The CarriersEdge Podcast | Episode #111
Mark Murrell: Happy New Year, and welcome to Episode 111 of The CarriersEdge Podcast. Coming to you live from the construction zone formerly known as our basement studio, I'm Mark Murrell, co-founder of CarriersEdge. And with me stuffed into the room full of furniture is
Jane Jazrawy: Jane Jazrawy, the other co-founder of CarriersEdge. Happy New Year!
Mark: Yes.
Jane: I forgot that it was actually New Year. It feels like a month has passed since the actual January 1.
Mark: I think we've aged a month or two.
Jane: Something like that.
Mark: But, yes, it is still mid-month. And it is the first episode of the New Year, so we are required to say, 'Happy New Year!'
Jane: Happy New Year.
Mark: We are in the midst of some home construction.
Jane: Aren't we always? I feel like we're always on, like, something is always happening to the house we live in.
Mark: Yes. After a year and a half in this house, we had to repair a floor. And since we had a small section of water damage that needed to be repaired on a hardwood floor, but the hardwood goes through the entirety of the main floor, we can't just re-stain a part of it. So we have to do the whole stinking thing.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Which means we had to get everything off of the main floor. Which is hard for our old joints and bones to manage.
Jane: Oh, yeah. Oh my god. My hips are not what they used to be.
Mark: Yes. My office, it's normally on the main floor, is stuffed into the basement and wrapped in a whole pile of stacks of boxes and bookshelves and things and yeah. And it's been a bit crazy because it seems like they are perpetually working right above me. I don't know what they're doing, but this section of the floor right above me is getting the most treatment and it's going to be the most pristine perfect floor when it's done, I think.
Jane: This is crazy. Well, I don't think we've experienced it when we had renos done. We'd never experienced someone actually working a full day.
Mark: Oh, yeah. Because they always say they're gonna show up at 8, but they actually show up around 10.
Jane: And then they leave at 4.
Mark: Yeah, between 3 and 4. But, yeah, this guy was here at exactly 8.
Jane: And stays until 6.
Mark: Yeah. But well, he would've kept going. I think he finally got the hint when I said how much longer you figure you're gonna be. And then he kinda wrapped it up, and that was at, like, ten to six. So he did a full day. That's for sure. They didn't even really have a break for lunch. They did lunch in shifts, so there was always somebody grinding something.
Jane: This is not the experience that we had in Ontario...
Mark: No. This
Jane: where people actually did here
Mark: not what we had here with other service providers.
Jane: Well, has anybody else worked? Oh, I guess the guy who did the patio.
Mark: Yeah. We had some landscape work done, and it was shorter days. But, yeah, it's been a weird experience. And of course
Jane: But the floor guy is weird.
Mark: Yeah. And they underestimate the amount of dust that they're kicking up. I think because they're used to it. They're used to it, so it's not a big deal.
Jane: Yeah. So famous last words, oh, you don't need to put in up any sheets because, you know, we're vacuuming the whole time.
Mark: Yeah. We've got fans. We've got vacuums. It'll be fine.
Jane: But if you listen to my voice, you can hear the dust. And I'm really susceptible to it. So, I mean, it's not that bad. But.. It doesn't take very much for my voice to start going, and it you know, I sound like I'm
Mark: You're about to sing "Bette Davis Eyes."
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: Well, yeah. So we had that scheduled to start this week because we knew that we would be finished with Best Fleets scoring by this week.
Jane: And we finished Best Fleets scoring!
Mark: And it was a grind.
Jane: It was.
Mark: Just the way the calendar fell, we had shorter period from the time that the surveys closed on New Year's Eve until we had to have everything wrapped up. So we, I think, had, was it seven business days this year? We had to get it all wrapped up. And we did. So it was a grind. There was what seven of us that were scoring at different times. Most of those seven were there pretty much the whole time. And we ended up with, oh, I should know this.
Jane: 75?
