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Show Your Drivers You Care! Put a Healthy Trucking Kiosk in Your Terminal
“There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.”
– B. C. Forbes (1880-1954), editor and founder of Forbes Magazine (1917)
Join Us on the Healthy Pathway
By Marvin Shefsky
I know what some of you must be thinking: This is supposed to be a driver recruitment and retention newsletter, so what’s up with all of these stories on driver health and wellness? The fact is – and as many of the stories in this issue point out – driver health is not only one of the most important issues facing the trucking industry at a time when the nation’s fleet of drivers is aging, it is also one of the most important issues from a driver retention standpoint.
Sure, we all know that drivers want more miles, more money and more home time. We also know they want more respect and to be “treated like a person and not a number.” Along those same lines, they also want to know that the company they work for cares about them, which brings up some key questions:
1. At the end of the day, is there anything more important to anyone than his or her health?
2. Is there any better way to show your drivers how much you care about them than providing them with access to free programs, equipment and information designed to improve their health?
3. If your company provides these free programs and the collective health of your drivers subsequently improves, would your fleet of healthier, happier drivers tend to stay with your company longer and be more productive?
I’m guessing the answers are yes, yes and a resounding YES!
When we launched our Healthy Trucking Initiative in November 2006, we set out on a new path that no one in the trucking industry had gone down before. The collective poor health of the nation’s three million truck drivers was the elephant in the room – everyone knew about it but no one wanted to talk about it. Someone had to step up to the plate. We did.
Today, less than two years later, HTI isn’t just a noble idea; it’s a complete program with real teeth that’s positively impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of drivers on a daily basis. We started out by placing 100 blood pressure kiosks in truck stops around the country to see if they would be used. They were – 150,000 to 250,000 times a month. Now our goal is to have 700 blood pressure machines out there in order to enable even more drivers to start down the path to better health. We also promoted Blood Pressure (BP) DownShift®, a program from Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation specifically designed for drivers. The result: thousands of drivers are now involved in this outstanding wellness program.
The success of the blood pressure machines soon attracted the attention of carriers. One of our customers asked if we could arrange to have a BP machine at their headquarters so their drivers could have even easier access to the vital diagnostic machine. We did, and the BP machine was an instant hit. Today, more than 30 of our trucking customers have BP kiosks at their headquarters or terminals, and the numbers continue to go up. However, the best number of all is “0.” That’s how many BP kiosks have been returned by truck stops or carriers. Clearly, the kiosks are working – for drivers and companies alike.
More recently, we’ve added two more critical pieces to the HTI effort: a discount prescription drug card and a program called Access My Records (AMR) in which drivers can have all of their medical records online, updated and available for instant use by doctors in the case of a medical emergency a thousand miles away from the driver’s home. Like everything else associated with the Healthy Trucking Initiative including the PB tests and Downshift program, the drug card is available to drivers for free. The AMR program (http://healthytruckinginfo.com/HTI/medical-id-card.cfm) is free for the first six months. If a driver elects to renew, it’s just $25 a year.
I should point out that the discount drug card provides average savings of 15 percent on brand name drugs and 40 percent off generic drugs. My daughter Jenny used the Healthy Trucker discount drug card on one of her generic drug prescriptions, and the cost was less than her co-pay. The cards are available for entire fleets and cover families as well as drivers. Again, all at no charge whatsoever.
In support of our Healthy Trucking Initiative, we’ve published dozens of health-related articles in our two driver recruitment magazines, Over the Road and Pro Trucker, and in this newsletter, and we’ve also created an online Healthy Trucking forum where drivers can share tips on healthy living on the road. We’re also looking into establishing a “Healthy Trucking Association” for health-conscious carriers, and we’ve recently rebranded our magazines as the “healthy” choice for drivers. I don’t know if this will generate more driver response, but we can virtually guarantee that the response will be from more health-conscious drivers.
We’re proud to have pioneered this healthy path, and we’re proud to continue to lead the way. We invite you and your company to join us in this most worthwhile journey. Call your account rep or call or e-mail me (my direct line is 678-739-0920) to see how your company can get involved in the Healthy Trucking Initiative. The opportunities are endless, the results priceless.
Marvin Shefsky is the CEO of Ramp Media Group and the publisher of Inside Trucking Online.
-- Marvin Shefsky, Publisher/CEO
(Marvin@otrprotrucker.com)
