Brent Dorfman, CEO of CDL driver recruiting and compliance platform DriverReach, joined Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach, to highlight how the company is helping the industry move forward with a more modern solution to streamline recruiting, qualifying and hiring drivers.
Dorfman started his career as a merger and acquisition attorney at a major law firm. After a few years, he found his niche in the supply chain then worked for several 3PLs and carriers. “It’s an amazing industry and one that I’ve especially gotten to know better over the last year at DriverReach,” Dorfman said.
Asked why he initially left the law sphere for the trucking industry, Dorfman said his reasoning started out practical and evolved into a vision-oriented goal for the future of a tough industry. “DriverReach was a well-capitalized company backed by smart private investors, and it mattered a lot to me to be able to go to a company that could invest in a vision,” Dorfman said.
“Once I was on board, I realized how big of a problem it was that we were solving,” he said. “DriverReach was the one who had solved it best. It’s unusual for a smaller company to be the one with the best solution, so I got really excited about the prospect of how much we could grow and what potential there was.”
Growing a solid customer base and reaching key players, according to Dorfman, is a much simpler challenge than developing the right solution or product.
The world of hiring compliant, quality drivers is complex and difficult. Due to the regulatory environment, numerous steps are involved in not only hiring drivers, but also in keeping them compliant and retaining them.
“I came from outside the industry, but in the 3PL world, when I wanted to hire workers, we just hired them,” Dorfman said. “We had to train them, of course, but we could put out ads and have employees start almost immediately.”
Recruiting qualified drivers and maintaining compliance, he says, is such a headache that companies of any size can’t manage it without good tools.
In response to these growing issues, DriverReach built a suite of tools that quickly make compliance manageable. “What we really want to do is provide tools to let you find, hire and ultimately retain good, safe drivers,” Dorfman said.
According to Dorfman, the difficulties of recruiting and compliance are so pervasive that many carriers have accepted that it will be a permanent struggle. “I hear it over and over again – ‘There’s not enough drivers, drivers aren’t safe enough or it’s too costly to retain them,’” he said.
“There’s now a status quo around this problem, and it lets some people set the bar low and place the blame elsewhere,” Dorfman said.
“It’s really fatalistic. But interestingly, the great fleets don’t say these things. You don’t hear the best companies complain, including our successful customers,” he added.
Dorfman recounted an interaction with one of DriverReach’s customers: “They came from a different software platform and said that their current drivers often apply for jobs with them, within the same fleet. They wanted to know how our platform can help them siphon those off to HR to let HR know that they’re looking for a job,” he said.
This problem, of course, is much deeper than a technical or software capabilities issue. “Their drivers are so desperate for a new job that they are applying for jobs endlessly, including inadvertently applying to their current company,” Dorfman said.
“The client asked how DriverReach fixes that, and I told them, ‘We don’t.’ You fix it by not having your drivers do that,” he said.
With the system DriverReach uses, the recruiting and retention process avoids some of these issues in the first place. “With our system, the types of drivers that you search out and identify, get to know on a human level, they’re going to know who they work for,” Dorfman said. “This won’t happen if you’re properly hiring and retaining your drivers with the right practices.”
Technology like what DriverReach offers isn’t going to retain drivers on its own, according to Dorfman. “That’s really about the people and how you operate and treat staff,” he said. “We’re not giving you a silver bullet. You still have to have good teams that are willing to work.”
“The software tools that we provide can make your lives much easier, but the best driver retention and recruiting requires having a healthy culture,” he said. “If you’re looking for an easy way out, you’re in the wrong industry. There’s no easy job in trucking recruiting or compliance.”
Being successful in retention and compliance requires proper recruiting, Dorfman says, and that means first and foremost being attractive to good drivers.
Surprisingly, one element that DriverReach has found lacking among clients is simple communication.
“Texts and calls are so simple that it seems ridiculous we have to remind companies that those are viable ways of communicating,” Dorfman said. “Don’t overcomplicate it.
“We provide ways to reach the right drivers where they’re already at. We encourage texting, because drivers have mobile phones. We don’t want to make them download an app, because that’s just another layer between you and the driver. Just try to talk to them.”
Dorfman’s favorite example of how DriverReach helped streamline recruiting comes from a client based in Chicago.
“She needed 15 drivers to fill a very specific niche,” he said. “The easy thing would have been for her to get a standard marketing budget approved, spend her $2,000 per driver and try to generate leads.
“Instead, she went into DriverReach, filtered out the right criteria, ran a texting campaign and filled the trucks without spending a penny on marketing. She saw an asset in our tools – she took driver leads that we had already helped her store, and she just went and recruited them herself. Those are the stories I love to hear.”
Book recommendation: Acquired
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Sponsors: DriverReach, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr