Show Your Drivers You Care! Put a Healthy Trucking Kiosk in Your Terminal
 Quote of the Day
“It’s the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.”
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By Marvin Shefsky  Turnover is at an all-time low. Is it because some carriers have improved their retention efforts so that drivers now love and appreciate their companies like never before? That may have something to do with it. When attitudes inside the walls change for the better, drivers naturally feel better about the outfits they pull for. When the economy begins to strengthen and turn around, the carriers who kept their eye on the retention ball will be poised to grow and prosper. When the industry’s recruiting efforts kick back into high gear, those carriers will be well positioned to recruit the best drivers and owner-operators for the least amount of money. On the other hand, carriers who are enjoying the historically low 65-percent driver turnover rate only because current market conditions have slammed the brakes on job-hoppers are in for a rude awakening once the economy starts to turn around. The slowdown may be hiding the fact that 50 percent or more of your current drivers are ready to jump ship, but they’re staying put because they can’t find what even looks like greener pastures. Trust me, they will be leaving you in droves the minute the economy shows signs of life. Of course, carriers that have more stringent hiring standards and good retention practices in place will not be interested in hiring from this group of high-turnover drivers, but these drivers will end up somewhere and the churning will continue. I’m not saying anything here that most of us don’t already know, but most of us just choose to look the other way rather than address the problem. Why wait for that day to come when those unfaithful drivers choose to leave you? Why not prune the deadwood now and replace them with better people during a buyer’s market when the quality is out there? I’ve been listening in on the Sirius trucker talk show radio “Road Dog.” Intelligent, retainable drivers have a lot to say in the privacy of their cabs. I am hearing more and more how unappreciated these quality people feel, yet they continue to stay with their current employer because other carriers are not actively seeking them out. If I were still in the recruiting business I would be going after this market of high-quality drivers (in normal conditions untouchable and unreachable) like there was no tomorrow, because there may never be a better time than today. Better, retainable drivers have more self-esteem than turnstile drivers. They are more likely to respond to print advertising in OTR and Pro Trucker magazines that say, “We are looking for the best. If you have a good safety record and no more than two job changes in the last five years, we want to talk to you.” An ad like that says you are looking for quality, not quantity, and in this day and age, that is exactly what you can get. Marvin Shefsky is the CEO of Ramp Media Group and the publisher of Inside Trucking Online. -- Marvin Shefsky, Publisher/CEO
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To learn more about how to put our team to work on your driver recruitment advertising needs,
call our advertising sales team at 800-878-0311 or go to: RampMediaGroup.com.
