How Con-way Recruits Young Truck Drivers With Apprenticeships

February 27, 2013

A well-run apprenticeship program can be an excellent way to replace your aging fleet with loyal young drivers whose skills you know you can trust.

David May, a driver-sales representative for Con-way Freight, is a well-known industry advocate and ambassador. He’s written a heartfelt piece that looks back at his past—and ahead to trucking’s future. Here are the highlights:

After graduating high school in 1976 I was living in an old steel/manufacturing town where there were few employment possibilities. The only things at that time that interested me were truck driving and serving in the military. If I entered the military, they would train me to drive a truck, and when my enlistment was up I would be 21. So that’s the course I took, serving my country and being a truck driver in the military.

How to Attract the Next Generation.
I have been a professional truck driver for 28 years now, and increasingly I ask myself: How do we attract the next generation to the trucking industry? Simple. Take a page out of the past, invite them to join as an “apprentice”—where they can learn and experience the profession through paid, on-the-job training.

How to Structure Your Apprenticeship Program.
At Con-Way, apprentice drivers are offered a part-time 20 hour week working on the dock to provide them with income. The other 20 hours will be spent learning the industry’s rules, safety regulations and how to drive a truck—at no cost. When the candidate successfully completes the program, they’ll be offered the opportunity for promotion to full-fledged Con-way Driver.

Additional Benefits: Producing Well-Trained, CSA Compliant Drivers.
This program is designed to do much more than fill the seats of Con-way Freight’s trucks. When the student completes the program, not only will they have their Commercial Drivers License (CDL), they will have learned how to be CSA 2010 compliant. They’ll be among the best trained, safest and most knowledgeable drivers in the industry.

Click on the following link to  read the original article, “A Driver’s Story – Encouraging the Next Generation”, in its entirety.

Too Expensive For You?
Maybe you’ve decided that developing an in-house apprenticeship program is too costly. You could ask your local trucking school if they’d be interested in co-sponsoring a program with your company.

That might be a reasonable option, as long as you have an agreement protecting your investment. Here’s one idea: If a quality graduate from the program declines your offer and accepts a comparable offer with another company, maybe that individual would owe you the amount of money you invested in subsidizing his or her tuition. Here’s a better idea: Get suggestions from the fine folks in your legal department!

Get your company profiled in an article! Just send me an email outlining any recruiting and/or retention issues you deal with. CLICK HERE for contact info.

2 Comments | Benefits, Company Drivers, Driver Incentives, Driver Recruitment, Driver Retention | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by francishare

Don’t Just Recruit Owner Operators. Make New Ones.

September 5, 2012

Five Fundamentals Of A Successful
Lease Purchase Program.

In the first eight months of 2012, Alabama-based flatbedder WTI Transport signed over 100 new Lease Purchase agreements. That’s an exponential increase over the few dozen WTI had at the beginning of the year. Which should tell you two things.

1) With the difficulty of finding banks to finance truck purchases, Lease Purchase programs are quickly becoming the only way ambitious drivers can become Owner Operators.

2) The folks at WTI are doing something right. Particularly when you consider how many of their Lease Purchase drivers successfully take title to their trucks. “The main thing is, we don’t treat our program as a profit center,” says Lease Purchase Director Jason Quinn. “We created it because we really do want to see more drivers become Owner Operators.

“Our President Rendy Taylor has always said, ‘We can’t consider ourselves successful until a driver gets his title.’ That’s our philosophy. And drivers know that.” So what’s WTI’s secret? It’s no secret: They actually help their drivers succeed.

HERE ARE THE FIVE FUNDAMENTALS OF WTI’S PROGRAM.

1) Minimize The Down Payment.
Better still, says Quinn, don’t require any money down.

2) No Balloon Payments.
It’s pretty simple, Quinn continues: If a driver can’t afford a large down payment, he certainly can’t afford a huge balloon payment. After all, Quinn notes, that’s where so many Lease Purchase drivers at other companies lose their trucks.

