Ever wonder how the proud, roaring engines of the trucking industry are faring in today's economic landscape? Join me, Walter Gatlin, as we rerun a segment from the Trucker Buffet podcast that's bound to steer your perspective on the critical issue of driver retention. We're not just talking shop here; we're getting under the hood of pressing concerns like equipment quality and fair compensation, comparing the golden days when a trucker's wage supported a family to our current, less glamorous reality. Buckle up for a ride through the challenges that supply chain disruptions and a diesel technician shortage are hurling our way, and discover the possible uptick in breakdowns and mechanical issues plaguing our fleets.
Now, it's one thing to spotlight the problems, but in this episode, we're mapping out the routes to solutions, too. Highlighting the importance of a respectful company culture and open lines of communication, I share how these elements can fuel job satisfaction and keep drivers feeling valued. We'll navigate the idea of relocating for a more affordable lifestyle and the allure of smaller, driver-centric companies. It's all about striking that sweet balance between a rewarding paycheck and the quality of life behind the wheel. So, if you're looking to shift gears and find out how to thrive in the trucking industry, both professionally and personally, this is the conversation to tune into.
Text me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at (641) 990-5641. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.
Ever wonder how the proud, roaring engines of the trucking industry are faring in today's economic landscape? Join me, Walter Gatlin, as we rerun a segment from the Trucker Buffet podcast that's bound to steer your perspective on the critical issue of driver retention. We're not just talking shop here; we're getting under the hood of pressing concerns like equipment quality and fair compensation, comparing the golden days when a trucker's wage supported a family to our current, less glamorous reality. Buckle up for a ride through the challenges that supply chain disruptions and a diesel technician shortage are hurling our way, and discover the possible uptick in breakdowns and mechanical issues plaguing our fleets.
Now, it's one thing to spotlight the problems, but in this episode, we're mapping out the routes to solutions, too. Highlighting the importance of a respectful company culture and open lines of communication, I share how these elements can fuel job satisfaction and keep drivers feeling valued. We'll navigate the idea of relocating for a more affordable lifestyle and the allure of smaller, driver-centric companies. It's all about striking that sweet balance between a rewarding paycheck and the quality of life behind the wheel. So, if you're looking to shift gears and find out how to thrive in the trucking industry, both professionally and personally, this is the conversation to tune into.
Text me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at (641) 990-5641. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.
Speaker 1:
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Rolling 18 podcast. I'm your host, walter Gatlin. I appreciate you folks listening to my podcast. Boy, I'm on 19 different platforms now and it's really turning out good. So thank you all who are downloading my podcast and listening. We're going to get more followers as time goes on. I have no doubt about it, because we're going to provide you with great information.
Speaker 1:
Today I was going to do a story on women in trucking and the importance of women in trucking and some of the pioneers pioneer women in trucking. I'm not going to bring that story today simply because we have too many podcasters that need help because of all the tornadoes and storms, so I'm mixing in everything. I've got all kinds of different podcasts here that I'm handling for other people, so I will bring you that story on Monday. Today I'm going to do a rebroadcast of one I did last year for a Trucker Buffet podcast. I used to do so. I went ahead and did that, but here's a replay and I will be back Monday with that story on the pioneers of women in trucking and it's going to be great. Here's a rebroadcast. I hope you enjoy it. We will see you on Monday.
Speaker 1:
Today's podcast is going to be about a story that was written by the trucker and it's over at the truckercom. This story here caught my attention because the number one issue actually, we have three issues, but the number one issue in America as far as truck drivers go is driver retention. This story here is basically called driver feedback shows that equipment compensation remain the top concerns, and that would be for the driver, but also the main concern for a lot of companies is driver retention. They took a latest poll off of the professional driver agency. Now, if you go to pdateamcom, they have a lot to offer as far as data and analytics, and their title is. Their slogan is it is not just who we are, but it is what we believe and they do data on people, analytics, drivers, different things like that. They have main office, I believe, in Brentwood, tennessee, and in 2015, with the primary focus of transportation and logistics industry. During its early years, pda helped trucking companies by recruiting and placing truck drivers with carriers across the United States. Now I'm sure they have much more involvement in other things as well, but the one things we're going to concentrate on today for this podcast is going to be about driver retention, compensation and the type of equipment the companies have Now, according to this story here, they said that the latest poll taken by the PDA shows that the two top most mentioned concerns among truck drivers are equipment and pay.
