Friday Short Haul - States Push For Electric Semis, Fewer Student New-hires, Troopers In A Truck

In this Friday Short Haul states sign a memorandum to push for electric semis, carriers find a smaller pool of student new hires, and troopers ride with truckers to spot unsafe drivers.

Friday Short Haul - States push for electric semis, fewer student new-hires, troopers in a truck

As his been said on this forum several times there is not a shortage of drivers but a shortage of good drivers.

For those of you considering moving to a different company...

The trucking industry's difficulties of training new drivers due to pandemic delirium is going to put pressure on motor carriers to incentivize their best drivers to stay on board. There's no better time to prove your value by improving your performance. Any drivers worth their salt will find themselves making better wages or receiving incentive pay for their productivity.

At Knight they've already offered to double our bonus pay if we stay with the company until July of 2021. Last year I earned around $7,000 bonus money. Over the course of this next year they will pay out bonus money just as they always have, but after July of 2021 they are going to take our total bonus pay from the prior twelve months, add it all up, and write us another check for that amount. That's a great incentive!

Learning to be hyper productive in this business will always bring you more money and satisfaction with the job. Switching companies seldom brings the kind of results people think they are looking for. If it did, the industry wouldn't be plagued with drivers always moving around. Everybody would be just as satisfied as I am. Unfortunately they aren't. These transient drivers keep re-discovering that they are now on a new trajectory of trying to prove themselves again as the new driver on board. That's a tough sell when you're competing with well established drivers. It's those well established drivers who are earning great incomes and staying at the top of the food chain.

But Derek Leathers, Werner’s president, says experienced driver applicants bring with them driving histories that conflict with Werner hiring practices.

He explained that 90 percent of experienced-driver applicants have issues Werner is not comfortable with and, because applications from that particular driver pool have increased, it makes it more difficult for Werner to sift through and hire the best.

Quote of the article.

It is making recruiting so much harder. Every single driver who never read this website, or ignored the advice on this website seems to be applying this year. We get stuck wasting so much time sifting through terrible applications that we can miss a good one. At least I have a job and I'm staying very busy, so I am grateful for that.

But dang man, Leathers is not exaggerating with his 90 percent of experienced drivers who are job searching right now have pretty terrible work histories. I might even say it is 95%+ for us, but we might have different standards than Werner, I'm not sure.

And... Old School with the best advice someone can give to another.

For those of you considering moving to a different company...

Learning to be hyper productive in this business will always bring you more money and satisfaction with the job. Switching companies seldom brings the kind of results people think they are looking for. If it did, the industry wouldn't be plagued with drivers always moving around. Everybody would be just as satisfied as I am. Unfortunately they aren't. These transient drivers keep re-discovering that they are now on a new trajectory of trying to prove themselves again as the new driver on board. That's a tough sell when you're competing with well established drivers. It's those well established drivers who are earning great incomes and staying at the top of the food chain.

Total Experience counts when it comes to being qualified for jobs, but the "new guy" is always the new guy.

Every company would take a driver with 3 safe years of driving experience all at one company over a driver who has 10 safe years of driving experience at 20 different companies.

That's a cold hard fact. Sure, drivers will still be able to find a driving job no matter how often they switch, but those jobs that hire chronic hoppers don't get better and better with every job switch. It's a vicious circle. Hoppers self sabotage. They say they are trying to escape companies that don't pay enough or treat drivers right, but after so many job changes...shady, low paying, lie-to-the-driver-Carriers are the only places that will hire them.

Those drivers have 3 choices: 1. Buckle down and prove themselves with their current company. 2. Keep hopping and becoming a miserable terminal rat with decades of experience but centuries of job history. 3. Drop out of trucking all together and become another failed trucker poisoning potentially great drivers from joining our ranks.

Only one of those options is a positive for the driver and for the industry.