At Commercial Carrier Journal's Solutions Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, top fleets recognized as CCJ Innovators shared their strategies to use technology to improve driver pay, recognition, quality of life and, ultimately, recruiting and retention.
The strategies included letting drivers pick their own loads, using a certifications to recognize driver achievements, and even using tech to precisely measure the language and tone of communications to pick up on and address driver issues before they manifest into problems.
First up was Blair Ewell, senior vice president of Trucking Operations at USAT Capacity Solutions, this year's CCJ Innovator of the Year. USA Truck's load board system has been the subject of CCJ articles before, and Ewell shared with the audience some nuances to the system as well as how it came to be.
Ewell said the company's load board came about in an effort to delineate itself from owner-operators in case legislation like AB 5 ever went mainstream. Essentially, Ewell set out to create a load board to facilitate "vendor-to-vendor" relations with drivers, and in the process reevaluated how the company was losing drivers and "what drivers want."
"They’re all human beings, they live these lives and they don’t have any choices of what happens to them," Ewell said in describing the old system. "They don’t get to choose what freight they haul. It’s being dished up to them from a system, an old system -- the same one we've been using for 35 years in business. We know better. We treat them like less than human beings, saying: 'You’re going to take this load, you’re going to take your break, and then you’ll take another load whenever I get around to telling you about it.' Who would want a job where you have no choices? And then we wonder why we can’t attract drivers to this industry."
USA Truck's solution, an app available for download on company-owed or driver-owned devices, shows drivers loads available in their specific geography with specific empty miles limitations and other metrics built in.
"The driver selects a load and the system performs a validation. Can he do it within HOS? Is he within the constraints of empty miles and can he get there in time to do another load?" said Ewell in describing the system. Once the system validates the load, the driver's workflow begins.