Speaker 1:
Now I can tell you one thing about pay all the years I've been on the road Every single truck driver out there is literally getting paid less today than they were back in the 80s. I mean, if you add all the statistics into play, including the cost of living differences, the cost of housing, a lot of companies are moving towards less pay and they're not doing it on purpose, I imagine. You can only get up to a certain point and pay when your company starts losing money and then you're not making money. So what's the point of being in business? Basically, a lot of companies cannot keep up with the cost of living.
Speaker 1:
Now, back in the 80s, a person could potentially drive a truck, you know, 70 hours a week, whatever it was back then. I can't remember Us chicken haulers. We put in a lot more than that. But you know, with all the logbook manipulations and things that went on back in the 80s, who knows how many hours we work. But I know for a fact that we paid for our entire household, the children. Most wives did not work back then. They enjoyed working. Some of them, quite a few of them, did work, but I'm just saying that a person could earn a living and take care of his entire family and buy a house, buy property, own cars, take care of all the children's needs everything on that one salary Today. It is extremely hard to do such a thing unless you do without a lot of things and you reduce your expenses by a great deal.
Speaker 1:
Now the PDA released the data compiled by thousands of phone calls with professional truck drivers during the first quarter of 2022. So this is very, very fresh and it shows here that the date of the story was April 22nd. Now, it was gathered as part of PDA's effort to help trucking companies curb turnover while providing accurate and actionable data to address their drivers' concerns. And it's, you know, hoopla, hoopla, hoopla. They throw in a bunch of words to make the story bigger, so we'll just get right to the point. But anyway, they stated, as we saw at the end of 2021, the equipment supply chain issues continue to cause headache for multi-carriers and drivers.
Speaker 1:
Now we have a supply chain issue. That's fine, it's going to work itself out. It always does this COVID thing really put a damper on a lot of things and I think, personally, the government screwed things up royally. But we've lived, we've learned and, like any other situation, like this massive COVID outbreak and shutting down the entire country, this hurt a lot of people and we're going to learn a lot of lessons from this, I guarantee you, because the people aren't going to let this kind of shutdown happen again. And basically we truckers were one of the few organizations that were out there in the midst of all of this, before the vaccine. It's like the doctors and the nurses and the first responders and the police and everybody else. We were out there and we were told we had to be out there.
Speaker 1:
The new tractor output, supply chain, delays for parts and the diesel technician shortage are putting pressure on maintenance departments and fleets are aging. Drivers will be keeping trucks longer, which will likely mean an increase in breakdowns and mechanical issues. Well, that all depends. I know some pretty good owner-operators out out there and they pay real close attention to their equipment, so they'll keep that stuff up. But yeah, you're going to have those guys out there, like I did.
Speaker 1:
My video podcast showed in part on that video how bad a person can pull a trailer down, how bad a condition that trailer can be in. He got 10 out of service violations on that trailer so, and he didn't even have a CDL. I knew that something was wrong there, because I know a normal truck driver would never even have the guts to pull a trailer like that down the road. The PDAD data has shown that equipment issues often lead to compensation frustrations for the drivers, and now we're probably referring to the lease operators or owner operators and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:
The main thing we need to know is that we need to come to a consensus on pay, and I think the best way to do that is to take an average throughout the United States, not just the area they live in, and I know some states are a lot more expensive than others to live in. But we need to take a ballpark average of everything food, the amount of children you have Somebody needs to do a study on this the amount of rent, the amount of mortgage payments, whatever. Whatever the average is, we need to compile that information and put it into a pay scale, and then that needs to be the pay scale. But, like anything else, you raise up transportation, you're going to raise up the cost of living. I've always said that the reason things are going up much higher than they used to be, like I said, you used to be able to to support an entire family on one income.