Mark: 72 finalists. This year, which is down a little bit from last year, but kind of in line with what we used to see pre COVID numbers. And that still meant an awful lot. I did do the math on it. I think there was something like 3,500 questions that we had to review in that period, because there's some new questions that I think we'll end up talking about here, and some rewritten questions that gave us some some different insights, and so you have to approach those differently. So we have to kind of start from scratch when we have a brand new question or a totally rewritten question. We don't really know what we're going to get with it, so we don't have any frame of reference for scoring and that takes more time. You're kind of coming into it blind. You've got to look at what people are doing, start to see, is there even anything here that you can kind of assess as better or worse? And then how do you put some point values around that to to reward the people that are putting in the effort. So you got stuck as you often do on some of these questions that were brand new, that were sort of blank slates. And so I want to talk about a couple of those with you. And the first one, one of our all time favorites to talk about is new entrant programs.
Jane: Yeah. That's, well, new entrant programs this year was, I think, kind of on a trajectory where nobody did anything for the longest time, and then they started popping up. And now it's kind of settled into: you either don't do them at all, or you partner with a school and then you have a finishing program. And there's a few, I'd say, maybe ten to fifteen percent of carriers actually have their own school. And that's about it.
But I don't remember anything very odd about it. It seems to be settling. I think fewer companies are actually trying to run their own schools.
Mark: That's a big change.
Jane: They're really focusing on the finishing program. I think there was a little bit of a surge of schools a few years ago because there wasn't any, and people were trying to find drivers. And I thought, well, you know, you can train them yourself and we'll create a school. It's funny because trucking companies often try to be other companies.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: It's weird because other types of industries don't do this.
Mark: Not very often.
Jane: If you're in banking, you're in finance, you don't try and be a trucking company. Or if you're in education, you don't try and be a trucking company. You don't try and kind of jump. If you're
Mark: If you're in banking, you don't buy a hotel chain because your people have to travel a lot.
Jane: Yeah. But in trucking, what you find is when they're putting focus on something, then they start thinking about creating a different company. And I think it's because a lot of trucking companies kind of grew out of other companies so farming. There's a lot of food services that have trucking related to them or retail that have trucking related to them. Or have a sort of a spin-off trucking company. But trucking companies were spinning off so much during, like, sort of in COVID and post COVID, there was and even, I would say, 2018-2019, because I remember companies saying, well, we're not really a trucking company, we're a tech company. Oh, yeah.
And thinking
Mark: When there was free money floating around everywhere.
Jane: Okay, you use a lot of tech, but that doesn't mean you're a tech company. And all of those tech
Mark: If you are a tech company trying to operate trucks, you're in trouble.
Jane: Well, none of those are around anymore.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: I don't know. I was actually thinking about this the other day. I was like, oh, remember when you had, during Best Fleets, we'd always have this... or they would have these really strange names, and then you'd sort of look up the website and kinda go, I don't know what this is, and then you'd realize that it was some sort of tech-funded trucking company. And I kinda I think I interviewed... A lot of the time they couldn't get it together to actually get to an interviewer, finish the questionnaire.
But when I did talk to them, they were always, like, thinking that it was somehow gonna be - whatever technology they were using - was gonna be the next best thing, and they were you're gonna have this gargantuan growth of something. But you didn't really get the sense that there was actual drivers and freight being moved around. Yeah. That was kind of besides the point.
Mark: Yeah. That was sort of just a means to an end. But you could always tell when you looked at the name because it was a name that sort of related to transportation, but it was missing a vowel. Or had some weird number
Jane: Freight with an eight.
Mark: Yeah. Or it's had some weird number thrown in the middle. Yeah. Yeah.
Jane: And they're all gone now, I think. I haven't really heard that much about any of them. I think they're all kind of flopped. There was "We have lots of money. What are we gonna do with it?" But there was also trucking, like, actual logistics type of companies that had so much tech that they were experimenting with that they were often creating their own software, like, their own dispatch systems or TMS or whatever.
Mark: Don't see too many of those anymore.
Jane: No. They're kinda gone too.
Mark: Kind of like the the life cycle of the crazy idea that doesn't really pan out because I think your original point here is that the the idea of doing a driving school sort of fell into that as well. And it is kind of the same is that you have somebody that has an idea. They, for whatever reason, find a way to make it work and it's successful for them. Then other people hear about it and they try and do it as well. But just because one or two people do it and have success with it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great idea.
