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MATS, Driver Survey Highlight Busy Spring

By Marvin Shefsky

We always look forward to the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville. This year’s show, set for March 27-29, will once again serve as an amazing gathering place for something like 70,000 truck drivers, members of their families, vendors and industry officials. If you want to take the pulse of the trucking industry and find out what’s around the next turn as far as driver recruitment and retention is concerned (or any other trucking issue, for that matter), there’s no better place to do it than at MATS.

We’ve been going to MATS for 27 years, the last 16 of them as proud sponsors of the Driver Recruitment Center. Why do we spend the time, dollars and manpower organizing and sponsoring the Recruitment Center? Certainly not for the money; it’s a non-profit venture. We do it because we’re in the communications business. We see ourselves as a communications link between truck drivers who may be looking for new opportunities and trucking companies who are interested in doing business with them. Our mission is to do everything we can to facilitate those driver-carrier relationships, and the MATS Driver Recruitment Center helps us achieve that goal by putting tens of thousands of drivers together with hundreds of carrier recruiters, face-to-face, under one roof.

In our opinion, too many companies have turned this business into nothing but business by eliminating personal relationships, especially those between the company and the drivers. The lack of personal relationships is no doubt reflected in the industry’s high driver turnover rates. Let’s never forget that we’re all in the people business first, and our objective is to move freight with those people. We’ve heard it said many times, “America moves on trucks.” We say, “America moves because of truck drivers.”

Along those lines, RAMP Media Group is teaming up with TRINCON Group for a first-of-its kind online survey of truck drivers. The survey, set for launch in April, will attempt to improve industry problems like the high turnover rate by asking drivers what they like and dislike about their jobs, what makes drivers leave the industry, how to best attract drivers to the industry and how to retain them. The results, which will serve as a national benchmark, are expected to be available as early as June.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t realize you have a problem. The survey is designed to help companies detect and correct blind spots and weaknesses in their driver recruitment and retention process and to gauge their organization’s performance in this critical area against that of their peers. For more information on the driver survey, read the accompanying article in this issue of Inside Trucking Online along with upcoming announcements from TRINCON and RAMP, and articles and advertising opportunities starting in the April issues of Over the Road and Pro Trucker magazines.

If MATS will give us the opportunity to take the pulse of the industry and the RAMP/TRINCON survey will give us a chance to take the pulse of drivers in a figurative sense, the RAMP booth at MATS will give drivers the opportunity to literally check their pulse and their blood pressure as part of our Healthy Trucking Initiative. Drivers’ health has become a major issue in the trucking industry; study after study show that an alarmingly high percentage of over-the-road professionals suffer from high blood pressure and related diseases, including diabetes.

Through its Healthy Trucking Initiative, RAMP has assumed a leading role in the effort to improve drivers’ health. Along with sponsoring blood pressure kiosks at truck stops across the country, we have also dedicated considerable editorial space in OTR, PT and Inside Trucking Online to the subject of health. Our booth at MATS will feature four BP machines and a trained medical professional in yet another display of our commitment to the cause. More than 2,000 drivers took their blood pressure at our booth last year, and 20 of them were advised to seek immediate medical care as a precaution.

We’re pleased to see more and more trucking companies joining us in this “healthy” campaign by offering drivers on-site wellness programs and blood pressure machines at their headquarters and terminals. When it comes to driver retention, is there any better way to show a driver you care about them than by helping them improve their health? Give us a call to find out more about launching a Healthy Trucking Initiative in your organization.

Needless to say, we all have a lot going on in the weeks and months ahead, so let’s get started. See you at MATS.

-- Marvin Shefsky, Publisher/CEO
(Marvin@otrprotrucker.com)

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