Barr-Nunn Director of Recruiting Doug Albrecht (left) and President and COO Rene Beacom, worked with a group of company executives to develop a program that guarantees owner-operators 99-cent diesel fuel. Since the program began late last summer, the company’s owner-operator fleet has increased by 50 contractors and turnover has dropped to 60 percent.
Early last year, carriers began touting pay package increases and unprecedented sign-on bonuses as the competition for drivers and owner-operators heated up. With page after page of recruitment ads filling the major driver publications, Barr-Nunn Transportation – a 48-state general commodities hauler – sought to differentiate itself. The Granger, Iowa-based carrier, which uses both company drivers and owner-operators, specifically wanted to find a way to grow its owner-operator base while improving retention.
Given the complexity of many carriers’ pay programs, “we looked at the difficulty of a prospective owner-operator being able to interpret and trust the ads they were looking at,” says Rene Beacom, Barr-Nunn president and COO. “We wanted to have an ad message that was credible, substantial and broke the mold of just being the best and greatest.”
With that in mind, in the second quarter of last year, Barr-Nunn gathered a group of six to eight executives for a two-day brainstorming session. They agreed that the company’s pay package and fuel surcharge program were strong, but that many owner-operators didn’t understand them. With a gallon of diesel at the time averaging around $1.75 and climbing, the group knew the high price of fuel was their owner-operators’ top concern.
Using a tool developed by the company’s research and development department, Doug Albrecht, Barr-Nunn’s director of recruiting, had a good idea of his owner-operators’ fuel economy and what they were paying for fuel. Under the company’s existing fuel plan, owner-operators already were averaging between $1.15 and $1.25 per gallon, with some fueling out of network in the $1.50 per gallon range. About 84 percent of Barr-Nunn owner-operators were taking advantage of the fuel plan at the time, so the company also wanted to come up with a way to encourage more owner-operators to fuel within the network. “A lot of them were sitting at an intersection of five fuel stops and trying to decide where to fuel instead of fueling in our network,” Albrecht says.
Armed with this knowledge, “we started trying to think of a theme that would enhance our pay package,” Albrecht says. The company was already offering 99 percent no-touch freight and 99 percent tolls paid. “And then someone said, ‘What about 99-cent fuel?’ and everyone gasped,” Albrecht recalls.
The fuel price guarantee was the type of bold move management was seeking. In late summer, ads guaranteeing 99-cent diesel fuel hit driver publications. At the same time, Barr-Nunn aggressively began marketing the program to its existing owner-operator base through monthly newsletters, training programs at terminals and phone calls with individual owner-operators.
Those participating in the program receive detail sheets monthly that provide a breakdown of fuel stops, discounts received and pump price.