Jane: Or that is a business
Mark: Or that is a business. I definitely noticed the decline of the kind of carrier-owned or carrier-managed school. That was one of the first things I remember you saying as you were going through this questioning and scoring, it is that they seem to have dropped that and you were thinking that it's related to ELDT where they don't need to be.. The curriculum things now are finally standardized. So it isn't the case like it was before where fleets can't find a decent school in their area, so they might as well just make make one of their own Right?
So there is a bit of standardization. Now, it still remains to be seen how many of these ELDT schools are actually delivering a good curriculum and turning out a good driver. There's still a difference between what you claim to be doing and what you actually are doing or what you're supposed to be doing and what you actually are doing.
Jane: Well, the Fleets, that are the finalist fleets, the ones that have moved on or who got scored for the Top 20, they have basically partnered. I think that what happens is trucking companies who really wanna get some quality drivers look around and find a good school, and then they try and get all the drivers from that school. And if they work with them, then they can influence what that school is teaching. So it kinda, then you can kind of have a continuity. So you can have people who you identify in the school and go, that's kind of person that I want, move them into your finishing program and have it, so that the people, the person who's the new entrant, can move pretty smoothly because they're familiar with your your particular, you know, the way of doing business, your particular type of freight, or your particular systems, or whatever. And that seems to be the most successful and kind of, like, basic way. Like, people have sort of figured it out, and I think that is how it's going to continue.
If you have a school, if you're doing, if your carrier has a school and has created a school and is successful with it and it's making money, that's fine. And maybe that will continue to happen. But I think as ELDT mmatures and the fleets mature, this is a maturity model for sure. Because, you know, at the beginning 2018-2019, everybody was like, oh, my god, we gotta teach new drivers, and all of these schools suck, so I gotta make my own school. But ELDT came in and, like you said, standardized everything. And now—
Mark: offered the promise of standardization.
Jane: There's a model. You know, the model has to mature. Right now, it's kind of in toddler. Yes. In sort of that realm. Right? You know, it's trying to stand up and smacking its face against a table or something. And so you're gonna get some, you know, really big failures, but you're also gonna start to see some success. And I think in the next ten years, you're going to see driving schools kind of get it together.
Mark: Yeah. Okay. I don't know if it I don't know if it will take ten years. I think in the next two or three years.
Jane: Maybe in this ten years, we won't need them anymore. I'm not sure.
Mark: Yeah. But you will see in the next few years, they will start to figure it out. They will start to kind of settle into the buckets of the ones that are trying to do it right, and the ones that are just fly-by-nighters that do not partner with any carriers. And, probably, there's going to be the first round of the blowback from the fact that ELDT doesn't really have any enforcement or any teeth to it. It's really just recommendations and you promise that you're going to do it, but nobody's actually gonna check any of it. Kinda like what ELDs did. As everybody just said, yeah, I'm compliant. Sure.
Jane: Well, that's what's happening in Canada.
Mark: Well, that's a little bit different. But in the US, I think what will happen is some schools will get bumped off of the list, or some schools will get a random audit and be strongly encouraged to remove their registration from the the training registry.
Jane: I don't think that's gonna happen over the next four years.
Mark: You don't think so? No. Well, it happened with ELDs maybe three years in when they started having—
Jane: so who.. which president had the ELD?
Mark: That was—
Jane: Was it Obama?
Mark: Oh, I can't even remember now. I don't remember.
Jane: It was 2020.
Mark: So that was more when the enforcement people started going in, started to look at them. Now it may take a little longer because it's unclear who's actually going to be doing that enforcement, who's going to be looking into those schools and reviewing them. So—
Jane: I don't think anybody's gonna do anything right now. I don't think that the new press—
Mark: Wait till there is a bad crash.
Jane: Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. Until something bad happens and people start looking at the ELDT program that a driver went through before they had the crash. If they even go there because... I don't think it's really high up. There's so many steps that happen after somebody gets their CDL.
Mark: Right.
Jane: So the ELDT, I don't think it matters. I think, unless carriers identify... because so many carriers have finishing programs. And they've already selected or gotten rid of the schools that are crap. So those crappy schools are now just churning out, you know, things like, I need to get people who have to drive heavy machinery for other things like firefighters and stuff like that. So I think that they're kind of being weeded out that way. Because there's just so many of them.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And I think it's a little different here because there was such a huge burst of them because of immigration that they're gonna be going out of business, but I don't think we're gonna see the same enforcement the way that ELDs were enforced. Because ELDs, that is something that is at roadside. That that is a it's a problem there. I can identify it and you can say, hey, these ELDs are, you know, they're not functioning the way they're supposed to. But training programs are really... Yeah.