Speaker 1:
The reason things are getting much higher is because the people that own these big corporations they're buying out all these little mom and pop places, it doesn't matter what it is a truck stop, a grocery store, whatever. The corporations are taking over everything you are buying from a corporation instead of a regular person or a family, and this stuff is going up drastically because not only do they need to have all these buildings and sell all this stuff and everything on the internet, but they have to make billions of dollars in profit. These are investment companies. These are not companies that care whether or not you get fresh produce. They care their bottom line, how much money they're gonna make, and definitely need to put a stop to this stuff. Because back when mom and pop places were 80, 90% in the United States, people were making a decent living. The people that were working were able to spend their money more wisely. They were able to buy nicer things, they were able to do better things for their children, but we didn't have so many corporations getting in.
Speaker 1:
All of these businesses whether it be grocery stores, whether it be shoe stores, I don't care what it is Walmarts, whatever the point is, they need to make billions of dollars on top of everything else. So the more they make, the more you have to spend, the less money you have, and everybody in the house has to go to work. That's crazy. We're getting to the point where the 1930s recession they had to have children go out and work. The whole family had to go out and work. And the whole idea of all the changes that were made after the recession, whether it be truck driving or anything else, was the fact that we're not going to go through this, no more. We want a decent wage so we can buy, you know, take care of our family and we can enjoy our lives, and we're going into the reverse of that.
Speaker 1:
Now that drivers are logging miles while their truck is in the shop is the best way to keep today's equipment problem from turning into the next week's compensation problem. Loaners are better than breakdown pay. So if carriers have available trucks, offer them to drivers who are stuck in the shop so they can continue to log miles. That is one suggestion from a driver. Then again, that truck has to be bought and paid for. That truck has to sit there waiting for a driver to break down and not log any miles itself. So they want you to have more truck, you know, so that a driver can keep going. That is an idea, but I don't know if it's usable.
Speaker 1:
Overall, compensation issues remain steady in quarter one at 21%, nearly matching 2021 quarter four totals. However, drivers complaining about their pay rate was up 6% quarter over quarter. Now they dispute noted again that the rise in driver feedback regarding pay rate is coincided with the increase in equipment issues. So I personally, if you go through all the statistics on the Department of Human Services and Social Security and stuff like that and Social Security is getting ready to raise their rates big time because of inflation. The government can say they don't have inflation right now. They can call it whatever they want, but it is inflation and we're going to go into a recession. If we stay on the path we're on, by the end of the year I bet you we're going to be in a recession.
Speaker 1:
According to the story, industry-wide pay raises continue but, as we've noticed, drivers are spending more time in the shop and they aren't making what they've been promised. Like I said, you can only raise wages high enough to where it starts squeezing that profit or taking that profit away, and once you do that, these corporations are not going to allow such a move and those are who make the big decisions. Now, personally, I would say the smaller company you work for, the better off you are, because their expenses are going to be lower. When you work for a company that has 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 trucks, all of that has to be taken into account, and you know that big money is getting involved somewhere, whether it be a big bank or whatever. So all of those trucks that are not moving have to be sustained by all the trucks that are moving. Everything has to be paid for before they can make a profit.
Speaker 1:
It doesn't matter what it is, but the biggest problem we're going to have in driver retention, I think, is the fact that people go out on the road thinking they want to drive truck because it's the easiest way to get a really good paying job right now, but they don't realize how much time they have to spend out on the road away from their family. Now there are ways that people do things to combat that kind of problem. You know they'll get on with a job, that they'll get them home every seven days. They'll go out on the road. They'll be home every five to seven days. They'll spend a day, day and a half, with their family and that'll help them stay close to their family and make them feel like, okay, I'm not out here working my butt off so that I can pay my bills and not enjoy any part of my life. That's understandable as well.
Speaker 1:
We have to understand that this is what trucking is, and I think the more we get down the line compared to the eighties we used to haul stuff from LA to Philly All that's breaking down. Now Very few companies have you drive that many miles anymore. Generally, the route's going to be 500, 700, 900 miles on average and then you're going to get another load. So that gives you time to make, to schedule yourself, to go home. So if you know what I'm talking about on the, as far as the miles go, and the further you go away from home, and the further you run away from home, the less likely it is you're going to make it home. But drivers need to make good pay but they also need to get home to their family. What do you do? Driver retention.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of issues as to why people can't be on the road and I've always said, and a lot of my friends have always said, you have to be born a truck driver to love this stuff. Because people get out there on the road and the next thing you know it's not what they thought it was going to be. They start missing their family, they get lonely. It's just one big problem after another. Anyway, they wrote here that communication issues accounted for more than half of the driver feedback regarding operations in quarter one. We've continued to see the communication issue on the rise the last several quarters. Drivers view communication and respect as the same thing and requested about the company culture, proactive and timely communication. Keeping drivers in the loop not only reduces communication issues but it makes the drivers feel respected while relieving driver frustration. And, yes, communication is the key for a happy driver Period. End of story, full stop.
