When Push Comes to Shove

During a disappointing seminar on driver retention at the Ontario Trucking Association convention last month, I listened to four panelists spend an hour laying blame for the industry’s labor woes at the feet of fleet managers who lack the “soft” management skills needed to make drivers feel more a part of the team. (“We need to give drivers a feeling that they count,” one said.)

Fine. But the truth is that driver retention suffers because fleet managers are too soft-with shippers and receivers. Who wouldn’t want to bail out of a job where you’re seen as cheap warehouse labor, made to suffer outrageous waiting times, and your employer keeps sending you back for more? You may have a killer driver lounge back at HQ, but a guy starts to consider other lines of work when he’s been sitting for six hours and the receiver won’t let him use the washroom.

That’s why I like the letter N. Yanke Transfer CEO Russel Marcoux sent to customers last month, explaining how he expects his drivers to be treated (see page 17). Marcoux says he’d rather lose business than a good driver-a powerful message for both customers and drivers to hear.

It’s a message worth repeating. Too many trucking operations give up the trailer as a mobile warehouse, commit to service schedules that force people to break the law, and then turn around and become a second-party manpower provider. (Now that’s a management problem.)

Shippers can say that loading and unloading is part of the job-and the rate. But is it? Most rates are based on cost per mile or cost per hundredweight. Few fleets isolate cost items like loading and unloading when they build their rate.

It’s a worthwhile exercise. The U.S.-based Truckload Carriers Association estimates that truckload drivers spend almost 34 hours a week just waiting to load or unload-amounting to $1.5 billion US a year in lost productivity. Given that statistic-compounded by the investment you need to recruit and retain just one driver-the cost of an abusive shipper is stratospheric.

I know that when rates are structured to exclude these extras, the exclusions are often ignored. At the very least, let your customers know that you won’t tolerate drivers being charged for the use of loading equipment, given low priority to dock slots if they don’t hire lumpers, or made to wait . and wait. You can’t afford it.

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The mailbag never ceases to amaze me: we get cartoons, grad school thesis papers, and the odd, “I invented something you wouldn’t believe…” letter.

But all this talk lately about the plight of the truck driver-combined with a little holiday spirit-has me sharing this poem, sent by Donna Addison of Delhi, Ont.

The Truck Driver’s Life

I sat and compiled a truck driver’s life, (Who else would know better than a truck driver’s wife?)

I thought of his hours of driving each day, And the billions of commuters who get in his way.

I thought how annoying drivers can be, Cutting him off just to gain those two feet.

I thought to myself of weather conditions, And how even in snow he must start up that engine.

I looked at his hours, they aren’t 9 to 5 And I know 2 a.m. is too early to rise!

Yet with all of the hassles he faces each day, And all the bad weather that drops by his way,

He gets there on time, his cargo in check, with too little thanks and too little respect!

Here’s to a prosperous New Year.

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COMING IN ON BUDGET

Brian Dernesch of The BLM Group, a trucking company in Kitchener, Ont., and I were discussing my September editorial on open-book management. Brian had a brainstorm on the idea (but doubted he’d have the guts to put it into practice):

“I’d like to give each of our drivers a bank account with $300,000 in it-or whatever we project the operating cost of their vehicle to be over the coming year. With that money, the driver pays for his own fuel, his own tires, his own costs per mile. If there’s anything left in the bank account at the end of the year, it’s his.

“It doesn’t have to be real money in the account-it could be virtual money-but the bonus would be real. A cost-conscious driver could earn a darned good bonus at the end of the year-and never again would he be tempted to dip into his own pocket to pay for a top-up in order to fake getting good fuel mileage so he can double his mpg bonus.”

Would it work? Have you seen it work? Would you have the guts to make it work? I’m curious-give me a call or drop me an e-mail.