Mark: Yeah. I can see what you're saying that it's a lot more nebulous because even if the training program is crappy, you don't necessarily see it roadside. The carrier sees it when they're trying to onboard them and when they're watching them. And seeing what these new entrants are doing in that finishing program, they'll see it.
Jane: And if the school can produce drivers who are able to get through the finishing program, then carriers aren't gonna use them.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: But, I mean, there's a lot of junk out there.
Mark: Absolutely.
Jane: So it's hard to know. I don't think that people are gonna enforce anything about ELDT at all. Well, I really don't.
Mark: I can see that taking a while. Before anything happens with it?
Jane: It's gonna be precipitated by a crash, for sure. I just I just can't see it. Education is not.. like, people love to change education without any real idea of what it's gonna do.
Mark: Without any clue of what education is all about anyway.
Jane: Or what the consequences of those changes are gonna be, you know, if you emphasize math and science and get rid of all the art programs, there's an effect later on. If you decide to do discovery math, or if your standards are lowered with math, or you don't wanna fail anybody, then there's a consequence to that that comes in later on. When you don't teach people how to spell, then there's a consequence that comes in later on. So the consequences not necessarily need to be bad or good. It's just there is going to be in effect. There's a reason.. It's funny, in Ontario they stopped teaching spelling and then started again and then stopped again and also with cursive. The reading, being able to read cursive letters seems to be kinda going away, but there was this little blip. They stopped teaching it. And then this little blip when our kids were, like, in that age where you would learn how to read cursive. So now they're, like, they can kinda read cursive.
Mark: And kinda write cursive—
Jane: Kinda but not really.
Mark: Yeah. Well, people really only need cursives for their own signatures. Outside of that...
Jane: Yeah. But if you don't learn cursives, how do you do a signature? But then again, do you need a signature when, you know, you can do a security thing through Adobe. Like, you can just sort of stamp your name instead of writing your name. Or you choose the handwriting that you want it to be when you're doing the virtual signing.
Mark: There will be a consequence. We just don't know what it's going to be. So that brings me to another question that I wanted to talk about. The one that I found very fascinating, and I think your preface there fits really nicely. The question about driver training after onboarding.
Jane: Oh, the Best Fleets question.
Mark: Best Fleets question. Yes. And we have the question about how much training after the first year, how much training do drivers get and in what formats is it delivered? How do you deliver training on an ongoing basis? And how much our driver is actually getting.
And I scored that question and I thought it was quite fascinating for a few different reasons. So we have rewritten this question several times because despite our efforts to get people to talk about what happens after the first year, they still inevitably only talk about the—
Jane: first year.
Mark: They're just so bent on onboarding that doesn't even really, wouldn't have crossed their mind to talk about of things. It's very much a blind spot.
Jane: Training equals onboarding.
Mark: Yeah. And so we said, very specifically, "beyond the first year" how do you deliver training? How much training do drivers get? And then, what formats is it delivered? And this one I found interesting because this was the first year that I've scored it where the pendulum has swung wildly to the side of online.
Now, this is an interesting one for us because we have spent the better part of the last two decades imploring the trucking industry to do more training for their drivers and saying, hey, do it online. You can do way more of it. And, within our own product, we saw people that did that kind of, "Okay, You want us to do more training? Hold my beer. I'll show you." They just dumped a million hours of training on their driver — the way way too much training. And, you know, then we found ourselves in the situation of having to say, Hold the act a little bit. That's crazy. Like, tone it down a little bit. Balance.
And same kind of thing has happened in the Best Fleets program where for years, if we could get them to talk about training, they had all kinds of things that they called training that really weren't. It may be messages that they sent out on the satellite. It may be some recording that they had that people could listen to, like anything under the sun was training. This year, it has finally shifted, and online training is the default.