Speaker 1:
The point is you start lying to your driver and you tell them this is going to happen or this is going to happen, and you know, I've seen it, even with my own family driving truck, I have seen it. They tell you one thing and then they change their mind or they say something has changed drastically. And they do this over and over and over again. You get to the point you can't trust them. You don't want to be there anymore. I don't care how much you get paid, because you're getting paid good, but then you got to put up with all this bull. Or you're getting treated great, but you're not making enough pay. When they bring up vehicle breakdowns, most people are driving a company truck anyway. Breakdowns are a bad thing because most drivers get paid by the mile. The thing of it is stick with a smaller company, a smaller company that replaces their equipment regularly and one that's going to pay you a good wage. They are out there. I know they're hard to find, but they are out there.
Speaker 1:
And another thing I would like to suggest to a lot of you drivers out there is that if you are living in a state that all they do is tax the hell out of you, I don't care how comfortable you are in that state. Move to a state that doesn't gouge you every time you make a turn. With taxes, with high real estate, wouldn't you much rather be able to afford to raise your family to take care of your family rather than worry about bills every single month. How much more comfortable would you be being away from your family if you were able to take care of them financially? And I know there's always one or another person that wants to stay in that particular town or state, even though the cost of living is ridiculous. You guys have to make responsible choices and if that means moving to a smaller town in a state that doesn't gouge your eyes out with bills and people don't gouge your eyes out with cost of living expenses, you know, sometimes those people are greedy and when they rent you a place or they sell you a place, you're going to pay two to three times what's normal. And I'll tell you, when I moved from California to Iowa, I immediately saved 50% on my expenses, so that helps greatly as well. But these companies are going to have to figure out driver retention and I think the best way to do that is top-notch pay, top-notch equipment and top-notch communication. Those are going to be the three things.
Speaker 1:
If you guys want to read this story, I'm going to put it down the link. You can read the entire story and see exactly what the truckercom had put on there, as well as the PDA. You can go to that website. I'll put the link on there. It's people data analytics and they also do a blog, but it's valuable information and it can help you make great decisions on your future.
Speaker 1:
Being a truck driver is more than just holding a steering wheel these days and getting a good wage. It's a lot of factors involved to keep your truck and your family moving smoothly throughout this journey. You're on and making a great living Because, remember, the more you make, the less you have to work, the more time you get to spend with your family and the greater your family's taken care of. That is going to build you the greatest happiness. That's all there is to it. But you got to find a middle ground here. You got to decide exactly what it is you want, because jumping in that truck every single day, not being happy because you can't do what you want or you can't get what you want, it's just going to eat at you and eat at you until it ruins your health. Start prioritizing your stuff. Decide what you want for your life. Move to a community that best fits your financial needs and if you do that, it will best fit your mental health needs. It'll best fit your quality of life and find yourself a company that is going to take care of you and not lie to you and communicate greatly with you. That's your best deal.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to bring out more information as these podcasts go on, and I'm also going to. I'm going to. I'm going to scounge every bit of information I can find to keep up with the new times, as well as talk a little bit about the old times. I still that's.
Speaker 1:
The one thing that bothers me the most is the fact that why is it people back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s could have one person, work, pay all their bills, own land, own a house, own new cars and their kids raised up with silver spoons. And yet here we are with all this knowledge and everything we've learned. We're going backwards. We're letting the corporations take over. They need to make billions of dollars in profits. Our pay and our expense difference is getting narrower. We're having to spend all of our money just to pay bills. That's not a good quality of life. So the three top things would be live in a community you can afford, make a great wage and drive for a company that communicates and has excellent equipment. Thank you for listening to Roland 18 Podcast, visit our website at wwwroland18podcastcom. Remember we have a new episode every Monday, wednesday and Friday. Be safe out there, drivers. We love all of you.