Show Your Drivers You Care! Put a Healthy Trucking Kiosk in Your Terminal
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Quote of the Day
Given our ongoing “Healthy Trucking Initiative” and our health-oriented theme for this issue of Inside Trucking Online, it seems appropriate to run some healthy famous quotes, most of which are deadly serious.
“If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.”
– Mark Twain
“Health is like money; we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.”
– Josh Billings
“Health is worth more than learning.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Getting my lifelong weight struggle under control has come from a process of treating myself as well as I treat others in every way.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.”
– Benjamin Franklin
What's Wrong With This Picture?
By Marvin Shefsky
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) recently released the results of a survey of 16,000 new truck drivers. One of the statistics that jumped out at me was this: Within a year of graduating from driver school and getting their CDL, only 3 percent of the 16,000 student drivers surveyed were still driving for the company that originally hired them coming out of school.
What’s wrong with this picture? Everything! Where do you want to start? Pick a problem:
Poor communication between driver and company? No doubt!
Problematic hiring practices? You bet!
A case of unrealistic expectations running head on into the realities of life on the road? Yes sir!
Put it all together and it spells trouble, right here in Driver Recruitment and Retention City.
Of course, all of these false starts waste precious time for the would-be drivers and money for the companies who hire and train them. Depending on how you count the beans, it can cost between $2,000 and $5,000 or more to recruit and train a single driver. I’m no accountant, but if 97 out of the 100 people I hired walked away within a year after I spent that kind of money hiring and training them, I’d consider that a pretty poor return on my investment. I’d also have to question my hiring standards and processes.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I’ll ask the questions: Just what is this industry doing wrong when it comes to screening, hiring and training drivers, especially new drivers just coming out of driving school? While the current economic environment has eased the driver shortage, are we still so desperate to fill cabs that we’ll risk thousands of dollars on folks who have no business in a big rig, or should we take advantage of the situation to fortify our fleets with well-qualified drivers? Do we really want the next generation of drivers – the new kids on the block who have what it takes – to pick up the same old habits of so many other drivers who change jobs as often as they change socks, thus perpetuating the driver retention and turnover problem?
Speaking of bad habits, I wonder how many of those 16,000 student drivers surveyed were overweight or had other health problems before they were hired? I wonder how many of them who might have been healthy and fit when they started out became fat and unhealthy because they didn’t know how to eat properly and how to take care of themselves on the road? I wonder why we, as an industry, don’t do more to monitor our drivers’ health from the get-go and do whatever we can to help them live a healthier lifestyle knowing that any money we spend on driver health maintenance will save two or three times that amount in terms of reduced insurance claims and premiums?
Like I said, I have more questions than answers, but I know this much: If your company is suffering from the kind of turnover among your new hires that the ATRI survey revealed, you really should take a look at your internal operations and hiring procedures because something is clearly wrong.
As always, we look forward to your opinions, ideas and answers.
Marvin Shefsky is the CEO of Ramp Media Group and the publisher of Inside Trucking Online.
-- Marvin Shefsky, Publisher/CEO
(Marvin@otrprotrucker.com)