So much is it the default that, I think, there might have been two finalists that aren't doing online, which is crazy, because I almost suspect that they are and they just didn't say anything. So it is pervasive. Everybody in the Best Fleets program, all the finalists are doing online. Whether you have twenty drivers or ten thousand, they're all doing online. And some of them are not doing anything but. So there's some of them that we're talking about drivers will get ten hours, twelve hours, twenty hours a year of training, and it's all online. The pendulum has swung too far. That is too much. You can't do all online training. It's gotta be balanced.
Jane: Yeah. I do not understand this sort of, I don't know, extremes that that people get into where all of the training is online. And basically, what you've done is you've decided that you don't care. You know, when you're just assigning courses that you probably haven't looked at, and it's just a monthly thing. You have no follow-up. You have no other activity that's just, you know, content-content-content. It doesn't mean anything. There's no... you have to have context. To learn anything, there has to be context, and you cannot do it with just online training because you do that in a vacuum.
Mark: Yeah. There's no balance. Like you say, there's no context. But it reminds me, and it's another example of things that happened in other industries ages ago that are finding their way into trucking now.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: And I'm reminded of the last real job that I had back in the early 2000s.
Jane: SolCorp.
Mark: SolCorp. That was owned by EDS who were, at the time, a huge Internet consulting company.
Jane: Owned by Ross Perot.
Mark: Started by Ross Perot.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah. Thousands.
Jane: Oh, he didn't own it when you worked there.
Mark: Yeah. It went public and he was out.
Jane: Right.
Mark: But thousands of employees worldwide or, like, 10,000 employees worldwide, or something like that. And they had their own learning and development group called EDS University, or EDSU. And it was the department of, like, I don't know, forty people, or something like that, in the head office, and then small groups, and other regional head offices, that only did development of custom training for internal purposes. So they're basically building all their own content.
And I think it was 2002. This is the last year that I was there for the full year. They had a mandate to have ninety percent of their content, ninety percent of their training be online. And I found out about that because I was a subsidiary, and I was supposed to be following the same thing, and I said that's crazy, we are not going to do that, and it's just a disaster. And I had to fight a fair bit, or basically find ways to get them to ignore me, to be creative and get them to ignore me when I was doing a balance of online and offline training. But that was their mandate for the year. By July, they had given up on it because it was not working. It was a failure. And they had moved back to a balance, and I think they were aiming for about sixty percent online.
But it was a failed experiment, and it was a way to save money. Let's say, if we can do it all online, it's way cheaper. And the same thing is happening now. So here we are, you know, twenty two years later, oh God, I'm feeling old now. Twenty two years later, the same thing's happening in trucking. They got online, hey, great, let's do it all online and only online. And it just is not gonna work.
Jane: I think the way that I always look at it when I hear about things that people are doing with their drivers is, I always think, would you wanna do that? Is that how you wanna learn? Like, do you wanna do every single thing online or would you rather be in a lunch and learn or have the ability to talk to people? And I think that people just kind of put drivers in this other place. And this is why drivers feel like they're not.. they're a number, or that no one cares about them, because—
Mark: They feel disconnected.
Jane: Yeah. It it because they are. They're actively being disconnected.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And when you say, oh, yeah, driver, you can do everything online, and we'll give you all this content that we don't care about. But you have to care about. But not really. But maybe. And there's so many mixed messages.
The other thing that drives me up the wall is the fact that they don't really care if drivers do it. They just don't care. There's absolutely... I have no evidence that people care. Some companies do not care. Because if they cared, a hundred percent of their drivers would do their training.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And it's like, sixty, forty. Maybe we'll come to a meeting. Maybe we won't. We have to do it, you know, we have to do eighty thousand versions of the same thing before we can get everybody through, and it just seems, like, if they cared more, they would find ways of getting people more engaged.
Mark: Well, that leads very nicely into one of the questions that you scored. That was another brand-new question. Which is about social events.
Jane: I was gonna say social.
Mark: Yeah. So we've always asked what kind of social events the company has. We started several years ago asking what percentage of drivers participate in those. And we mixed it up this year and changed it into what do you do to encourage participation? Or what do you do to make it easier for drivers to participate in these things—
Jane: Ok. Can I?—
Mark: —The one that you scored.
Jane: Can I just say? No one knows how many drivers.
Mark: That's the fantastic part of it. Nobody really has a clear sense of how many drivers.
