Volume 1, Issue 2

In this issue:

How to Shorten Your Hiring Cycle and Improve the Quality of Driver Hired

My Point

Drivers Sound Off

Carriers Up the Ante

Driver Recruitment Center Ready to Roll

Seminar to Focus on Owner-Operator Issues

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Our Sponsors

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Question of the Day

After a solid driving record, what's the first thing you look for in a new hire?

• Personal appearance. If applicants don't take care of themselves, chances are they won't take care of our freight and equipment.

• Dependability: I don't care what they look like as long as they make their pick-ups and deliveries on time.

• Independence. Driving over-the-road can be a tough, lonely life, and there's no one around to hold your hand.

• Common sense. A little street smarts and common sense can take a driver a long way in this business.

• Good attitude. Attitude is everything.

Click Here to Vote

Results

In our last newsletter, we asked readers the following question:

Is there a driver shortage?

Here are the results:

• Yes, and it's only going to get worse in the future: 59 percent

• No, there are plenty of people with CDLs looking for work: 15 percent

• You're asking the wrong question. There are plenty of drivers, there just aren't enough "quality" drivers: 15 percent

• There are plenty of drivers, but they're moving from job to job. The real problem is turnover: 11 percent

Note: Inside Trucking polls are surveys of those who choose to participate and are therefore not valid statistical samples. We will present the results in the next newsletter.

Quote of the Day

"Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader."

-- General George S. Patton

ARCHIVES

The driver market is getting extremely tight and we are seeing carriers that historically don’t have a problem filling their seats advertising for the first time. As capacity demands continue to increase, carriers will add trucks to their fleet, ultimately creating an even tighter driver market. Recruiters are struggling to find the numbers and quality of drivers they need.

Many recruiting departments exacerbate the situation with flawed recruiting processes. I have heard it said, “Your system is perfectly designed to give you exactly what you’re getting.” If we don’t like what we’ve been getting, we need to change what we’ve been doing.

One of the biggest recruiting system failures I find is a long “hiring cycle.” The hiring cycle is the time from the first call until you give the driver a contingent offer of employment, ultimately giving them every reason not to make any more calls to recruiters and to come to your orientation. A long hiring cycle also lowers the quality of driver you have the opportunity to hire. This is because the good drivers will have already chosen other jobs.

Ask yourself these questions to identify hiring cycle lengtheners:

1.     Do you answer all recruiting calls live or let them go to voice mail?

2.     Do you mail applications?

3.     Do your recruiters have the authority to qualify or disqualify an applicant?

4.     How long does it take for you to offer employment?

5.     Do you wait until you have all the background information before you make a contingent offer of employment or contract?

A short hiring cycle is a vital part in competing for quality drivers. It enables you to choose the drivers you want rather than the drivers who want you. Here are a few action steps for shortening your hiring cycle:

1.     Instill a sense of urgency within your recruiting department (It’s not a call, it’s an opportunity.)

2.     Take 1-page phone applications (It provides information you need to make an initial decision.)

3.     Fax releases (Minimize the number of pages to fax.)

4.     Give quick approval (This should be during first call to 36 hours max.)

5.     Empower recruiters with clearly defined hiring criteria/parameters

6.     Create application/lead ownership (Drivers are lost in the pass-off between departments.)

On Oct. 29, 2004 the “Safety Performance History for New Drivers” regulation went into effect. Due to the extra steps required by this regulation, it is now even more crucial that you have a streamlined and systemized recruiting process. Carriers that have shortened their hiring cycle are not suffering from the tight driver market. They are running effective advertising to generate good leads and then capitalizing on those leads to hire the best and leave the rest for their ill-prepared competitors.

Lisa Motor Lines struggled with finding qualified drivers and had reduced the size of their fleet accordingly. Then Mark Rhea, vice president of Lisa Motor Lines, implemented the streamlining techniques listed above and increased awareness of driver turnover by holding fleet managers accountable for the turnover on their fleet. As a result Lisa Motor Lines increased the quantity and quality of driver they were able to hire and retain, ultimately growing the fleet by 100 trucks within a year.

Kelly Anderson is president of Impact, Inc. Anderson provides recruiting and retention consulting/training throughout the United States and Canada. For more information you can contact him at 888-429-3445 or kelly@impacttrans.com.

My Point

According to industry studies, it costs carriers between $3,000 and $8,000 every time one of their drivers walks out the door and doesn't come back. The figure is based on the cost of advertising, recruiting, training, lost production and other factors associated with replacing a driver.

Another study by the Truckload Carriers Associations indicates that the average driver who changes jobs eight times during a 30-year career will lose more than $100,000 in terms of lost wages, medical coverage, paid vacations, etc. over those 30 years due to job hopping.

