Tough Love

Truck drivers form the backbone of the Canadian economy, says the narrator right off the top. “They link producers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. Without truck drivers, every Canadian would be affected, from farmers to manufacturers, to retailers to consumers. Yet this industry is in crisis. There’s a critical shortage of drivers in this country.”

I’m on the plane coming home from a recent trip to Vancouver watching a 10-minute DVD produced by Coastal Pacific Xpress in Cloverdale, B.C. The same outfit I wrote about a few months back — the one giving its drivers $10,000 pay increases this year.

If you’re thinking CPX must be in trouble if it needs a slick little DVD to get hiring prospects to listen, you’d be wrong. This isn’t a recruiting tool at all. CPX produced this high-quality video expressly for the only bunch in the supply chain that doesn’t seem to understand the threat posed by this driver shortage…

“What we’ve got is the potential for a corporate and consumer catastrophe,” says CPX co-owner and president, Jim Mickey, in the opening moments of the DVD. “If we don’t have product on the shelves to sell, that’s about as serious a problem as we could have in the retail sector.”

… his customers.

Using drivers from his own fleet, as well as office staff, Mickey explains some of the difficulties the industry has in attracting drivers, and why the number-one issue, he tells viewers, is compensation.

So, when he or his sales rep (he only has one) goes in to see a customer, the customer gets a free copy of the DVD.

In the video, CPX driver Jacquie Kohanko, filmed from the passenger seat while maneuvering through town, describes the problem in terms of the hours of service rules. “We’ve only got 15 hours a day to work, and if we use up four to six of those hours making a pick up or drop, that cuts into how many miles we can get in for the day,” she says.

And for added impact, Paul Landry, president of the British Columbia Trucking Association, explains — rather succinctly — the roots of the driver shortage.

“Over the course of the 1990s, the trucking industry was brutally competitive,” he notes. “The industry underpaid its workers. It failed to respect the worker’s needs in terms of compensation for delays at the border and delays at shipper’s facilities.”

CPX is out to remove any doubt from their customer’s minds that they don’t have a right to expect top quality service if they’re not willing to pay for it. He’s makes the point pretty clearly that if shippers expect –no, hope — to have a truck at the door when they need it, they’re going to have to pony up.

Mickey makes no bones about the cost of developing and retaining the kind of driver the customers want handling their freight. And he’s right up front with the customer about the high cost of quality help, which he warns in the DVD, is going to get higher.

CPX bore the entire cost of producing this DVD, and they’ve taken it around to all their valued customers. The feedback, Mickey says, has been tremendous.

“We’ve had several traffic managers thank us for giving them the tools to justify the rate increases to their bosses,” Mickey told me. “By now, everyone knows about the driver shortage, but we’re just explaining what it will mean down the road for companies that rely on timely deliveries. They know where they’ll be without trucks.”

Aside from the fact that I believe initiative of this sort is worth a public pat on the back, I applaud CPX for its directness in presenting the issue to the customer. There are (or should be) real limits on what carriers and drivers should be expected to do for nothing, and prices they should be expected to absorb. This company has been right up front about it, and is taking steps to explain the affect predatory pricing is having on one industry’s ability to serve the other.

The trade off to higher rates, says Mickey’s business partner, co-owner Glen Parsons, is simple: “If we continue to pay our drivers well, provide them with good working conditions and good life/ work balance, they will provide the customer with good service and a strong commitment to make sure the product is on the shelves on time.”

That’s what I call a balanced and sustainable business relationship. Want a little help in managing your customer relationships better?