Jane: No one has a clue.
Mark: So I always look for these places where we've got really obvious blind spots that are across the whole industry, because that's a place where we can talk about it and sort of point it out. And usually, as soon as we point it out, people are, like, Oh, yeah, we aren't doing much in that area, and we should. And that's absolutely one of them where they can't really track. It was the same conversation—
Jane: They can track.
Mark: Well, they aren't really trucking. They can't really tell you how many are coming to their social events. And the same thing with their meetings, their driver meetings. If they're doing them, doing real meetings, and not just dumping out newsletters and things. If they are really doing these, how many people are participating? And how soon after the meeting, are they kind of reading the notes or watching a recording or how many are showing up live? That is really interesting.
Jane: There's two things. There's the meetings and the social events. So let me go back to meetings because I thought this was really interesting that we are starting to see a shift away from meetings... training... the only thing that counts as a meeting is training.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: So people are having driver meetings that aren't necessarily training. They might be safety, but they you know, those kind of meetings, they're starting to become actual meetings. People are doing them online. People are actually having sessions, but you're not getting a hundred percent of drivers coming to a meeting. And sometimes they're getting part of their bonuses based on it, I think. Sometimes people are kinda going the podcast route, so basically, what they do is they kind of have a bunch of content. They talk about it on a podcast, and they'll put it on Facebook live, or something like that, so the drivers can ask questions. But it's not really a meeting. I mean, it's kind of a meeting. It's better than nothing.
Mark: It's on Facebook live. It's at least a virtual meeting that people can participate in and engage with.
Jane: Yeah. And there's other, like, I think, there's Zoom meetings that they all have. They'll do the meeting in person, but they'll have it on Zoom and people can ask questions and stuff like that. And the meetings are better. This is definitely better, but I've really noticed the whole podcast increase where I'm gonna put on a performance, and if you get information out of it, great.
Mark: We'll call that a meeting.
Jane: Yeah. That's what we call the meeting. And there's a lot of companies who are doing podcasts like this.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: Which is kinda unfortunate. Podcasts are great, but when trucking companies are becoming tech companies— There are trucking companies that think they're now podcast companies in there, and they are very... It's a lot of effort and enthusiasm going around the podcast, but it's a performance. I feel like everybody working for a trucking companies, or every trucking company owner, seems to be like a frustrated artist. And what they really wanna do is be Lady Gaga, or something like that, or like some big hot performer, because they love it. They love performing.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: There's so much performance. When I do an interview with companies, you just find out that people are, they're doing podcasts. They're having, you know, they're putting on shows basically with these big funfairs and stuff like that. So I always find it kinda interesting. But going back to social, the social life at a trucking company revolves around the office. And I would say, ninety eight percent of the carriers in the finalist carriers had multiple social events on the office side. Multiple social events. There were five or six that said a hundred percent of drivers will come to at least something. So never never a hundred percent for one. Over the year, you might get every driver into something, and that was the best I could get.
Mark: Well, I understand that you're never gonna get everybody into a single meeting. That's probably gonna be a bridge too far. But if you can get a high percentage of them and you have enough of them that over time everybody gets something, and what really stuck out for us, I think we're the ones who do something for the people who can't attend.
Jane: Right. The virtual social events, like, sometimes some people refer to virtual events, but I don't know what they were. But there was also, what do you call it when you're betting—
Mark: Gamble?
Jane: Pools.
Mark: Oh, right.
Jane: There's a lot of pools that are going on virtually, and that's something that actually everybody can participate in, if they want. I mean, I wouldn't. But Fantasy Football kind of thing...
Mark: Well, it depends on what fits your corporate culture, and you can definitely do it. And maybe you have one that is Fantasy Football, but then you do another one that's, I don't know, betting on the dog show or something, you know, whatever the interests are. We have one every year. We have our... it's not a raffle, but it's a a fun game where we have a pool of, everybody guesses what the Best Fleets nomination count is going to be.
And then whoever's closest wins a prize. And it's light, it doesn't take a lot of effort, but it's fun, and people enjoy it. And it's not really hard to do those kinds of things.
