Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve3662
I do not see salaries or hourly working. How am I going to pay one team per driver $1200 a week that trashes around at every truck stop or that wants to take short loads that averages 4500 miles a week vs a team driver that keeps the door shut and runs whatever and averages 5500 miles a week. Our arrival and dispatch times are time specific. Lets say you go to Rialto California their dispatch times are between 6:00am and 10:00 am if the team that doesn't trash around gets there at 8:00am they will get a load of the team that trashes around gets there at 10:30 they won't get a load till the next day. Both loads made it by sort time but because there is no motivation for the team to run miles since they are getting paid salary they just don't care. You can't fire them because technically they weren't late because the trailer was due for a midday sort.
Hourly wont work because you can't keep track. I would have to go off of driver logs for payroll. I don't think they will accurately project the true hours they actually worked. Then why should driver a get paid the same as driver b if driver b averages 55-60 mph when driver a averages 45-50. Most runs that we have delivery times are averaged at 45-51 mph. So what is stoping them from averaging a slower speed even if they can average a faster speed. 5-10 mph results in 3-6 more hours on a 1900 mile run. A team does 6000 miles a week that's a 10 to 20 hour a week difference at straight pay of $12.00 per hour that's $120-$240 a week for doing less work at straight time would be more if they hit overtime. So how is that going to work? Kinda looks like rewarding laziness to me.
Drivers that don't like their pay should look for a different company. If you refuse to drive for a crappy company they will go out of business because they will have no one to run their freight. They will not be able to cover their agreements with their customers therefore loosing them. Don't blame the companies blame the idiots that work for them. My drivers average $60,000 a year being paid by the mile and I am not the only one that pays like that.
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If you were running another form of business, how would you handle an employee that seem to always sluff off and go out of smoke breaks or wastes time talking with other employees about Monday night football or discussing the new chick working at Hooters? See, this makes my point. Folks are so tied up in their minds to the mileage thing, that they cannot think outside the box and look at productivity and cost/performance ratios in general. There is an HOS standard you can use to your advantage and see how time is being managed. Folks in trucking are sooooo afraid to use a productivity standard on drivers that doesn't involve miles. One could have one driver that burns up the road and racks up the miles... all at a measly 5.5 mpg and increased wear and tear on equipment and tires. Then you could have another driver who doesn't rack up near the miles the first one does, drives more moderately, but is getting over 7 mpg, gets 30-40% longer tire life, and equipment lasts longer. Which is actually more profitable to the company? And which one would deserve the most pay? Driver a may turn over 140,000 miles in a year, while driver B only turns 120,000 miles a year. But just in fuel, the first driver costs you 69 cents a mile while the second driver costs you 54 cents a mile in fuel. So, driver B is not turning as many miles, but is saving you 15 cents a mile in fuel cost alone. And if a driver is showing a record of not showing up on time for pickups or deliveries, the that is a productivity standard also.
Productivity is not rewarded effectively. For instance, a carrier may pay a measly 3 cents a mile bonus for getting good fuel mileage. No heavy duty incentive there. Now lets look at our previous two drivers. The second one is saving 15 cents a mile in fuel. So pay him half of that, 7 or 8 cents a mile extra. The carrier is still 4-5 cents a mile ahead compared to the first driver.
You know, you can always establish base line standards. If you want the truck at Rialto, CA at 0800, then specify that! Is that so difficult? You actually can specify when a driver has to be somewhere at a minimum. They can still manage their time without having to nanny them. Instead, by your method, there is not standards set, the costs per mile are higher, and you have no minimum standard in which to terminate or reward a driver.
And we all wonder why trucking has such a hard time getting and retaining good drivers. What incentive is there to be a more productive driver that also has a concern for the carrier's operating costs when there is just a one size fits all per mile pay package? I know that it is not the prevailing thought among trucking owners and executives, but to have professional drivers, you have to make them feel like professionals, in that they need to feel more like they have a vested interest in things. And rewarding them for how profitable they are to the carrier is the best way to fit that. Instead, carriers set up a standard per mile pay package that forces the drivers who would be great drivers to carry the dead wood of those that are mediocre at best. And those best drivers suffer also when they have to take an extra day off to go to the doctor or something. Whereas if they were compensated properly, it would not have a detrimental effect and you would have a more motivated driver.
I has been shown in business, that a salaried employee, rewarded for going above and beyond, is a more motivated and profitable employee. Trucking, in general, could learn a few things from other businesses. And maybe a few classes in micro economics would help. But you are right about one thing, Drivers who don't like their pay will go elsewhere.
