Rethinking Your Driver Recruitment Budget

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driver recruitment

Budget planning is one of the most important jobs at any company. A limited amount of funds is available for each team, and they need to be spent wisely. When working through your plans for hiring drivers, your recruitment budget is a critical piece of that puzzle. But when you step back and look at the process and what you’re actually spending, maybe it’s a good time to also rethink your driver recruitment budget.

First Things First

do you have a good handle on your actual budget needs? It could be as simple as knowing your turnover rate, your anticipated need for additional drivers above turnover, and then multiply that by your current cost per hire. Simple, right? Could be that easy, but it’s probably a little bit more complex than that if you’re working through this for the first time. Especially when turnover rates keep climbing, and the driver shortage continues to grow. These things impact revenue because trucks are sitting idle, and once revenue decreases, assigned budgets can unexpectedly change at any time.

Cut Out What’s Not Working

The best thing to do when looking at your driver recruitment process is to figure out where to cut out waste. Let’s start with the type of drivers your looking to hire. Here you want to be highly strategic in your approach, to attract the perfect candidates. You don’t want to simply generate hundreds of leads only to find out that they don’t meet even half of your qualifications. If that’s what you’re doing, you probably also know the amount of time it’s taking for your team to work that massive pile of ice-cold leads. It might be a good idea to try and find a better place to spend that money. And a better way to use all of those wasted hours.

Using your historical data of what’s worked best, where have you found the best matches? The best retention? Those are the places you want to ensure your recruitment budget is maximized.

Part of any good budgeting strategy is tracking everything related to that budget. You should have at least a simple tracker of costs vs. return on each tactic, best case on a monthly basis (if not weekly). Once you’re sure the low performing tactics are no longer part of your plan, you can work to reallocate those funds to tactics that produce the best matches. Who knows, saving those hours and dollars might allow for improvements in employee benefits or salaries that will make you more competitive down the road.

Stop Making the Same Driver Recruitment Mistakes

At the end of the day, a recruitment budget shouldn’t be focused strictly on volume. Producing thousands of unqualified leads for your fleet, just bogs you down and creates capacity challenges throughout your day.

Instead, a driver recruitment budget should be focused on making meaningful connections with drivers that you are able to sustain in the long run.

It should be about focusing on spending in areas that will actually produce qualified matches for your fleet, instead of just trying to get warm bodies in your trucks.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

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.

Get the Ebook

Why is Converting Truck Driver Leads So Hard?

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truck driver leads

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.

truck driver job description template

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Truck Driver Job Description Template

Your job description can either convert or lose applicants. Follow this template to make sure you’re on the right track.

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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.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

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.

Get the Ebook

4 Challenges Facing Trucking Recruiters

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Trucking recruiters are invaluable to their carriers. Recruiters find and interview leads, identify top talent, send them job offers, and shepherd drivers through training and orientation. Without strong recruiters, truck driving jobs would remain unfilled and trucks would be sitting idle. Recruiters are especially important for a tough industry like trucking which faces unique obstacles. Here are 4 challenges facing trucking recruiters.

1. Driver Shortage

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: the biggest challenge for anyone in this industry is the driver shortage. The truck driver shortage has increased, and the industry is lacking about 60,000 drivers. The driver shortage will continue and grow over the next few years, even taking into account a rise in autonomous trucks. While the driver shortage affects the entire industry and economy, it’s a major challenge for recruiters. Finding the best talent for your carriers is extremely difficult when the pool of candidates is narrow. Worse still, these candidates are courted by many carriers simultaneously, so it’s difficult to entice them with something the top carriers can’t match.

2. Unqualified Leads

Even when you find drivers in the midst of the shortage, about 50% of your leads will not be viable. Recruiting is a matching game—you can’t just pick any driver for any kind of trucking job. While sorting through dozens of candidates you’ll find that over half are unqualified, uninterested, inexperienced, or otherwise inappropriate for the job. Meanwhile, you’ll have wasted time and precious recruiting budget on pursuing dead leads.

Instead of recruiting blindly, what you really need is a stronger matching or screening system.

