Trucking is a hard business managed by hard people. It has to be. $7 diesel, increased regulation and government scrutiny and ever changing customer expectations drive the soft and the weak to less demanding industries. We're judged by lines on a spreadsheet and measure virtually every part of the business from fuel metrics to topline revenue, but the most important aspect of our businesses is something that can't be measured.
Ask any fleet leader what their most important asset really is and they won't mention the trucks or the trailers but instead point to the person behind the wheel. Even the most hardboiled among us know that without a driver the entire industry grinds to a halt. We know what it costs to hire, train and replace a driver but we truly have no idea what it costs to keep one.
And that frustrates the hell out of us.
So we rationalize. We tell ourselves that it must be money. That drivers are only motivated by their paycheck, and when we lose a driver, it must have been because we just didn't pay enough. It doesn't matter whether or not this is true. It makes sense, so it's the story we believe.
We spend thousands on pay raises and sign-on bonuses and yet, as an industry, we continue to lose drivers year after year.
The very first fleet I was hired to run was every driver's dream. Predictable freight, predictable loads, paid at the top of the market. Everything about it was great. And then we lost the account. Fortunately, I was able to start a new account with the same company. The constraints of this account, however, would require any driver who came with me to take a $0.07 per mile pay cut. Drivers actually lined up to follow me. I could have my pick and I took the best ten. A year later, all of them were still with me, even though recruiters were hounding them daily. This taught me that it wasn't about the money. It was about the respect.
Rory Sutherland, the Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy UK, is a behavioral economist famous for noticing that sometimes the best solutions aren't logical. They're psychological.
"If you don't believe in magic, you'll never look for it."
— Rory SutherlandBecause we have decided that money alone drives retention, we've stopped looking for other solutions even though there are dozens of low cost or free ideas that can keep drivers so happy they feel stupid looking anywhere else to work. Because we can't quantify it on a spreadsheet, we dismiss the idea that small psychological reframes can make a massive operational difference.
I've spent years noticing the same things working for reasons nobody could explain on a spreadsheet. I call it Psycho-Logistics. It's built on a single premise: perception is reality. It isn't the job but the way a driver sees it that determines their satisfaction. We don't manage drivers but we can manage their expectations, their perception, and when we do that well, we manage their behavior. What follows are not theories. They are things I have done, results I have measured, and proof that when you start looking for the magic, you find it everywhere.
There are companies that don't reimburse driver showers. This seems crazy to me because for ten or fifteen dollars we can help a driver feel like a human being on the road. That's not a perk. That's dignity at scale for the price of a fast food lunch.
Every branded t-shirt we hand a new driver should be high-vis. Safety vests are hot and cumbersome and drivers resist wearing them. But high-vis shirts go everywhere a driver goes, every customer facility, every truck stop, every rest area, every situation where being seen matters. They were never going to wear the black t-shirt out to dinner either. This is a subtle change that costs nothing extra and follows the driver into every moment we'd want it to. This idea has been ignored every time I've brought it up to Vice Presidents of my own company and yet every driver I've mentioned it agrees with me.
On a startup account we were sharing loads with the previous carrier and I had more drivers than freight. Drivers would return from a delivery and have to sit. Even though they were being paid their full rate to park, several were ready to quit. One day I simply told each of them where they stood in the queue for the next load. The complaining stopped immediately. It wasn't the sitting that was driving them to the edge. It was the not knowing. Context is free and it changed everything.
It is my standard practice to always tell a driver that the load they're about to take will be terrible. If it isn't, they're relieved. If it is, they're prepared. Either way we've managed the experience before it begins.
On a closing account where drivers were disengaged and service was suffering, we tried a $200 weekly bonus for perfect on-time delivery. Service improved mildly. The following week we had no budget for the bonus so instead we sent a fleet message recognizing every driver who hit every stop. Service improved dramatically. They cared more about being on the list than they cared about the cash. Recognition outperformed money and it cost nothing.
None of these are logical. Every one of them works. The placebo effect in trucking is as real as it is in medicine. We just need the courage to look for it and the conviction to use it.