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approach has the added value of starting the process of
opening lines of communication between that new hire and
his coworkers at every level.
“People don’t quit companies; people quit people,”
Fisk said. “It’s important as much as possible for upper
management to get to know new drivers right off the bat.”
The panel agreed that the best way to avoid a driver
shortage is to hold on to the ones you have, and that creating
a friendly, comfortable working relationship goes a long
way toward that end.
“It all comes down to a guy behind the wheel,” Fisk said.
“Even when we have autonomous vehicles, there’s still
going to be somebody there. And these folks are people.
Every once in a while I’ll hear some fleet manager refer
to someone and they give me their truck number, and I
don’t go for that. That’s a big no-no at our company. These
people have names, they have lives, they have families and
interests.”
Establishing those lines of communication early is
important, Davis said. A driver may not remember what
you said to him yesterday, but he’ll remember every word
of what was laid out to him when he was hired. Let a new
driver know right off the top what’s expected of him. “And I
want to know what the new driver expects from us.”
One thing a driver likes to know is that his company
stands behind him, Perryman said. As an attorney, he
usually meets drivers after they’ve had an accident.
“In how many professions can you have a lapse, one that
can end your career?” he said. “It’s important to assure that
driver after an accident that you have his back. And that
driver feels like part of the team again.”
That is the preferred method of dealing with accidents,
Manthey added. “It used to be if they had an event, it was:
‘You know what? They don’t work here anymore.’ That’s
what safety would say. Today, we do a full vetting.” And
if it is at all possible, a timetable is set for the driver to get
retrained so they can get past that incident and back on the
road.
“The reason we do that is very simple,” Manthey said.
“We know what we have in that driver. What we don’t
know is what we’re going to get coming in the door.”
Being able to stand behind a hiring decision is one of the
most important reasons for a company not to compromise
its standards, Perryman said, and it’s surprising how often
he finds companies hire drivers who don’t meet their
standards and it comes back to bite them.
“From the legal side, you look at the company’s hiring
criteria,” he said. And it isn’t to assess that criteria. After all,
he said, a company sets its own criteria.
“Obviously, there’s the criteria where drivers are
disqualified under 383.51,” Perryman said, referring to the
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations
section that lists the types of moving violations for which a
driver can be temporarily or even permanently disqualified
from getting behind the wheel of a CMV.
Other than that, and as far as the law allows, carriers
can pretty much set their own standards, Perryman said.
“In an actual litigation, the focus more often is less on
the driver’s past and more on the company’s standards
and hiring practices. What I find pretty important is that
whatever your hiring criteria might be that you follow that
criteria.”
“Yeah, it isn’t the standard that gets questioned, it’s the
exception to the standard,” Davis added. “Imagine being in
court in a claims case, and the plaintiff’s attorney asks: ‘So,
your standards used to be here, but then you lowered your
standards and hired this driver. Why?’ and the answer is,
‘Well, we just weren’t getting enough drivers.’ Those are the
kinds of things that we say add zeroes to claims.”
Davis said about every two weeks he’ll get a call from
a safety director who’ll say something along the lines of,
“Look, we’re just not getting the recruits, we’ve got to do
something about the standards.”
“The first thing I will say is, ‘what are you doing to keep
the people we have?’ This is the only industry I know where
100 percent turnover is acceptable. If I went to my boss and
said, ‘Wow, we had 100 percent turnover this year,’ I’d
probably wind up being part of that turnover.
“When I look at getting calls from a company saying,
‘hey, we’ve got to make this exception and that exception,’
then it’s time for us to go in and say, ‘are these standards
working?’”
The companies that have been successful have been
those that carefully consider what they need in a driver, set
appropriate standards, and then go after that kind of driver,
period, panelists said. Sure, maybe once a year a carrier may
want to review its standards, adapting as the company’s
needs or maybe even the trucking industry changes. But
whatever the hiring standards are at a given time, stick to
them.
Despite the perpetual driver shortage, Davis said,
he hasn’t seen many carriers dramatically lower their
standards — some may have edged down their minimum
age or years of experience. And for any company that may
be considering it, he added, there’s one last good reason not
to do it: It doesn’t work.
“The one thing I’ve always seen, the companies that do
make large changes to their policies wind up with rapid
turnover,” he said. “They draw in a lot of people, but they
lose them fast, too.”
That last-call lovelorn friend might be satisfied getting
by with a string of meaningless one-night stands. But
eventually that scene gets old, usually after a few nasty
surprises along the way. Most companies tend to try to
avoid nasty surprises.
“I’ve always been a firm believer a company brings in its
problems from the outside, so we try not to do that,” Fisk
said.
It might take a little more time and effort, but in the long
run it’s better to take the matchmaker approach and hold
out for a real keeper.
42 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017