3. High Turnover

As if the driver shortage wasn’t enough, trucking recruiters also deal with high turnover. Once a carrier finally lands a top driver, it’s not as if they will always stick around for long. In fact, many fleets are losing more drivers than they recruit each year. Carriers can use incentives like signing bonuses, but those aren’t geared toward retention. Strong retention starts with strong recruiting, so it helps if you only hire drivers who are a good match. Survey your drivers to better meet their needs and match their values will also help reduce the chances they are enticed by job offers from rivals. Still, building a solid company culture which nurtures driver loyalty can be a long-term investment that is easier said than done.

4. Budget Allocation

You only have so much money you can spend on recruiting. What and where to spend that money on are challenging questions facing all trucking recruiters. Today there are many more recruiting channels than ever before and carriers want to spread a wide net, reaching as many drivers as possible. At the same time, you may be wasting money if you allocate it toward recruiting methods that just aren’t effective. Measuring your recruiting effectiveness is an essential task that can help you allocate your budget efficiently, reach more drivers, and save money. Nevertheless, spending that kind of research is time-consuming in itself.

What recruiters really need are strong tools which help them recruit very efficiently through different channels suited for location and job type

 

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

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.

Get the Ebook

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.
truckers.

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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4 Mistakes to Avoid on Truck Driver Job Board Websites

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There’s a multitude of choices out there for CDL drivers when it comes to searching for a new truck driving job. Jobs are being advertised every day in truck stops and magazines. Add to that the barrage of emails, text messages, and phone calls drivers get daily, the messaging can become overwhelming. And definitely confusing.

An employer’s goal should be to get their job posting in front of drivers in a marketplace once the driver is ready to receive it, and where the driver is comfortable giving out their personal information to connect. Truck drivers should trust that the job board will help find the best matches for the specific type of job they want. But that doesn’t always happen. Here are 4 pitfalls to know before using another truck driver job board website.

1. Quantity Over Quality

Many job boards pride themselves on the premise of “quantity over quality”. It’s all about the volume of leads. Carriers want to find pools of available drivers to fill their open jobs. But does more always mean better?

Some job boards claim to have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even a million+ drivers. But if all of those “leads” don’t have anything to do with the types of jobs you’re seeking to fill, what difference does it make?

You’re going to still need to do a lot of work to sift through that pile of names to try and find someone who fits your needs. Focusing on quality over quantity has many benefits. Although the approach requires having a more methodical recruitment system, it can end up saving you time, money, and energy in the long-run.

2. Driver Privacy / Information Security

Hiring managers want more than just a name and phone number to start a conversation with a prospective driver. A completed DOT application is probably your ideal place to start. However, for drivers to feel comfortable providing more than some basic personal data, those drivers need to trust that their information is safe and secure and not going to be sent out or sold without their knowledge.

Job boards are notorious for sharing collected information with third-parties.

You should make sure you’re listing your jobs with reputable services so that drivers are willing to share more information with you prior to connecting with them. This helps ensure your search for a candidate starts off on the right foot.

3. Driver-Focused

Truck driver job boards often don’t have the drivers’ needs first. If the focus isn’t about what’s in it for the driver, the job postings on those boards might not get much traction if they don’t grab the driver’s attention and keep it.

Driver-centric recruiting techniques result in the most fruitful leads. When searching for job boards, be sure that they fit the drivers needs with the way they work and the way that they interact with them. Being mobile friendly, easy to use, and most importantly, speaking to drivers in a way they want to be spoken to, are things that make drivers feel like a particular truck driver job board is a good for them.

4. Qualified Matches

Truck drivers only decide to go looking for a new job when they no longer feel that their current job is meeting their needs. Those needs might be financial, driving preferences, work / life balance considerations, time away from home, or benefits related.

No matter what the reason, any good truck driver job board should know what the driver is looking for, as well as what the carrier needs are in order to produce a good match. A match that is qualified on each side’s preferences.

If you take a little bit more time up-front to be clear on what you’re looking for and what type of company the job is for, you can find yourself further down the hiring path faster, with the perfect candidate for your next hire.

If you’ve already spent too much time searching for truck driver job boards that you hope will find you great candidates to hire, we invite you to try something different and register with Drive My Way. We pride ourselves in standing out in the market, focusing on matching you with the right driver for your job instead of providing you with a giant list of “leads” that waste your time. If you’re ready to try something different and recruit for retention, schedule a demo of our platform today.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

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.

