Trucking businesses looking to gain an edge must place a strong focus on truck driver retention. Consider the following truck driver retention best practices to help your company stay current and maintain your employees.

Solicit Driver Feedback

Retrieving truck driver feedback may not seem like it would make that much of an impact to get further, however, it’s the critical first step.

Many transportation companies fail to make sure their driver needs and wants are heard. Your truck drivers should be treated with the same respect as your sales reps, your management team, and your accounting team. Give them a forum to submit their thoughts and insights on business operations, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly the feedback will impact driver retention.

Act on Driver Feedback

After soliciting driver feedback, be sure to act on it. Don’t let driver requests, complaints, concerns, or suggestions just sit on the sidelines. If you’re able to act on valid feedback, do so. If there is a lack of understanding, inform them of this. Utilize your business’s operations, recruiting, and human resources talent for driver feedback response. 

Build Dialogue, Rapport & Trust

You should always be striving to create dialogue and rapport with your drivers from feedback. This will help to build trust with your drivers. 

Honest, open, and authentic communication is the key, along with consistency. Your drivers will greatly appreciate an outlet to express themselves to your management teams. You can gather insights from these conversations, to be used to influence future strategies.

Provide Better Routes

If you can, give drivers better routes allowing them to stay home more and avoid putting them on cross-country routes that lack consistency and proximity to their home.

Keep in mind that drivers have obligations and personal lives to attend to. Allow them to have more opportunities to be present for those for instances and more opportunities to keep semi-regular hours and spend time with their loved ones. This will only help keep them motivated and loyal. 

Pay Them Better

Before investing in some expensive logistics data solution or giving your office employees a raise, consider reinvesting that money into truck driver compensation to generate major returns for your business in the form of happier, incentivized drivers who are more likely to stay with your company. Also, ensure that your clear compensation plan is clear, as truck drivers really value that.