road transport recruitment
STAYING IN THE GAME N As in Australia, a big issue for road transport operators in the United States is attracting and retaining quality drivers. Tim Richardson travelled across the Pacific, pre-COVID, to attend the Merge 2000 conference in Nashville with the emphasis on recruitment
52 OCTOBER 2020
ASHVILLE, TENNESSEE is affectionately known to North Americans as ‘Music City’, but for most Australians we recognise it as the global hub of country music. It also played host to the largest recruitment and retention conference for the American trucking industry, Merge 2020. Some may wonder why I would travel to the United States to attend a driver recruitment conference as we see our industries as quite different. But the challenge of truck driver training, recruitment and retention is an issue right across the globe, so I took the opportunity to listen to and speak with people from another market. I did not have any pre-conceived ideas as to what I would learn at the conference, I was just hoping to gain an insight into how the US is combatting the challenge of driver recruitment. What was evident from the moment that I started to speak with people is that recruitment was not their biggest challenge, it is driver retention. The American trucking industry current driver turnover rate is 85 per cent per annum with 60 per cent of these occurring within the first six months of employment. Considering the US has 2.1 million long haul drivers, nearly 1.8 million of them are changing employer less than every 12 months. Some of the more reputable transport companies who have focused on reducing their turnover rates are achieving 35 to 45 per cent turnover, which is still remarkably high, but much better than the industry average.
The turnover of drivers results in an incredibly competitive recruiting effort by many longhaul operators. All transport companies have a recruiting team which are constantly looking for new drivers and there is a significant number of third-party recruiters involved in supporting the industry. Drivers can register their details on a number of websites and job boards, which will then pass their contact details on to many transport companies. Truck drivers need to make little effort to seek new employment, which in turn leads to the remarkably high turnover rate. The first workshop I attended looked into unlocking the ‘why’ behind driver turnover. They listed out the top five issues behind driver turnover in 2019: compensation, equipment, operations, home time and lastly company issues. Drilling down into each of these issues further, it was evident that drivers were seeking consistency with mileage, which in turn leads to consistent income, good and well maintained equipment and to work for a company that respects them and the hard work that they put in. The issues raised there would relate to many truck drivers here in Australia. The underlying point presented by Scott Dismuke from the Professional Driver Agency was “the relationship between a driver and the company is critical to manage route delays and changes”. “Be honest and don’t mislead the driver during the recruiting process, and start the driver off on a good note ensuring their truck is handed to them in good working order and cleaned.”
ownerdriver.com.au