Get the Ebook

3 Mistakes to Stop Making When Recruiting Truck Drivers

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recruiting truck drivers

In an industry like trucking, a few bad mistakes when recruiting truck drivers can set a company back significantly. As a result, you might find yourself leaving your trucks unoccupied shortly after you fill them. Here are 3 mistakes to avoid when recruiting truck drivers for your CDL jobs.

1. Stop Having a Long Response Time

In this highly-competitive market, it’s critical that recruiters reduce their response time to drivers as much as possible. When a driver inquires about a job, it’s essential that the recruiter contacts that driver within minutes of receiving the expressed interest.

The reasoning is drivers are contacted constantly by countless companies about a variety of jobs. Waiting too long to respond to their inquiry will increase the probability that the driver won’t remember your job. It’s hard to stand out in the mix of everything else they expressed interest in.

According to industry research, recruiters who contact drivers within 5 minutes of receiving their inquiry drastically increase the probability of speaking to the driver.

The longer you take to contact your prospects, the more likely it is they will be driving for a different fleet. As we’ve mentioned in our Top 7 Reasons Truck Drivers Decline Your CDL Jobs eBook, the number one reason drivers decline is because they got another job faster.

2. Stop Sorting Through Unqualified Leads

Recruiters don’t have time to waste. Their task lists are typically never-ending and a variety of tasks claim every minute of their work day. However, many recruiters tell us that sorting through unqualified leads for their CDL jobs wastes countless hours each week.

That’s because most truck driver recruiting platforms are focused on delivering as many leads as possible instead of only delivering qualified drivers that actually match with the job.

It’s frustrating for a recruiter to sort through hundreds of leads each day.  That’s especially true if there’s nothing to show for it at the end of the week. Recruiters that focus on finding the right candidate for their position will not only improve their hiring process, but will also start recruiting for retention.

However, it’s important to note that attracting qualified candidates for a job requires clarity. A company to clearly specify what they are looking for. The job description and advertisement must explicitly state compensation, home time, benefits, etc. in order to match with a driver that is truly looking for that job from a professional and personal standpoint.

3. Stop Ignoring Driver Feedback

Companies that are dedicated to having and maintaining a great reputation constantly listen to drivers, make adjustments to their strategy, and revise their recruiting methods accordingly.

Too often we hear about drivers who share their feedback with a company only to never see it implemented. Now, we fully recognize that not all driver feedback is applicable. But, when a recruiter receives a gold nugget from a driver, using it to improve should be the action taken.

In addition, companies often receive feedback from drivers in regards to pay, home time, etc. on a variety of advertisements they deploy for their jobs. These are a great way to see inside a driver’s mind. Then, you can more objectively assess how your own company stacks up in the market. Take this real-time feedback seriously, engage with the drivers, and make changes when applicable.

Avoiding these common truck driver recruiting mistakes will set employers up for success in the market. Employers will fill their trucks faster, and better yet, keep them full longer.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

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.

Get the Ebook

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.

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.

Get the Ebook

How to Increase the Quality of CDL Truck Driver Leads

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truck driver leads

There are two main approaches to bringing in truck driver leads in the industry. The first focuses on sheer numbers. Cast as wide a net as possible and you’ll have dozens of potential leads to consider for open jobs. The second focuses on lead quality over quantity. This can be a more time-consuming and tedious process, and you’ll have to narrow the search a bit. Then you focus your efforts on the high-quality applicants to convert them to drivers for your fleet.

Taking the quality approach ultimately wastes less money and time. While we aren’t going to solve the quality versus quantity debate, we do know that there are a few things you can do as a recruiter to increase the quality of your leads. Here are four strategies to focus on to improve the quality of your truck driver leads.

1. Narrow the Candidate Pool

Focusing on quality means that not every job applicant should receive the same amount of time-investment on your part. Once you narrow down the pool of candidates, you can focus more on the high-quality leads rather than lose time and energy on candidates who are not a good fit for you.

Finding the right fit can be made easier by using qualifying questions in the job application and initial contact.

There are many questions you can ask to decide whether candidates are a good fit for your organization and for the jobs you have available. Consider asking about years of experience, type of experience, driving record, region of operation, and preferences about home time. After learning this information, you can easily sort out the candidates who don’t fit the profile your fleet is looking for. Narrowing the pool as early in the game as possible will save you more time, energy, and money on not pursuing leads who don’t meet your criteria. You can and should save these leads for future reference as you may want to contact them in the future.

2. Lead Scoring

Now that you’ve narrowed down the pool, you can focus on the leads who are strong prospects for the job. Eliminating them using qualifying questions is just the first step though. The leads who are remaining aren’t all equally suited for the job.

You have limited time and resources to spend on pursuing a lead, so use lead scoring to help prioritize who to talk to first.

You can assign lead scores based on some of the same criteria which are attributes of the jobs you are trying to fill or based on the attributes of the drivers themselves. Which of your truck driver leads has experience with ice road trucking? Who only drives local? Which ones prefer over-the-road or team driving? Match these with the jobs you are looking to fill. Assigning each prospect a score will help you keep track of how much time and energy you should invest in pursuing them. Follow the highest scoring leads first and soonest, at the expense of the lower scored ones if needed.

3. Understand Why Drivers Decline Jobs

Okay, so you’ve eliminated the leads who aren’t suited for your fleet, and you’ve prioritized the rest based on your lead scoring system. Now you need a method to contact them fast. The longer you take to contact your prospects, the more likely it is they will be driving for a different fleet. We’ve written earlier about how the top reason drivers decline jobs is because they recently accepted another position which was offered to them first. This is another reason to implement lead scoring and prioritization.

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4. Contact Drivers Quickly

Losing your leads to the competition is bad enough but losing top candidates is worse. If you wait too long, you’re more likely to lose the best candidates first. Then, you might be stuck with the prospects toward the middle or bottom of the pool. Use your lead scoring system to prioritize which leads to contact first. Then, focus on improving your contact rate. Start the conversation with prompt initial contact. After, follow up with more details and questions at a convenient time for them. Keep moving each lead through the recruitment pipeline, but start from the top of the list, and focus your energies there.

Focusing on truck driver lead quality over quantity has many benefits. Although the approach requires having a much more methodical recruitment system and some start-up cost, it can end up saving you time, money, and energy in the long-run.

You want to make sure you are not wasting time by pursuing the drivers who are wrong for your fleet. Regardless of which approach you take, there are strategies you can use to improve the quality of your leads. Narrow the pool, prioritize prospects using lead scoring, understand why drivers decline jobs, and contact drivers quickly. Each of these strategies helps maximize the chances of your fleet landing quality drivers.

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5 CDL Truck Driver Retention Strategies

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4 CDL Truck Driver Retention Strategies

Recruiting great drivers is tough enough, but retaining top drivers is even tougher. While the driver shortage is the main obstacle to recruitment, turnover is the reason it is difficult to retain truck drivers. It’s no secret that the industry faces high turnover rates. According to some surveys, over 50% of newly hired drivers will leave their carriers within the first six months. Implementing strong driver retention strategies is critical to the success of your fleet.

Apart from offering higher and higher salaries and compensation packages, the real answer to the turnover problem is driver engagement. Drivers who are engaged with the job and the company are better and safer drivers and are more likely to stick around for longer. Here are four CDL truck driver retention strategies to maximize driver engagement.

1. Listen to and Act on Driver Feedback

Drivers want to feel like their voice matters and that they are being heard. Having strong communication with drivers is just the beginning. Make sure everyone in your organization, especially dispatchers, are aware of the importance of good communication with drivers. Fleet managers should regularly solicit driver feedback on a variety of issues, especially the types of jobs, routes, hauls, and schedules they prefer. Asking drivers for their feedback on how satisfactory the job has been so far also shows that the company cares about them as individuals. There are dozens of questions you can ask in driver engagement surveys.

However, asking drivers for their feedback isn’t enough. Acting on driver feedback is what distinguishes a great company from a good company.

Fleet managers should always aim to improve something for the sake of a driver’s preference unless they have a very good reason not to. And when you can’t act on their feedback, let them know why that’s the case. You’ll be surprised how understanding and appreciative they’ll be that you made the effort. When you interact with drivers as partners in problem solving, it will make them feel more engaged with the company and valued as employees. This strengthens driver loyalty and makes it less likely that they will leave the fleet.