3) Pay A Decent Wage. And Make Payments Affordable.
As of August of 2012, WTI was paying its Lease Purchase drivers 70% of gross. That’s as high as you’ll find in the industry. It’s why driver Andre Davis left another company for a Lease Purchase agreement with WTI: “With that other company, I had to run a minimum of 4000 to 4500 miles a week just to make any money for myself. Plenty of weeks, I owed them money.”

4) Offer A Fuel Routing Program.
A successful Fuel program combines maximum fuel surcharge with solid MPG practices, says Quinn.

5) Teach Drivers Good Business Practices.
“We think this is one of the real cornerstones of our program,” Quinn explains. “There’s a huge learning curve for anyone taking the leap from Company Driver to Owner Operator, so we created a Business Planning support system, to monitor our Lease Purchase drivers’ success in several key areas. Each Fleet Manager regularly reviews, with his drivers, a chart he keeps on those areas. Over time, the areas he’s marked red (problem) and yellow (potential problem) start turning green.

“So I guess, Quinn concludes, “you might say we aren’t really successful until our Lease Purchase graduates consider themselves successful Owner Operators.”

Good conclusion.

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Posted by francishare

Integrated Recruiting: If You Knew It, You’d Do It

May 11, 2012

In an excellent piece for BusinessWeek magazine, Steve McKee explains why it’s so important for all your recruiting efforts to work together.

While McKee’s original column addresses the broader issue of marketing, his points are directly applicable to driver recruiting. Here are the key points I pulled from his piece—adapted to your specific needs as a recruiter:

New marketing channels pop up every day, from apps to publicity stunts and beyond. Audiences (and attention spans) are becoming increasingly fragmented. That reduces the chance any message has of getting through.

How do you overcome fragmentation? Integration. That means communicating a consistent identity from message to message, and medium to medium. More importantly, it means consistently delivering on that identity.

Everything you do to attract, convert and retain drivers should be integrated—including your human resource practices, your training programs, even your compensation and employee evaluation metrics.

So why don’t more companies implement integration strategies? They don’t start with a strategic messaging foundation, and they don’t have the patience to see it through.

Companies that maintain healthy growth over time tend to have more durable messaging strategies and longer-lasting campaigns, while those that struggle tend to change direction more frequently.

That’s exactly what’s happening in the cola wars. Coke has remained focused and consistent for years, and is winning market share, while Pepsi recently fell to an embarrassing No. 3  in the market behind Coke and Diet Coke. That’s why Pepsi is now reexamining everything about its brand.

What’s the first step?
Take a close look at all of your company’s messages to prospective and existing drivers. Compare those messages with what your drivers experience once they sign-on with you. If it doesn’t all connect for you in some meaningful fashion, it won’t for your prospective and existing drivers, either.

If your messaging strategy is weak (or off the mark), you may need to do what Pepsi is doing, and reexamine everything.

It may be that your problem is more a matter of execution: You’re simply not doing what you’re promising.

Or it could be that you haven’t pulled the trigger because you haven’t seen a flawless plan for integrating all your recruiting and retention efforts.

Here’s the good news: There’s no such thing as a perfect integration plan. Over the long haul, the companies who have the real recruiting advantage simply do it better than their competitors.

Steve McKee is the author of When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About It.

Click Here to read his original article in its entirety.

Leave a Comment » | Advertising, Benefits, Branding, Communications, Company Drivers, Digital Marketing, Dispatchers, Driver Incentives, Driver Pay, Driver Recruitment, Driver Retention, Media Advertising, Recruiters, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by francishare

When Online Complaints Impact Your Truck Driver Recruiting.

January 23, 2012


Seven steps you can take to repair your
company’s damaged reputation.

Between Social Media, and dedicated sites like RipoffReport.com, it’s easier than ever for disgruntled drivers to launch effective attacks on their ex-employers’ reputations. It’s one reason behind the rise of image-repair websites like Reputation.com—which today serves customers in 100 countries worldwide.

We’ve seen it first-hand.
In the past couple months alone, my agency has had extensive conversations with two separate companies facing that very problem—and from what I know, most of the complaints aimed at them are unfounded.

Again, that’s most of the complaints, not all of them. Which leads to the first, and by far most important, step your company can take to repair its reputation: Eliminate the root cause of the problem.

