travels with a pet, the other driver needs to be able to tolerate that. Additionally, drivers need to have a general ability to get along, so extreme differences in background, religious beliefs, or what they like to do in their down-time should also be part of the conversation when assigning teams.

Driving Style & Preferences

Team drivers need to have driving styles and preferences that work well together. Putting together two night owls or two early birds, and they’re not going to be able to stretch their time on the road. They need to be compatible when it comes to work ethics as well. If one on the team likes to take a lot of breaks, and the other only wants to stop once or twice per shift, they’re going to be at odds.

The team truck driving partners should agree about whether they are willing to drive on weekends and holidays.

Each driver needs to be willing to make compromises on things. Being too rigid will make for tension over the miles. Lastly, their driving skills and experience should be similar as well, though a new driver could benefit from working with a more experienced driver. This could make that newer driver better over the long haul.

Every carrier is looking to maximize the return of time and effort put into developing their drivers. Leveraging team drivers is a great way to do that. Using these helpful tips when assigning team truck driving partners, can provide an addition to your overall strategy to maximize resources and return on your investments. These team drivers can be a long-term solution that will greatly benefit any trucking company.
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ultimate guide to retaining truck drivers

Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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5 Ideas for Improving Your Truck Driver Benefits Package

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3 Ideas for Improving Your Truck Driver Benefits Package

As a recruiter for truck drivers, you know that the driver shortage means that finding the best talent can be difficult. With turnover also being high, retaining drivers can be even more challenging. The best companies are offering great truck driver benefits in addition to good salaries and bonuses. While salary and cents per mile are important figures, drivers know they aren’t the whole package. The experienced driver recognizes that a strong benefits package can be more valuable than sign-on or referral bonuses.

Benefits also build a driver-centric company culture where drivers feel valued and respected. Word-of-mouth about benefits will soon spread to attract other drivers. While there are some industry standard benefits that you should definitely offer, you can also supplement them with your own unique additional benefits that reflect your company and brand. With so much on the line, here are three components to include to improve your truck driver benefits package.

1. Insurance and retirement plans

Providing health insurance and a 401(k)-match plan is an industry standard practice, so you don’t want to skip these for your drivers. Drivers know that the cost of health insurance has skyrocketed, so they’ll be looking for employer-based plans as better alternatives to individual plans on the health insurance marketplace. Any package worth it’s weight should include medical, prescription, vision and dental. Look for insurance policies with reduced premium incentives, low co-pays and a health reimbursement account deposit for wellness. Dental plans should include standard preventive care (such as teeth cleaning) fully or almost fully covered. Vision coverage should ideally cover an annual eye-exam with a low co-pay, and some allowance for prescription glasses or contact lenses.

Drivers will be concerned about the cost of health insurance for their families, so most of your standard packages should provide coverage for their spouses and dependents

Consider including flexible spending accounts, which give drivers the option to put aside pre-tax income from their paychecks to pay for non-reimbursed medical, dental, and vision expenses.

Most trucking companies will include a 401(k)-matching plan for retirement savings as well. Drivers will first be able to place a percentage of their pay into the plan pre-tax. The matching amount by the company can vary based on the percentage. Some companies boast being able to match 100% on the first 4-5% of salary deferred. The exact specifications of your retirement and insurance options will depend on how strong your company is financially. Just keep in mind that drivers will be mindful about noticing whether the company is investing considerable resources into benefits packages for their employees.

2. Lifestyle Benefits

While retirement and insurance are industry-standard benefits, you can craft your own additional benefits based on unique resources and needs.

Many drivers are attracted to benefits which allow them greater flexibility in their lifestyle, both on and off the road.

For example, more drivers would like to be able to work in larger cabins with more personal space. Fleet amenities such as kitchen appliances and satellite radio/TV allow for comfort, cooking, and entertainment. Your company should already be investing in the best truck equipment, and many of these will come fully equipped. A pet policy lets drivers with a canine or feline companion bring them along on the road. See if your company can craft a pet policy with small restrictions on a weight limit and a refundable pet deposit.

Similarly, some drivers would like to bring their spouse or children along with them on the road and view this as a major benefit. Drivers will view a passenger policy by your company as a great advantage when considering their home life and how to spend more time with family.

Paid-time off is another important benefit for work-life balance. Some companies differentiate between vacation time and sick time, while others offer a more general PTO category. These PTO days should increase per every year worked, and ideally, roll over to the next year.

3. Driver Loyalty Programs

Finally, consider creating a driver loyalty discount program, or similar package. Offer rewards or benefits to drivers in the form of points based on credit card purchases, or discounts at select partner locations across the country. For example, your company could partner with a nation-wide hotel or restaurant chain for great deals. Similarly, you could partner with a credit card company to pair with the rewards points. Such perks will help drivers feel valued as they look for places to stay or eat across the country.

4. Tuition Benefits

Finally, some companies have been offering college tuition coverage and college scholarships for drivers and their families. The tuition plan is simple—for as long as drivers remain with the fleet, the company will pay for a portion of college tuition and room/board expenses for the dependents of drivers. As you can imagine, this is a very appealing program for drivers and addresses retention concerns extremely well. In addition, your company can offer a handful of college scholarships every year based on a number of factors. Many drivers will want to send their children to college but will consider the cost of higher education to be prohibitive.

Offering college tuition aid programs signals to drivers that you value them and their families’ priorities and can help give the gift of education

While these options can be financially taxing, they would be considered one of the greatest benefits for drivers in your company which goes a long way toward retaining them and building loyalty.

