Why it pays to roll out the red carpet
Improving shippers' and receivers' loading and unloading practices--along with a dose of common decency--can help curb driver turnover ... and just maybe cut costs.
By Peter Bradley; Jim Thomas -- Logistics Management, 10/1/1998
Right now, at shipping and receiving docks across the nation, truckers are lined up waiting to load or unload. When they finally pull up to the dock, after long days or nights on the road, many of these drivers will face the task of loading or unloading themselves, or be forced to hire waiting day laborers called lumpers. They may not even have access to a bathroom or a telephone.
During all that--the waiting, loading, and unloading--the drivers for the nation's truckload carriers, who are paid by the mile, aren't making a dime.
It's enough to make a man or woman walk away from the job, and they do, by the thousands. Drivers try another carrier hoping for better treatment or take a job in another business.
The life of a long-distance trucker is a hard one by any measure. Hundreds of miles of driving followed by sleeping in a truck and long stretches of days or weeks away from home make it hard enough. There's little that carriers can do about drivers' working conditions other than buying more comfortable equipment or making efforts to get drivers home more frequently. But the way drivers are treated at the docks can and, carriers insist, must change.
That's the message of what amounts to a crusade conducted by American Trucking Associations Chairman Edward R. Trout, who completes his term this month. In the last year, Trout, who also is president and chief operating officer of truckload carrier Cornhusker Motor Lines of Omaha, Neb., has visited dozens of truckstops around the country, asking drivers what's good and what's bad about their jobs, and what could make those jobs better.
Inevitably, he says, drivers cite the way they're treated at the nation's shipping and receiving docks as one of their biggest complaints. "I have had drivers say they would forgo their next [pay] increase if they did not have to load and unload," Trout says. "The other major issue our guys run into, and it's easy to fix, is [lack of] respect."
Saving Time Saves Money
Why should shippers care about the truckers' complaints? Call it enlightened self interest. Simply put, driver training and recruitment are expensive (it costs $6,000 to $10,000 to recruit and train a driver, according to the Truckload Carriers Association). Inevitably, those costs are reflected in trucking rates. Leaving tractors and trailers idling in line is a costly waste of assets, and that, too, is reflected in carrier costs. Plus, equipment waiting in line to unload is not available to pick up another load. That can and often does mean missed shipments. So there are plenty of economic reasons for shippers and their receiving customers to improve the system's efficiency. Says Lana Batts, executive director of the TCA, "Now that there's a shortage of trucks again, shippers understand that we have to find a better way to utilize drivers and trucks."
It is largely for that reason that the National Industrial Transportation League has joined with the American Trucking Associations and the TCA to form a task force to find ways to improve the drivers' experiences at shipping and receiving docks. Bill Huie, assistant vice president of corporate transportation for NCH Corp. in Irving, Texas, is heading up the effort for NITL. Huie says the group will be searching for best practices in shipping and receiving.
Determining those practices is one challenge. More formidable may be the task of implementing them at shipping and receiving facilities across the country.
"The big problem is really the great diversity and numbers of shippers and receivers," says Huie. "If we had a finite number, we might be able to get some good things going. But it is going to be very difficult with the tens of thousands of shippers and receivers who are more interested in getting the freight off the dock and getting it to customers and want to let somebody else worry about the driver shortage." Yet, he says, shippers, receivers, and carriers have to make the effort to reach that broad community.
"Whether shippers or receivers know it, the driver shortage is our problem as well as the carriers' problem," Huie says. "It translates into delays, having truckers harder to get, and obviously more cost. It would help productivity and bring down the cost of distribution if we all could do a better job of getting those drivers on the way."
The extent of the problem for drivers is indicated in the results of a survey conducted for the TCA's Refrigerated Division. The findings of the National Refrigerated Drivers Survey, which were released this summer, show that those drivers spend on average 10 hours waiting, loading, and unloading for each shipment. According to an analysis by Martin Labbe Associates, the transportation consultants that conducted the survey, the drivers pick up and deliver an average of 3.7 loads a week. That adds up to close to 40 hours per week of non-driving activities. And a large portion of that is merely waiting.
The long waits and lack of simple courtesies on the dock are hardly the only reasons for the difficulty truckload carriers have with retaining drivers. But neither can they be discounted. The National Refrigerated Drivers Survey indicated, for instance, that 63 percent of drivers considered waiting time to be a critical issue, and more than half the drivers said that they were unhappy or very unhappy about the waiting times they endured. Also, 60 percent rated the receivers' attitude as a critical issue, and 39 percent said they were unhappy or very unhappy about what they faced.
Achieving improvements in dock efficiency will require substantial changes in dock operations, particularly among receivers, if the National Refrigerated Drivers Survey is any indication. The survey results indicate that about 75 percent of shippers assist drivers with loading, but only about 36 percent of receivers help drivers with unloading. "That has got to change," Trout says. But Batts warns, "It's going to be a long process."