It may first take drastic action
I’m reminded of a policy maintained by one of the industry’s leading flatbed trailer manufacturers. The CEO once told me that whenever one of his plants faced a significant unionization threat, the first thing he did was fire the plant manager.

Why? 1) The fact that employees were dissatisfied enough to consider unionization told him they weren’t being treated as well as they should be, and 2) Firing the person at the top told everyone that nobody’s job was guaranteed.

The point, of course, is that heads may have to roll before your problem is solved. So let’s assume you can fix the problem. Here are six critical steps you should consider next.

Re-Brand
Your old brand may not fit your newly-fixed company. Presenting a new, and accurate, brand identity is the first way to show driver prospects you’ve changed.

Reach Out To Complainants
Very often, ex-employees’ complaints are entirely due to poor communication in the first place. There are a variety of techniques (direct and indirect) for mending fences, and securing retractions from complainants. It might even lead to some valuable re-hires!

Communicate More Efectively
Better communication means better relationships. Which means fewer and fewer complaints in the future. What’s more, it’s important you improve communications across multiple platforms.

Revisit Your Driver Orientation
When your orientation program creates unrealistic expectations, you’re setting the stage for future problems from Day One.

Establish A Complaints Contact
Make sure your drivers know the company is committed to hearing, and addressing, their concerns. Very often, the very opportunity to air a grievance is enough to keep a problem from escalating.

Use Social Media
Develop and implement a proactive and reactive social media strategy. Proactive, in publishing positive information. Reactive, in quickly responding to feedback—especially negative feedback.

Will these steps eliminate all complaints?
Probably not. Some drivers simply can’t be reasoned with. But if you’re doing all the right things, it’s not really your problem. It’s theirs. And most good drivers know a crybaby when they see one!

For Further Reading:

Build On Your Strengths To Improve Truck Driver Recruiting

With Truck Drivers, A Recruiter’s Work Is Never Done

What’s Brand Got To Do With Truck Driver Recruiting? Everything.

Improving Truck Driver Recruiting With A Satisfaction Guarantee

2 Comments | Branding, Communications, Company Drivers, Driver Recruitment, Driver Retention, Owner Operators, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by francishare

Truck Driver Recruiting: Speaking To The Wives

March 9, 2011

Tom and Karen Moore

Husband & wife teams are typically the most dependable you can find—which is why it’s important your messaging should appeal equally to the wives.

After all, wives often do most of the initial research that leads to a team’s decision to join a company. So when you address their top concerns without having to be asked, you’re already ahead of the game.

The Advantage Of Husband & Wife Teams
Donna Smith (who partners with her husband Allen on a number of online trucking-related ventures, including AskTheTrucker.com and TruthAboutTrucking.com) says the main advantage is that husband & wife teams are a natural fit. “You don’t have the potential obstacles that face other teams, like incompatibility.”

Think Big Picture
In general, Smith notes, husband & wife teams are either mature couples with grown children, or younger couples with no children. In both cases, though, they often have a different mindset from other drivers—who are usually focused on their immediate earning potential. Husband & wife teams usually have longer term-goals—like building up a solid enough nest egg to retire comfortably some day.

Does your company offer a 401K plan? If so, that’s likely to be a strong selling point for wives. If not, consider this alternative: My wife and I have long worked with an excellent financial planner who’s structured personal retirement accounts for each us. Based on our own experience, we’ve always enthusiastically recommended his services to our new employees.

With a little research, you should be able to create a list of trustworthy financial consultants you can recommend. At the very least, it shows you’re thinking about what’s on the wife’s mind.

Another Potential Perk
Retirement-minded wives understand that the best way to reach their goals is to work as hard as you can right now, and to minimize expenses along the way. Which is why, Smith notes, a lot of husband-wife teams literally live out of their trucks. So, maybe one of the perks you could offer is an occasional overnight hotel room for those teams. Especially during, or after, long-haul jobs.

Don’t Forget The Little Things
Jerra Orr, who (with her husband, Carl) has been with Birmingham’s Baggett Transportation for over a decade now, says that one of the things she appreciates most about the company, is that whenever she calls in, “They know who I am, and they call me by name. That means a lot to me.”

And as any good husband can tell you, sometimes, it’s the little things that mean the most.

