CCJ Innovators profiles carriers and fleets that have found innovative ways to overcome trucking’s challenges. If you know a carrier that has displayed innovation, contact CCJ Editor Jason Cannon at jasoncannon@randallreilly.com or 800-633-5953.
The first quarter of 2018 at Paper Transport Inc. (PTI) read like the opening of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
The good news? The freight economy was firing on all cylinders. “Nobody could hire enough drivers,” remembers Ben Schill, vice president for the De Pere, Wis.-based truckload fleet.
That January, PTI had rolled out a new technology — a mobile application that drivers could use to view a simulated trip plan of their current work assignments. With one click on their tablet, drivers could pull up a digital map to see accurate real-time estimates of their arrivals at the planned stops on their routes for pickups, fueling, hours of service breaks, deliveries and more.
CCJ recognized PTI as an Innovator in July 2018 for this unique SmartETA planning tool.
The bad news? The company’s driver turnover had reached a breaking point in March 2018. It climbed 10 percentage points from January to hit a 70% annualized rate. The impact on the company’s operations and culture was palpable, Schill says.
PTI was faring better than the industry, with a turnover rate for large carriers tracked by the American Trucking Associations increasing 20 points to reach 94% in the first quarter.
