Trucking fleets are reliant on happy truckers. High turnover can lead to shipping delays and lost business. As a trucking company, it’s crucial to recognize the day-to-day struggles that your employees face and strategize to overcome them.
If you keep your truck drivers happy, you’ll experience:
- Less turnover
- High employee satisfaction
- Better customer experience
- So much more
There are a few key ways that leaders in the transportation industry are working to keep their fleet happier.
1. Be Generous with Bonuses
Truckers work long, hard hours. It’s not easy being on the road for lengthy stretches of time, dealing with high-traffic areas and maintaining the utmost in safety on a non-stop daily basis. If you want to keep your employees happy, you must be generous with the bonuses that you dole out.
Your trucking fleet wants recognition for a job well done. A few of the bonuses that truckers appreciate are:
- Sign-on bonus
- Safety bonus
- Mileage bonus (teams)
If you want your trucking employees to be happy (and safe) on the road, it’s essential to offer them an incentive. A safety bonus is just one of the many ways to say “thank you” to the employee while also keeping them happy.
Sign-on bonuses have also become the norm, especially in today’s competitive job market.
Truckers know that their skills are in very high demand, and they’re more than willing to switch to another carrier if you’re not doing everything in your power to keep them happy and content. Sign-on bonuses can help attract new talent and should be spread out over time.
For example, a $5,000 bonus may be broken down into $1,500 after 90 days, $3,000 after 180 days, and the total $5,000 paid after 12 months.
2. Keep Rigs Running Well
One of the major complaints of drivers is that when their employer doesn’t maintain their rig well, the driver loses money. Rigs that are always in the shop or break down often will cause a trucker to drive fewer miles.
Also, older rigs don’t offer the same high-end safety features as newer vehicles.
If you don’t have a strict maintenance and replacement policy in place for your fleet, it’s time to create one. Your drivers will enjoy riding in a vehicle that’s safer and well-maintained, and it also helps keep rigs more efficient overall.
Efficient and reliable rigs keep accounting departments and trucking employees happy. And that’s a win-win all around.
3. Introduce Regular Home Time
If you survey your fleet, you’re sure to find employees that wish they had a better home-life balance. Being on the road all the time is fine for younger drivers, and some drivers may prefer these intense work hours.
However, many drivers want to be home more, maintain a social life, and maybe even start a family.
A few of the ways that fleets are adjusting to the home-life demand are:
- Offer better home-time options overall including daily and/or weekly guaranteed home-time or a minimum number of yearly days off.
- Create routes with longer out and home times, possibly including options sucjh as driving for 7 days with 4 days home followed by 7 days of driving with 3 days home.
If you can attract more local and regional business, you’ll be able to create fleets that offer more home time.
4. Compensation Matters
Are you paying your drivers well? An internal audit of pay followed by an assessment of your region’s going compensation should be performed. If you don’t routinely keep on top of pay changes and offer less than competing trucking fleets, employee morale and happiness will fall.
Employees want to be:
- Compensated well
- Able to move to higher pay
If you haven’t raised the pay for your truckers in a while, it may be time to do so. Zippia lists the current average pay rates by state, region, skills, and industry, if you’re curious. https://www.zippia.com/truck-driver-jobs/salary/
5. Train and Monitor the Dispatch Team
Dispatch teams are either great or horrible. Truckers that have an issue with dispatch, especially favoritism, are often vocal. If you haven’t already, introduce training for dispatch on how to best:
- Assign routes
- Keep truck drivers happy
Internal policies and processes can also help in this regard. For example, truckers who ask dispatch for time off or don’t have their concerns met will be displeased.
6. Stay in Closer Contact with Shippers and Receivers
Shippers and receivers are a crucial part of your business’ operations, but you’re not in control of these entities. Unfortunately, if there’s an issue getting goods on the trailer or it takes a long time to unload shipments, your trucking employees will have to wait.
When there’s no or less pay involved, waiting is bad for truck drivers.
Your team should have constant communication with shippers and receivers to ensure that delays are kept to a minimum when rigs arrive.
7. Send Out a Survey
Finally, you want to periodically send surveys out to all your truck drivers. Since every business is different, there will be unique issues that your truckers face that aren’t on this list – or any list. And you can be sure they will appreciate their voices and opinions being heard in a non-confrontational way.
A worry-free survey, especially if it’s anonymous, will allow truckers to:
- Voice their issues
- Offer a way to feel valued and appreciated
Truckers are often afraid to go to management with issues out of fear of retaliation. If a survey is anonymousand has the right questions on it, you’ll gain valuable insight into how to make your truckers happier.
Get the Latest Trucking Insights, Tips, and News
Are you working hard enough to keep your truck drivers happy? If not, the tips and recommendations above will help improve employee morale, satisfaction and retention.
If you want to learn about other great trucking insights, tips, or news, we invite you to sign up for our free TCI newsletter. Click here to get trucking industry news right in your inbox.
