On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach, is joined by Sam Bloomquist, the organization’s chief operating officer and CPO.
After decades in software development across multiple industries, Bloomquist came to both DriverReach and the trucking sector nearly seven years ago, attracted to the meaningful potential of technology adoption in the field.
In Bloomquist’s early days at DriverReach, the company focused primarily on the pressing issues of driver recruitment and retention. When the goods economy was booming, sourcing reliable drivers was a major obstacle for many carriers.
And while the issues of recruitment and retention have not vanished, they have been joined by another key concern: regulatory compliance.
In a spot market environment with compressing margins, carriers must avoid costly failures to comply with a tangled web of federal regulations.
One such regulation is that carriers need to maintain a qualification file for each of their drivers. This single file includes a driver’s history of employment, background check, health record and collection of relevant certificates.
Unfortunately, putting together this file can be deceptively complex for carriers, often leading to legal headaches and mounting fees.
“The thing about regulations,” Bloomquist said, “is that they change, and not every employee in the company is constantly talking to a lawyer.”
In fact, the industry is rife with oral traditions that transmit out-of-date information and inaccurate interpretations of the law from veterans to new hires. In the words of Mark Twain: “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble — it’s what you know that just ain’t so.”
To guard against legal vulnerabilities, DriverReach has rolled out a feature that simplifies the building and maintenance of driver qualification (DQ) files.
“There’s really nothing quite like it on the market today,” Bloomquist said. “It takes something that’s painful, confusing and difficult and it makes it easier and more organized, helping people who are struggling to get things in order and grow their company.”
The announcement of DriverReach’s new DQ checklist feature is timely because, as Reymer noted, “the industry faces considerable pressure from plaintiffs’ attorneys seeking ever-increasing verdicts and settlements.”
Despite the convoluted nature of regulatory compliance, it is unlike many other challenges faced by carriers insofar as compliance is wholly within a company’s control.
“It’s an unfortunate reality,” Bloomquist said, “that accidents can always happen, and sometimes those accidents are going to involve tragic outcomes.” But if you ensure that your compliance is up to standard, “you improve your odds for avoiding those bad situations that are out of your control.”
Control is a growing concern for carriers, at least regarding their data security. At a recent TCA Profitability Program session, one of the participating carriers asked if DriverReach shares carrier data with anyone outside the customer’s organization.
Bloomquist’s reply was an emphatic no. “We do not share our customers’ data with any other companies. Our customers are in control of which other companies can be integrated with their accounts, and what kind of data will flow in and out.”
But Bloomquist also saw a deeper concern underlying the question: whether this data would be used to profit off driver churn, a practice that harms the industry by incentivizing drivers to hop from fleet to fleet.
Again, his answer was a resounding no. “Our obsession with customer success is the first and foremost value behind every decision we make.”
The new DQ checklist feature received positive feedback in its testing phases and DriverReach is excited for the reception from its broader customer base.
Looking ahead to 2024, Bloomquist is eager for DriverReach to deliver reporting insights to its customers. “We’re going to build intuitive reports and tools that create actionable, ‘aha!’ moments for our customers and help them be more successful.”
Click here to learn more about DriverReach.
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