5. Other Perks

In addition to the standard benefits of insurance and retirement plans, many companies offer other optional perks. These optional plans won’t be used by every driver, but rather depends on their personal and financial situations. Offering these as an alternative will show drivers you value their needs, and it won’t break the bank. Accident insurance and critical illness insurance plans are for those rare circumstances where things go drastically wrong on the road. They communicate to drivers that you want them to know that you have their back.

In addition to insurance, consider offering a CDL legal defender plan to drivers. Your team of lawyers can represent a driver and their claims in the rare possibility of a legal scenario. Offering short-term disability means if drivers get injured on the road, they have financial peace of mind. This extends to drivers who must be away from work for a short period of time. Some companies offer voluntary life insurance plans for additional financial security. Engage in conversations with your drivers about which of these optional benefits would be useful to them.

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Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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7 Truck Driver Appreciation Ideas

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One of the biggest complaints from truck drivers is not about salary or benefits, but rather that they don’t feel appreciated by their fleets. Drivers want to feel like an integral part of the team, not just another number or a cog in the machine. National Truck Driver Appreciation Week in September is a great time to set aside and show drivers your appreciation, but it doesn’t have to stop there.

Driver appreciation can and should be a year-round activity. After all, appreciation is a key component of driver retention. So whether you’re a recruiter, dispatcher, fleet manager, or executive, take some time to show your drivers how much you and your company value them. Here are seven truck driver appreciation ideas you can use anytime.

1. Use Social Media

One of the simplest ways to show driver appreciation is by shout-outs on social media. Many fleets engage in these already and highlight different drivers individually. Make yours more meaningful by making the social media posts personalized to each driver. You can include the reasons why you think this driver is unique and special and has made an impact on the job and the company. Testimonials from other drivers and company leadership about their work will make the posts more unique. Photos are a must, but if you want to go the extra mile put together a quick one-minute video of gratitude.

2. Gift Giving

Gifts for truck drivers seem like an obvious choice to show appreciation but be careful as these can go horribly wrong. If you choose generic gifts or don’t put much thought or meaning behind the gift it can end up backfiring.

Just like Christmas gifts to extended family, the trick is to make each gift personalized to each driver.

Something that will help the everyday lives of truck drivers will also help them feel valued. For example, some drivers may be passionate about healthy eating options, so consider a crockpot or recipe book. Others may be interested in the latest tech, so Bluetooth headsets or XM radio would be good options. Gift cards are okay but find out what the driver’s favorite restaurants or stores are first.

3. Truck Servicing

Maintaining and cleaning the equipment is an essential part of the job for drivers. Arrange to wash windows or tires or find other simple ways to clean and service the trucks before the drivers can get to it. Leave a friendly note of your gratitude to surprise them. Even gift cards for truck servicing or cleaning will be appreciated. Don’t forget that a clean and well-maintained truck is a great marketing tool, and thus is a benefit to both driver and company. Drivers will also appreciate anything you can do to make sure the receiving company will be unloading the truck so that they don’t have to.

4. Thank You Notes

Sometimes the simplest ways of showing gratitude are the most effective. Hand-written thank you notes are a time-honored tradition of showing thanks all around the world. Make sure to make your notes personalized to each driver, highlighting their strengths and what makes them such a valuable part of the company. Having it signed by multiple people increases the impact. Ideally, a note like this could come directly from company leadership. Notes on special occasions like birthdays or workplace anniversaries are a must, but a surprise note out of nowhere is even more special.

If you want to go the extra mile, consider writing one note for the driver and a separate note to send to their families.

They are usually the ones behind the scenes supporting the drivers and sacrificing home time for the job, so a note to them will be much appreciated.

5. Treat Lunch

Another simple way to show your appreciation for drivers is to just cover a meal for them. Taking them out personally to lunch when they are in town will be something they will look forward to and boast about. Find out what some of their favorite restaurants are and let them know it is covered by the company. For greater impact, you can have company leadership cook and serve a meal for many drivers together all at once. Inquiring about favorite dishes or bringing your own homemade recipes adds a special touch. If you’re unable to schedule something to treat a driver to lunch, arrange for packed lunches for drivers to take on the road with them.

6. Giveaways

While the occasional small gift will be much appreciated, you can create some buzz and excitement about giveaways that fosters more engagement. This works best for larger and more expensive gifts. Usually, giveaways will be used for special events or occasions such as National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. That said, you can pleasantly surprise drivers by engaging in this at any time during the year. Drivers can enter into drawings to win prizes covered by the company, such as new tech or gadgets. Make sure to highlight the winners and encourage more people to enter the drawing next time. Giveaways can be a popular way to build some driver engagement.

7. Solicit Feedback and Send Encouragement

Drivers want to feel part of the team and that means listening to their feedback and acting on it. Nothing will make a driver feel more engaged in the company than seeing their suggestion implemented. Ask them to propose ideas for potential solutions to challenges faced on the job, and the appreciation will take care of itself.

Making feedback and encouragement a two-way dialogue will boost engagement and show your gratitude to drivers.

Inform your company’s leadership about accomplishments or efforts by individual drivers and copy the drivers on email. Texting or emailing drivers every once in a while also keeps morale high. Best of all is encouragement and appreciation which is publicly viewed and recognized.

As you may have noticed, most of these appreciation ideas are not objects or things. While gifts and tangible objects are nice, most people place greater value on more abstract acts of gratitude. Showing appreciation doesn’t have to be time or cost extensive and can be done at any time. Acts of appreciation should focus on showing drivers that you respect them and their contributions to the fleet. Showing truck driver appreciation establishes trust and respect and builds loyalty to your company.

Quick Guide to Truck Driver Appreciation

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Quick Guide to Truck Driver Appreciation

Truck driver recognition is a great way to show your drivers they are appreciated. This quick guide helps employers learn about truck driver appreciation and how to make drivers feel valued.

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