2. Training and Professional Development

One of the reasons drivers will leave a company is because of inadequate training or because they feel their professional needs aren’t being met by the company. By making training and development an integral part of the relationship with drivers, truck driver retention will naturally increase. In addition to preparing them for the road, a proper onboarding and training program signals to employees that you can invest in their careers. They’ll be more likely to stick with your company if you provide continual professional development opportunities after the initial training.

Every three months or so, drivers should be eligible to engage in professional development seminars, workshops, and opportunities to connect with other drivers and learn from them.

One simple example is a mentorship program. Fleet managers can pair new drivers with experienced veterans based on their needs. The experienced truckers can mentor the younger employees on the joys and challenges of being a truck driver. This is a benefit for novices as it will help them improve and address their weaknesses. It is also a benefit for the veteran drivers who can also find mentorship extremely rewarding. Suddenly you’ve taken something that’s of benefit to the company and made it personally meaningful to employees. Retention will take care of itself once you’ve helped drivers feel more professionally engaged in their careers.

3. Equipment and Maintenance

There are few things drivers can’t stand more than having to deal with faulty equipment and vehicles. From their perspective, they’ve been hired for the driving job, not the maintenance job. Investing in quality equipment and providing maintenance is one of the best driver retention strategies.

If you don’t invest in quality equipment and trucks, it will frustrate your drivers for several reasons. First, it signals to drivers that the company isn’t willing to spend money on the trucks which drivers will be operating and often living out of. The optics can look really poor if your company is perceived to spend considerably on other areas at the expense of equipment and trucks. Second, drivers will be frustrated if fleet managers routinely expect drivers to address maintenance issues on the equipment. While the occasional minor maintenance issue might be fixed by the drivers, fleet managers shouldn’t expect that to become the norm. This is one of the top reasons why drivers decline jobs or leave jobs.

In addition to having regular inspections conducted, there are many things fleet managers can do to address maintenance issues. Implementing a fleet preventative maintenance plan will help you tackle the issues before they grow.

Some ELD solutions also automatically monitor fault codes through connection with vehicle diagnostics. The ELD will alert fleet managers about maintenance issues directly. Remember that drivers aren’t expert or trained mechanics. If drivers perceive that the expectation is to either deal with driving faulty vehicles or repair them themselves, it won’t be long before they start considering leaving. Make sure your drivers know you stay on top of maintenance issues and watch truck driver retention become easier.

4. Driver Safety and Empowerment

Part of a fleet manager’s responsibility is to ensure safety and improve the working conditions for drivers. Building a culture of safety is necessary baseline that every company should strive for. You can signal to your drivers that safety is a priority by investing in compliance measures and driver coaching, rather than paying regulatory fines. If you emphasize to drivers that their actions matter, they will feel empowered to make safer decisions.

Back up your words with rewards and recognition for safe drivers. You should try to use the carrot more than the stick. Incentivize good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior.

Drivers with the best safety scores and lowest unsafe driving behavior can be offered financial or other rewards. In addition to encouraging drivers to be safer on the road, it also boosts loyalty and retention.

5. Use Technology to Your Advantage

Embrace new technology like front-facing dashcams and electronic logging devices. In case of accidents, these devices can help you see things from the drivers’ perspective. Protect your drivers from false claims when they aren’t at fault. Building an empowerment culture for drivers goes beyond just protecting them.

Solicit driver feedback on what which working conditions they’d like to see improved. You’d be surprised at how many small requests from drivers you are able to easily fulfill.

For many, it may be the hours on the road, the number of stops allowed, home time etc. Finding small ways to keep drivers happy, or having them know that you’re trying, goes a long way to building loyalty and retention.

Drivers leave jobs for many reasons. Higher salary and better benefits are not the only factors which affect driver turnover. Building an engaged and loyal driver base can be easier than offering the highest salaries. Often, the small things add up and drivers will realize they are happier at your company than at a competitor who pays more but doesn’t care more. Implement these four CDL truck driver retention strategies to help your drivers stay for years.

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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