Get your company profiled in an article! Just send me an email outlining any recruiting and/or retention issues you deal with. CLICK HERE for contact info.

Leave a Comment » | Company Drivers, Driver Recruitment | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by francishare

Improve Truck Driver Recruiting By Becoming A “Best Place to Work”

February 16, 2011

Following a few simple tips, your company can become known as a great place to work—improving your driver retention and recruitment.

Steve Boese reveals how his Dallas-area employer Starr Tincup has won a “best places to work” award every year since 2008. Here are a few of his secrets:

You Can Win Before You’re The Best.
It’s ironic, but a company doesn’t really become a best place to work until they’ve won the award a couple of times.  It takes a couple of years to fully reap the benefits.  And the benefits are numerous:

  • Employees become more active in creating a great culture that they fall in love with
  • We attract the best job candidates
  • We win new business more easily
  • We get all kinds of PR attention
  • My family loves seeing my picture in the paper

Here’s The Secret:
A company wins best places to work on 2 fronts: an audit of your benefits, and an employee survey.  Take these easy steps to score big on your benefits audit (it’s what we do):

  • Offer a Cadillac benefits policy (medical, dental, vision and some supplemental insurance) and then pay for all of it (including all dependents)
  • Match 100% of your employees’ 401-K contributions.  Immediately.  No waiting period.  No vesting period.
  • Provide unlimited paid time off.  Trust your people to monitor themselves.
  • Pay your employees above market rate (exceed their expectations whenever you can).
  • Keep adding new benefits all the time.

The Hard Part: The Employee Survey.
When it comes time for employees to complete the survey rating their work experience, make sure they’re in a good mood.  Since you never know what day each person is actually going to complete the survey, it’s safer just to be nice year round.  Here are a few tricks to ensure a high score on the survey:

  • Treat every employee with respect all the time
  • Make sure they know their work matters
  • Recognize and reward heroic effort

On top of all that, Starr Tincup goes even further—just to make sure they place well.  And yes, it sounds like an expensive proposition, but when you consider that the cost of replacing good drivers it starts to make a lot more sense.

Click on the following link to read Steve’s article, . How to Win the Best Places to Work

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Posted by francishare

Truck Driver Recruiting Lessons Learned On The School Bus

February 14, 2011

Some companies can actually benefit from tougher HR policies.

The Big Question For Your Truck Driver Recruiting:

How do you create a tough-minded organization that also appeals to drivers? The simple answer is: Very carefully!

HR/Recruiting pro and blogger Tim Sackett, in an interesting article, “Life Lessons and Riding the School Bus”, shared some interesting lessons that can be gleaned for those faced with the task of recruiting truck drivers:

Riding The School Bus Is Tough . . .
Every bully in the world rode the bus – let’s face it their parents weren’t giving them a ride, so you had to deal with that (me being small and red-headed probably had to deal with it more than most). You also got to learn most of life lessons on the bus – you found out about Santa before everyone else, you found out how babies got made before everyone else.

But let’s face it, the bus kids were tough – you had to get up earlier, stand out in the cold, get home later and take a beating after the ride home.

. . . But It Can Make You Tougher!
As HR Pros, we tend also not to let our employees “ride the bus”. We always look for an easier way for them to do their work, to balance their work and home, to do as little as possible to get the job done. In a way, too many of us, are turning our organizations and our employees into the kids who had their Moms pick them up from school.

I’m not saying go be hard on your employees – but as a profession we might be better off to be a little less concerned with how comfortable everyone is, and a little more concerned with how well everybody is performing.

And Tougher Can Be Better.
Too many HR Pros tend to act as “parents” to the employees, not letting them learn from their mistakes, but trying to preempt every mistake before it’s made – either through extensive processes or overly done performance management systems.

We justify this by saying we are just “protecting” our organizations – but in the end we aren’t really making our employees or organizations “tougher” or preparing them to handle the hard times we all must face professionally. It’ll be alright – they might not like it 100%, but in the end they’ll be better for it.

Click the following link to read Tim’s article, “Life Lessons and Riding the School Bus”

Leave a Comment » | Company Drivers, Driver Recruitment | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by francishare

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