Concern over a driver shortage slid for the second consecutive year, according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) 19th annual Top Industry Issues report, and driver retention improved 5% from 2022 to 2023, but that doesn't mean fleets can take their foot off the gas when it comes to cultivating workplace quality.
CarriersEdge President Mark Murrell, co-creator of the Best Fleets to Drive For program, led a panel discussion Monday at the American Trucking Associations Management Conference and Exhibition in Austin, Texas, reviewing the trends and best practices uncovered in the 2023 edition of the program.
Of the trends Murrell said he's noted emerging in fleets' quest to create a thriving workplace, he said the pace of change in the industry is increasing rapidly, adding the turnaround from idea to implementation has gone from about five years to "really quick."
"It means the people that are at the front of the pack are getting farther and farther ahead," he said, "and fleets need to keep moving, and keep moving quickly, in order to keep up."
Another noteworthy trend, Murrell said, is the emergence of formal human resource policies and departments. Murrell noted in the early days of the Best Fleets program, most fleets didn't have an HR department, and if they did, the department often didn't have an HR background and didn't work with drivers. "That has really changed," he said, "and they're coming in with a lot of great ideas from outside of trucking."
That infusion of organizational talent has helped fuel the evolution of compensation and benefits, and part of the evolution includes a greater emphasis on mental health.
"We've added a life coach this year. It really gets to the fact that being a driver can be hard," said Phil Wilt, president and chief operating officer at American Central Transport. "Our life coach works on the financial and the physical side, as well as just general well-being and satisfaction of living on the road."
Health insurance probationary periods are failing to make jobs more attractive, and onboarding is getting more focus as part of an effort to "providing a great experience to get them ramped up."
The ramp-up process, Murrell said, has become much more lucrative. The average daily rate of pay for orientation among Best Fleets to Drive For entrants is $213, up from about $100 per day, "which had become sort of an established standard," he said, adding some fleets are paying upwards of $500 per day for orientation.
Onboarding as a practice has also changed. "It's no longer three days in class, here's your keys and hit the road," Murrell said.
Wilt said this year ACT contracted with a third-party firm to act as a touch point as part of its orientation. Someone touches base periodically with new drivers for up to their first six months. Wilt added that it's important to strategize based on Best Fleets to Drive For scores.
While being named a Best Fleet to Drive For is itself a considerable accomplishment, Prime Inc. Director of Operations Jim Guthrie said it's important to scrutinize the scores with fleet leadership.
"We will take [the results] and make copies of it and share it with our senior management and support team as well," Wilt added. "We will then take those things and we build some strategic things that we're going to do and build them into our strategic plan; maybe it's around driver satisfaction or a compensation issue ... We'll be very strategic with those results with what we're going to do."
A companion piece to analyzing scores, Guthrie said, is to take note of the feedback – both positive and negative – provided by survey respondents.
"I feel like one of the most critical qualities of any manager is the ability to listen," Guthrie said. "Our operators are extremely astute business people, and it's rewarding to have these conversations with them."
Murrell added that negative feedback is almost never a bad thing if you use it properly.
"You've got to take it and evaluate it and act upon it," he said. "You've got to welcome the feedback. There's always a conversation to be had around a problem that needs to be solved."
Wilt said it's also important to communicate to drivers why a fleet can't fix a specific problem. "Drivers are the most real people in the world," he said. "I'd rather just [pop] the balloon than just let it be out there because it always gets bigger."
The overall success of the driver, Murrell said, has also become a measuring tool for the success of dispatchers and managers. No longer are these levels set simply by how many leads came in on a given day or how many miles a driver logged. That's helped drive what Murrell called three levels of fleet maturity: things that are done to drivers, done for drivers, and done with drivers.
"We rarely see a Level 1 company anymore," he said, adding that Level 1 is a more controlling and punitive approach driven by managers. "Most everybody has realized that's not going to work."
