Welcome to 18 Wheels of Justice, our focus in this section is trucking books and our trucking articles! The 18 Wheels of Justice Trucking Article below covers truck driver retention and is the first of a series, Has Your New Driver Started to Look for a new Truck Driving Job on his First Day?  Our trucking articles and blogs are educational and designed to aid truck drivers, owner operators and trucking companies. We are in the process of categorizing all of our blogs by title and subject, to make it easier to find exactly what trucking company, trucking topic or trucking information you are looking for.  If you are looking for good information on all things trucking, you are in the right place!  We have trucking books on Driver Retention, Trucking books about Negotiating with Freight Brokers, Trucking blogs with in depth reviews and interviews with large and small carriers.  Our Trucking books and blog articles are an ongoing work in progress, be sure to check back often and always, thank you for reading!

 There are a lot of concepts and ideas that have been presented over the years to help with driver retention.  Some good, some not so good.  Believe it or not, there are a lot of trucking companies who excel at recruiting and retention. Please join me on a short journey that will take us through some basics of successful and unsuccessful recruiting and retention processes.  

Let's begin with some careful self-examination.  Honesty is key here, know yourself and your organization.

-A New Driver Arrives for Work-

 Behold! A Driver!  What a wonderful day it is.  Thousands of dollars spent on advertising and referral bonuses.  Years of both formal and informal education on human resource concepts. Hours spent on the phone with the driver, more hours spent running an MVR, checking backgrounds, drug testing, praying, hoping and lo and behold!, we have a Driver!

 Does he get the type of welcome he deserves?  I don’t know whether or not he deserves a great welcome, he just wants a job and a good paycheck.  He's not expecting a balloons and a parade.  He probably doesn't realize what a huge effort was behind the joyous occasion of his arrival.  He just wants to go to work, make a good living, get home and be reasonably happy. 

Let’s begin, shall we?  The process is different at all trucking companies, depending on size, location, general morale and people skills.  The average process, if there was such a way to figure an average, would go something like this...

 The Director of Safety initiates the process.  Why it always seems to fall on safety is beyond me. I think everybody thinks they have nothing to do until an accident happens or auditor shows up.  I assure you this is not the case, especially in this current regulatory environment.  Anyway, they go to great length and expense to advertise, spend hours on phone, email applications, run MVR's, meeting with potential drivers and operators, and finally one out of the ten, or perhaps one out of the twenty five they have been talking to shows up for orientation.

“Jim” a well-meaning dispatcher, knocks on your (Let's pretend we are in the Safety/Recruiter's shoes for a moment) half closed office door, while you are on the phone, announces there’s a new driver in the drivers lounge waiting for you.  You politely wave him off and nod, because you are on the phone with highway patrol in NJ and the trooper is telling you about how one of your drivers hit a bridge, is wedged underneath it and this has caused some problems with morning traffic.  You’re stuck on the phone, with unexpected issues, the driver shows up an hour early and is waiting downstairs.  Always downstairs.  Any recruiter, safety or retention professional worth his salt has his office on the second floor or far from the door. (This is a big mistake.)

 The Driver is in the lounge.  At his point we don’t know his name, we are assuming it is the driver that was scheduled to be here to start today.  Jim, however, either forgot or was never taught proper social graces and failed to introduce himself, find out your guests' names and properly inform you. 

Three hours have passed as you have been trying to get free to meet with this new driver.  On your way to get more coffee you see that the drivers lounge is empty.  “I hope he didn't get tired of waiting and leave” you mutter to yourself.  Jim sees you walking through and tells you he put them in the conference room and gave him coffee and a drivers manual to read.  Great, Jim is not so bad after all. 

The usual process ensues, sign this, read this, the shop manager comes in and goes over shop issues, the payroll manager comes in and goes over paperwork and how to submit it to the company.  Safety(if this isn't you) comes in to discuss logs, inspections etc.  It’s all very routine and needed.  More than likely the driver has been through this a dozen times before and is politely listening.  Meanwhile his thoughts are elsewhere.  He knows what will make this job work out or not.  Two things: equipment and his dispatcher.  He has not seen either one at this point.  Things are going well; you feel you have found a good driver and good addition to the company. 

Paperwork is done; you walk to find his dispatcher, "Frank".

Of course “Frank” is on the phone, and has three calls waiting.  He says he will be in when he gets a minute.  Knowing you have problem after problem backing up in your office, you welcome the new driver  to the company and explain that “Frank” will be in shortly to get them on their way. 

 "Frank" is stuck on the phone for an hour, grabs the load information for the new driver, spends 10 minutes going over check call needs, after hours procedures etc. and hands him the load information.  The new driver explains he doesn't know what truck he’s going in, etc.  Jimmy says the shop or safety should have done that already, but he will check it out.  As well intention-ed as "Frank" is and wanting to get the new driver off to a good start, gets tied up in another problem at his desk and is delayed for almost an hour before he gets the keys to the driver so he can load his belongings in the truck.

It is a moment of great triumph!  Everybody is happy, he has met his new dispatcher, perhaps an operations manager,  if he is lucky the owner of the company comes out of his office to say hello and welcome him.  The owner operator or driver feels good about his decision to sign on with your company and everybody is smiling and shaking hands...

Are you bored and miserable reading this yet?  I’m bored and miserable writing it.  Now, imagine you are the driver and you are on hour six of waiting around on your first day of work.  Your new driver is polite about it and just nods and says well, it's trucking.  But, he is not making any money, already in a bad position financially by switching jobs to come here. 

 “Finally keys and a load, let’s roll, I will just throw my stuff in the truck and go, I will worry about unpacking it later after I get some miles under my belt” the new driver thinks to himself.  He gets in the truck finds 4 or 5 minor issues with it, finds the shop manager, he is on the phone.  The shop manager finally tells him that there are 3 trucks ahead of him, but they will get to him in a few hours.

The new driver decides that these aren't safety issues and he will get them fixed when he comes back in the next few days.  He wants to get out of this place, he has had enough!  Off he goes on his first day of work to deliver his first load!  

Turnover at the majority of trucking companies is sadly well over 100%, at some it reaches alarming heights of 200%-400%.  But let's not focus on how bad things are, let's focus on fixing the issue.  The hardest part of any job is getting started. 

Continued on Sunday!  Don't miss it as we cover the... 

 "7 Most Common Mistakes Trucking Companies Make on a Drivers First Day."  And direct from our audience interviews "The Keys to a Successful First Day Driving at New Company"  

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