Retention Requires Attention
The whole issue of driver recruitment and retention takes up an enormous amount of carrier management's attention. Two carriers that have had notable success in recruiting and holding drivers are Crete Carrier Corp. and CFI Inc.
Glenn F. Brown, chairman and president of CFI, a truckload carrier based in Joplin, Mo., says, "We've done everything we can think of [to retain drivers.]" CFI has put particular emphasis on the tractors the company buys. Brown says CFI tractors "are almost like owner/operator spec'd trucks. They've got everything you can imagine on them." In addition, he says, the company's terminal facilities offer a number of comforts, including separate smoking and non-smoking lounges, exercise equipment, and outdoor picnic areas for drivers. Pay, of course, is another important issue, and Brown says that CFI is in the top 10 percent of truckload carriers where driver compensation is concerned.
What may be the most important step that CFI takes, however, is a requirement that all company executives spend time on the road with drivers. Vice presidents must spend a week a year out with drivers, and directors must get out at least once every other year. Brown himself has spent three weeks with drivers this year alone.
In addition, CFI has been willing to turn down business from customers it views as unfriendly to drivers. "We've discontinued business with some customers that we were not able to work out problems with," he says. "We don't do pallet exchanges. We don't serve grocery warehouses. Anything we perceive to be driver unfriendly, we stay away from. We look for long-term relationships, and we don't enter a business relationship lightly. We look for those relationships that can be mutually beneficial, and that includes the drivers."
Kerry Kearl, vice president of company fleets for Crete, based in Lincoln, Neb., says, "Turnover begins with the hire. If you hire the wrong person, he's not going to stay." High on the list of attributes that attract drivers to Crete, he says, are compensation, the equipment provided, and home time.
But even the right person will leave if he loses respect for the company, Kearl says. Usually, he says, that's the result of the driver perceiving "a non-caring attitude."
Kearl also emphasizes the importance of customers in driver retention. "We have good customers who work with us to try to decrease the time from arrival to departure to keep the driver productive," he says. That's not universal, however. "We have customers on both sides of the fence," he reports. "Some are super; the drivers never touch the freight. Others have a lot of stops on the load, and it's all driver unload. We can't think every driver is going to haul that freight."
Customers that create delays not only frustrate drivers but add costs to the system, Kearl says. "Customers nail us for a service failure," he says, "but there's not much a trucking company can do when you arrive on time, and six hours later, you're still sitting there. That's a service failure by the customer. The customer wants us to keep costs down. To keep costs down in today's market, wasted time has got to be eliminated."
The Waiting Game
Loading, unloading, and waiting time(hours, average)
Waiting to load 3.39
Actual loading time 1.65
Waiting to unload 3.20
Actual unloading time 2.25
Source: Truckload Carriers Association, National Refrigerated Drivers Survey, 1998A
Little R-E-S-P-E-C-T
What do truck drivers want?
Edward Trout, chairman of the American Trucking Associations and president of Cornhusker Motor Lines Inc., and two drivers whom he described as the "cream of the crop" attempted to answer this question at the annual meeting of the National Perishable Logistics Association. Their responses focused on job conditions.
Topping the list was loading/unloading practices. "We have to get our drivers out of the loading/unloading business," said Trout. "It's a question of productivity. You don't see airline pilots unloading cargo." Trout said that drivers became more fatigued when they engaged in loading and unloading and that harmed their effectiveness behind the wheel.
Don R. Baker, a 10-year driver with C.R. England, agreed, adding that the issue of freight handling squeezes the driver. "To warehouses, it's a transportation issue, and to transportation companies, it's a warehouse issue," he said. "I can't believe that handling is not addressed by either party. Where does it get lost? Why does it ultimately fall on the driver?"
The situation is exacerbated at congested docks where drivers wait for hours to get their freight unloaded. "There isn't a driver in the world who would enter six hours waiting time into his log, because that time is not paid," said Trout.
The drivers discussed a number of benefits and disadvantages in current industry trends. Baker said that onboard communications systems were one of the biggest boosts to productivity. "It saves a lot of time," he said. "Getting on and off the highway to make a phone call is a half-hour project."
Cliff Walker, a driver for Prime Inc., is concerned with the trend toward longer combination vehicles and longer trailers. "I don't like the 53-footers," he said. "There's more trailer sticking out beyond the tandems than you can negotiate in congested areas."
The drivers had a number of suggestions for shippers and consignees, including the following:
c Shippers should load their trailers in unload order to expedite the unloading process.
c The bill of lading should include directions to the consignee's facility.
c Trailers should be loaded or unloaded within two hours of their arrival and consignees should provide personnel to handle the loads.
c Shippers and consignees should comply with requests for pallets. "If you deliver a shipment with 24 good pallets, you should take back 24 good pallets," said Baker.
A key issue with Baker and Walker was the issue of respect for drivers. "I expect courteous and kind treatment, but it doesn't happen all the time," said Walker. "Smile when you see me. I'm delivering something you ordered."--Jim Thomas
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