Recruiters shed light on obtaining, retaining drivers
Summary
As carriers compete for very few fish in a large pond, they’re discovering and implementing new ways to attract talent, reaching beyond the traditional demographics of a driver and offering more competitive pay, benefits and home-time options, among other things. “We did address it, and then secondly just to ensure that were in the game from a recruiting perspective as well.” According to the American Trucking Associations, driver wages were up considerably in 2021 compared to 2019 with a slow migration away from mileage-based pay. Tim Chrulski, chief operations officer at Ohio-based Garner Transportation, said his company has also increased pay in the last couple of years but has applied a different approach more recently that involves a pay-for-performance system, which compensates drivers based on four categories related to things like safety and fuel efficiency. But Tim Norlin, Roehls vice president of driver employment, said one of the things that makes the company stand out from other carriers is its home-time and fleet options. “Some of the benefit there is youve got an individual behind the wheel of a younger age thats going (to adapt) quicker than the 50-year-old guy or gal, so I think there’s a lot of great opportunity there and … its great that the government is getting on board with us now and putting a program together to help trucking companies be able to train that next generation.” Norlin said it is long overdue for the industry to be able to offer interstate driving jobs to 18- to 20-year-olds because Roehl has long been training 18-year-old CDL holders to drive intrastate.