Recruiting gets easier

Easy way to answer this.
Imagine you are the employer.
2 applicants come to you.
1 wants .46 per mile after all, he is an experienced driver of many years.
2 comes and will take whatever. Been driving a year or so.

Which would you pay?

 

Depends....... doesn't it?

First and foremost......What does my insurance company say?

Then,

Is it the dead of winter and the driver is going to have to drive in the Northeast or Canada?

Am I a contractor with the government which requires me to run ADDITIONAL background checks on my drivers...... or even have drivers that have "security clearances"?

There are a wide range of specialty carriers...... not to mention expiditers...... that cannot just choose anyone from a stack of applications.

However, if I am one of the big carriers that needs a constant stream of new drivers to survive...... then I'm hiring every one of those "driving a year or so" guys that walks in the door...................

 

I'm sorry but you're wrong in my line of business. I'm glad that my company learned many years ago that a well trained driver will save them money in the long run. They learn the hard way by lawsuits and everyone going after deep pockets. Maybe that's why we want 5 years tanker experience. All it will take is for some of these sh-ty companies to have a bad accident and the word gets out about their 6 month driver trainers and you'll have a line waiting to sue.

 

GH - no, she's right. Yes, most companies understand the cost of inexperience. The differences lie in what the company has for a business model. Some companies really do make a profit in training newbies. It takes a large number to really make that worthwhile, so you can pretty much guess what companies do it: Hire a newbie, "train' him, throw him in a truck, then when he screws up (you know he's going to), toss him back in the lake and reel in the next one. Free money and you still get your freight hauled.

MOST companies, on the other hand, are more concerned with saving money through experience. Obviously yours is one of them. It looks like it costs them more (higher pay, higher cost in benefits, etc).. but their insurance rates are much lower, they have drastically lower training costs, and their employees are happy. Happy employees are typically 1) willing to not go ballistic over the occasional mistake made by another department (payroll) 2) are typically willing to go that extra mile to make things happen. These mean that they have to devote fewer resources to handling irate employees.

Further, there are intangibles - which ARE figured in monitary terms. A good reputation will add dollars to the bottom line. How you treat your employees is part of that reputation.

nerts - I just re-read what you said. I would tend to agree with you, there. I'd missed that you were speaking particularly about your company's niche in the industry. Yeah - you guys really do need to (and probably do, mostly) hire experienced drivers (even though I got a job offer from a tanker company, right out of school. Maybe I'm just more perfecter than others )

I'm still gonna leave what I wrote, above, though.

 

Lurch and GasHauler....... I was, very much, speaking of the bottom feeders....... I am well aware that this model of business is not traditionally used or supported, but for some companies it works.

I am going to go look for an old post I wrote.......... I think I discussed this business model in detail and then proposed a question........ did the model come about because the company was having such a high turner and their employee pool was so underskilled etc.... OR did the company create the model and now the industry has a ton of marginal drivers because of how they got their start......... something like the chicken and the egg...........

Ill find it and repost it here....... it is much more articulate than what I wrote above....... I am leaving in 2 minutes.........

HELLO LURCH!
MISSED YA DUDE!

 

Hiah, sweetie! Missed you (and, yea, I'll admit it - the others here) while I was on the road. Turns out my laptop modem is toast, so I went through serious withdrawals the first week out. Gonna see if I can't land an aircard in time for the next trip out.

As for the chicken/egg question - without a great deal of research (none), I'm inclined to say it was a deliberate move on the part of at least one company. I mean, SW... er, this company had high turnover, and realized that it could be made to pay handsomely, so deliberately made it their business model.

 

Here are my guess-timations on the low pay carriers.

I am not including anything associated with the training as far as any govt. income that may or may not be received, nor am I including the several weeks to months that drivers will run with trainers making next to nothing. I am only considering the first years lower wages and lack of benefits that new drivers receive.

Lets say a company has 10,000 drivers that run a company average of 2200 miles per week each. That is a total of 22 million miles per week company wide, or One billion, one hundred fourty four million miles yearly.

Lets say the company saves appx. 12 CPM in pay and benefits for a newbie driver. 12 cents per mile savings is a very realistic figure. Multiply that by the yearly mileage figure and you get: $114,400,000 saved per year by using lesser experienced drivers.

This is a low estimate, as Swift runs over 40 million miles per week, and has many more that 10,000 drivers. I am using these figures as an example of using low cost drivers vs higher cost experienced drivers in OTR operations.

A company can afford a few lawsuits for an extra 100-200 million per year in the pockets from hiring newbies.

 

Boy........ I am glad you people aren't running the co. I am working for.

Shees...........

 

Two employees # the industry low of .28 cpm would be .56 cpm+benefits,payroll taxes.

So, I'll go with the experienced driver.

 

But you have to add the cost of training the new driver. Calculate the insurance risk.

And NO company wants a lawsuit.