This is why Werner continues to have problems, despite putting so much effort into improvement

During my time with Werner I saw the company improve by an absolutely immense amount. In my first month as a driver I had 18 trailers out of compliance. During my last year with Werner I dont recall having even a single trailer out of compliance. It went from an absolutely terrible company to one that was actually probably the best major company when it came to vehicles and technology. The tech tools and the learning tools were vastly better than anything I saw before or since. In that way they were extremely good.

The problem is that Werner has too many "motivated" employees who will do ANYTHING to reach their goals. The employees who appear to be the best employees are often an absolutely living hell to deal with, because they do not consider ANYTHING except getting to their goals. These employees are often so blinded by their goals that it creates situations that border on psychotic in many instances.

For instance, I witnessed several cases where the JIT manager stranded drivers during family emergencies because they drivers refused to continue driving if they were not going home. So the JIT manager rage stranded them. This occured once to my own co-driver when his child was in the ICU, and in another case I was sent to recover a load from a stranded team in Nevada who was trying to get home after a death in the family.

As a trainer I also had issues with this obsessive behavior by dispatch almost continuously for several years. I routinely got into arguments with dispatch after having been on 30-40 hour shifts and repeatedly sending messages that I would require at least 10 hours to rest before the next load. After two months of constant arguing at the end of every run, I eventually ended up quitting training altogether because it was psychotic to have to constantly argue with dispatch simply to get sleep like a normal human being.

I found the same problem with obsessive behavior by my solo dispatchers, including an instance where I was breathalyzed after vomiting in a terminal, then repeatedly called and yelled at because I was unable to take a load into an urban area, or take a load at all. I was literally slumped against my door in my driver seat, barely able to stay awake. When I took several days off in response to their behavior, they even sent safety staff out to force me to take their calls when I stopped responding to them.

Obsessive behavior by motivated employees is a recipe for abuse of drivers. Obsessive employees do not take into account anything except moving freight, and this causes extreme stress and harassment of drivers when freight cannot be moved safely for any reason except weather. Dispatch knows that its not allowed to tell drivers to operate due to unsafe weather, but there is no such limitation if the driver is personally unable to continue doing their job safely.

Specifically, drivers cannot reject loads if they are unable to safely stay awake.

If Werner wants to improve the work environment for drivers and get back to growth, it needs to concentrate on making sure that employees do not accidentally abuse drivers as a side effect of being overly motivated. Drivers MUST have a way to stop this kind of behavior. Not to mention that it is legally required, as coercion to operate unsafely is a crime (And listed on the FMCSA complaint form as such)

So what is the solution? Its pretty straightforward. Add a new Macro that has three levels of operational readiness. Red, Yellow, and Green. Green means the truck is completely good to go. Yellow means a truck may be having issues and to expect delays. And a condition red means the driver is unable to drive, be it illness, weather, stress overload, fatigue, or family emergency.

There absolutely has to be a way for drivers to throw up a red flag when the office personnel are overstepping their boundaries. Without a way for drivers to limit this kind of behavior, Werner will continue to lose drivers because of office conflicts that should be easy to solve.

 

Crete is actually pretty good about that. I worked for their sister company and have a student there now, and the difference in attitude made the company a vastly better workplace.

If I wasnt working for myself now, I would probably be over there.

So its definitely possible to run a large company and keep drivers happy. I think Crete has something like 6+ times the average length of employment.

 

Otherwise known as "ignoring the problem".

 

Exactly. There is no reason to push people to take loads they cant safely take because of fatigue or illness.

Better to lose a load or two per month than to lose the entire business income of the driver permanently.