FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC:
Driver recruiting and retention in a challenging freight environment
DETAILS:
Chris Schoate, vice president for driver recruiting and retention at Houston-based Gulf Winds International, talks with FreightWaves about driver recruitment and retention in a post-pandemic job market.
KEY QUOTES FROM SCHOATE:
“The one big change that I saw that happened in the COVID transition was pay was number one. It was 100% pay; that was the main thing. And while pay is obviously going to be a main driver for all jobs in any sector, home time became more and more important … . People weren’t willing to do a lot of the longer routes. Two to three months out, that kind of went away and people were looking for more regionalized opportunities. If you had local [job postings], then you were sitting pretty.”
“Trucking is very unpredictable. Anything a driver can do to make it more predictable, whether it’s more predictable pay, more predictable home time, dedicated routes – which is a very dangerous word – but anything that’s more predictable for the driver, that’s what they’re looking for … . Ever since COVID, that’s been a huge transition.”
“We generally plan for 50% of the people who enter our process are who we count on for getting hired. That’s a trend we’ve seen for a long, long time … . But you can kind of get lost in that. You’ve got to plan for the numbers but also take every individual situation as it is. You’ll find some wins in there if you look at the individual drivers’ needs and find out what is actually affecting them to not come on.”
“One of the best things I’ve ever seen – and this was on the dedicated model, so it was a little bit easier to execute – was they had bands. They had pay bands and they had home time bands. Every single week this report would come back, and if they didn’t hit their pay band or their home time band, the fleet managers would have to call the driver, get some information and report back to why … . What they would tell me is if they’re getting home on time and making what we say, everything is going to be all right.”