It costs carriers big money every time they lose a driver, and it costs drivers big money every time they look for greener pastures, yet the trucking industry is plagued with annual driver turnover rates of more than 100 percent. Carriers clearly have a monetary incentive to keep drivers happy, and drivers clearly have a financial stake in staying put, yet drivers continue to head for the door, and, unfortunately, too many carriers don't do enough to stop them.

They say that money changes everything, but the prospect of losing several thousand dollars every time a driver quits hasn't changed the way some carriers do business. As a result, their annual turnover rate remains excessive. In fact, the revolving door of drivers has become so pervasive in the trucking industry that some carriers now accept it as just another cost of doing business. They figure there's nothing they can do to bring their turnover rate down. On the other hand, we know other carriers that boast of annual turnover rates of less than 40 percent. Why have some carriers succeeded in the retention game while others have not?

In our opinion, the difference is this: carriers with relatively low driver turnover rates have developed a company-wide "retention" culture that attracts, nurtures and thus retains drivers. You build that kind of culture by first tearing down barriers inside the company-- real and perceived -- that separate employees who work behind desks from those who work behind steering wheels. What kind of a message does a company send when it erects a glass partition in front of the dispatch department so that the only way a driver can talk face-to-face with someone in dispatch is through a small, round hole cut in the glass divider?

In order to get to the bottom of this "clash of cultures" -- with office personnel on one side of the fence and drivers literally on the other -- we asked some over-the-road professionals to tell us what, besides money and reasonable home time, would attract them to a company and what would drive them away. For their responses, see the "Drivers Sound Off" column in this issue of Inside Trucking. Truck drivers, it turns out, want to be told the truth. They want to be heard by management. They don't want to be "treated like a number." If they can't be treated like "family," they would at least like to be treated as well as their fellow workers behind the desks are treated.

None of this is new, yet many carriers still haven't taken the time to train their inside people on how to work with and communicate with the most important employees in the company -- the drivers. How else can you explain all of those drivers walking out the door every month, even though it costs both drivers and carriers big bucks each time it happens? The irony in all of this is that the one thing drivers want most is not only priceless, it's free. It's called respect.

Marvin Shefsky is the publisher of Inside Trucking, as well as Over the Road and Pro Trucker magazines.

Inside Trucking asked a handful of over-the-road professionals what, besides money and home time, would attract them to a company and what would drive them away? Here are some of their responses:

"Honesty and trust are probably the two biggest things. Stick to your promises. If you tell me up front that you're going to do this, that and the other, I expect you to follow through. The problem is, most of these companies don't keep their promises. That's what drives people away. Drivers want companies to tell them the truth." -- Duane Slick, 42, Freeport, IL (Professional driving experience: 17 years)  

"I left my last company because I was going broke. I bought a brand new truck, and I couldn’t make the payments. I talked to some people who said the company I'm with now was pretty good. I've been pretty happy ever since. We all have our bad days, but I'm happy 90 percent of the time. They treat me right and pay me a good living. I do my job and I do it right. It's pretty simple, really." -- Sidney White, 59, Cartersville, GA (Professional driving experience: 20 years)  

"A little more respect from dispatch. A little more honesty. I've been out here 10 years, I've worked for eight different companies and every company has had the same attitude: You do it our way, you get it done, and we don’t care what it takes. If you have to run illegal, you run illegal. If you have to take time off, too bad; we need to have that freight there. There's not going to be a next company. I've got a bad back and the doctor says I shouldn't be doing this. Once this job is finished, I'm done." -- Dave Whetstone, 39, Belding, MI (Professional driving experience: 10 years)  

"I look for a company that stands behind their drivers. That's important. I left one company because they tell the driver he's wrong no matter what decision he makes. My thing is, if I make a decision, I expect the company to stand behind me. I'm making the decision based on my experience and ability. I'm not going to agree to go 1,000 miles in six hours because I know that’s unrealistic." -- Heath Evans, 35, New Market, IN (Professional driving experience: 12 years)  

"I want a company to treat me respectfully. I want to be thanked every once in a while for doing a good job. I've been with this one broker for five years, and in all that time I think a customer has thanked me twice. Twice.  I don’t want a tip. I just want to hear someone say, 'Thank you. You did a nice job.' " -- Bruce Buffington, 62, Jacksonville, FL (Professional driving experience: 33 years)  

"I've driven for four or five companies in 15 years. Why did I leave one for another? Usually, it was for more money. It's always about money. As for the other things, I think every driver wants to be treated with respect. As long as they're honest with you and they keep you busy, I'm happy."-- James Chapman, 41, Phelps, NY (Professional driving experience: 15 years)