by Ray Haight, TPP Retention Coach
The issue of driver turnover has plagued the industry for decades and, it seems to me, that trucking companies should have made better progress in bringing it under control. The fact is that many trucking companies see the published numbers on driver turnover coming from industry groups, and as long as they’re below what the estimated average for the industry is at that time, they think they’re doing well. It’s mass delusion and makes no sense to me, especially when these averages usually hover around 100%.
I always find it enlightening to see what new ideas industry suppliers come up with which try to entice companies to buy a solution to the driver-turnover problem. I’ve seen many come and go over the years. Most are presented by well-meaning folks who look at trucking with its turnover issues and see great opportunity, where there is pain there is an opportunity to provide solutions and to profit.
I call these purchase opportunities “plug and play” because they never really get to the core of the issue of driver turnover. I’m talking about the quick fixes that seem to be designed to attract and retain drivers through a new offering or the latest widget designed to have a driver believe that they will be happier at trucking company ABC because of the utility of the product in play. I don’t mean to diminish the value of these products or companies because many of these plug and plays are quite good, however thinking they are a panacea to the driver turnover issue is not realistic. There are a great number of these ideas and services that would work great if they were introduced in addition to the right effort, an effort to attack retention at its core.
They say there is no magic bullet to driver turnover, I think their wrong. It’s not easy but there is a cure. As deep as the problem is, that’s how deep you need to get in your company to fix the issues at the heart of your turnover. You’ve got to strip it down and build it back up again on a firm foundation, and unfortunately many are just not interested in putting the kind of effort necessary to win at the effort.
I do not hold myself up as any kind of savant on this issue; after all, I have been at the helm of a company that had a 120% turnover. It was at a time when the company I was running was growing at an expediential rate and I lost sight of what was going on with our turnover. Call it greed, call it getting lost in the frenzy of the growth, distracted by the whirlwind; whatever it was, the buck stopped with me and I had let it get out of hand. It might sound a little cliché, but culture is a delicate thing.
The actions I took, was making driver turnover an issue that was worthy of our company’s efforts to get it under control that is what gives me the license to offer the advice that I do. We, and I mean myself as President, my partner and our senior management team, took our driver turnover numbers from 120% to 20% turnover in under 24 months. We went from needing to hire 300 plus drivers to maintain a fleet of 275 trucks over a one-year timeframe to needing to hire less than 60 in 24 months.
We did this by starting at the start; we started by taking a good hard look in the mirror. We took responsibility for our situation. Change starts with the acknowledgement that you did everything to be in the situation you are right now. Could be talking driver turnover, personal relationships, career status, whatever it is you need to own it, playing the blame game is for suckers and losers, you have to own it to change it, there is no other way.
We also secured the help of a very good consulting firm, to ensure we got off to the right start with the effort. In addition, we agreed as leadership that we were committed to each other to see this thing through because, without that kind of rock-solid commitment to the cause, it will falter. So that was our starting point, we were determined to get a handle on our situation and plot a path to rein in our out of control turnover. We had successes, we had failures, we had stumbles, we had heroes and we had stars and we had to cut bait on some folks.
In the end the gains so outpaced the sacrifice, it was amazing and in retrospect, we could have called it a safety initiative, because our accident rate plummeted and so did our insurance costs. We could have called it a profitability initiative because as we streamlined our processes to become driver-centric, we also became more efficient and also more profitable. Bottom line, if and when you decided that high turnover is within your control and you can get a handle on it, you will see gains that you never expected and wonder why you hadn’t done this before….
Learn more about the TCA Profitability Driver Retention Program by visiting www. tcaingauge.com/retention/. I look forward to talking with you.
Safe Trucking!