But social things, I think, part of the challenge on social is that people think social event can only be everybody at a barbecue together. So if we can't get all the drivers in into one place to attend a barbecue, well, then we can't do any social events. And they need to sort of expand their thinking about what the options are on those, and realize that there's a lot they could do without anybody ever showing up.
Jane: I think one of the things that I would like to see is people trying to figure out who goes.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: That's the crazy thing is that they don't even... no one seems to know who actually attends. And no one cares. Like, everybody knows exactly what's going on with every single thing that a dashcam puts out. And everybody knows exactly, you know, how many miles this person is going, but we found this out before really early on: people couldn't tell us how many drivers they had or people can't tell us—
Mark: Wait till somebody has a telematics device that tracks barbecue attendance. Then everybody will know.
Jane: I don't think that it would be hard to do that.
Mark: No. You have a sign-in sheet, or you have somebody who's just keeping tabs on it and making a list, or give a name tag, so you can see who attends, and, like, there's lots of ways to do it. If you don't know who goes, how are you gonna know if they're successful or not? How are you gonna know if you're meeting the needs, or if you're covering it?
Jane: Well, you know how the office thinks about it.
Mark: Right. And I get it if you have 1,500 or 5,000 drivers, that's gonna be a challenge. But if you got 80 drivers, or even a couple hundred, you could track who's actually attending. And whether and who didn't attend, why? Why didn't they come? And what would have made them more interested in attending. And there are some people that have anxiety and don't want to go to these large social gatherings—fair enough. But if you know that, then you can plan something that does fit for them.
Jane: Well, I think, the interesting thing is that the social events at a carrier are very, very important. There's always something on Facebook about social events. They're always talking about their social events, about the big party they have. Blah blah blah. But they don't make an effort to think about which drivers are going, which drivers might not be going.
The other that I saw about this question is that some companies did a really good job of saying, okay, we're having a celebration, we're gonna make sure that everybody has a chance to participate somehow. So virtual gifts instead of, you know, use gifts, if you're doing a raffle, then have multiple drawings, or have some sort of virtual one. Things like that where you can do things virtually, or you can do things instead of being there. So if they have a big— There's a bunch of them that have big chili cook-offs and things like that. Well, get your chili, put it in a fridge, and give it to drivers as they come through. There's ways of including people rather than saying, oh, well, you weren't here, oh well. And that's some.
Mark: Yeah. I think it's really interesting. I was just sort of thinking a little bit about something we'll probably talk about in a little bit. The conference coming up in March. And I think there is an element of a section—I don't know where it would go in the agenda—but there's a section on the numbers that people don't track. You know, all the things people don't know, because we're talking about meeting attendance, we're talking about social.
One of the other things that came up that we were very interested in is the amount of unplanned maintenance. You know, going away opposite from social into operations and maintenance. We changed that question and we were looking at not only how much downtime do drivers have, but how much of the maintenance is scheduled and planned versus unplanned, you know, surprises. And there's a lot of them that don't track it, a lot of them that couldn't tell you how much of their maintenance is unplanned.
And there's definitely some that we're sort of guessing that are looking at and saying, "Ah, over the past month it was this, and that's probably typical, so I think it's gonna average about this." But they don't really measure. And I found that really fascinating that they don't even look at whether or not it's scheduled or unscheduled. An unscheduled unplanned maintenance is way more expensive. It's way less efficient.
Jane: And what's interesting about planned and unplanned maintenance, and I think that we talked about it on this podcast, is that systems, fleet systems, you know, the computer systems that you have trucking your maintenance, could absolutely be trucking your unplanned maintenance. And why aren't those systems trucking it?
Mark: Yeah. We talked about it on an earlier episode when we were in the interviews and we started noticing it. But now we finished, and I've got the actual, I've got the sort of hard numbers after scoring it, and it is as big a gap as we thought it was.
Jane: I don't know. I really don't know, but it's funny how you can sort of see these industry gaps, and you can see where they're being filled in.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And like, I think one of the things that I always think is interesting is that Wreaths Across America has really done a great job of filling in that how to support the military gap. And because as—
Mark: As how to improve public image, and how to be doing more in the community and charity and things like that, yeah, they check a lot of boxes.
Jane: They do. And it's a really, I mean, it's an awesome program and it's so much effort and really rewarding for fleets who take part in it, and the drivers who are veterans, who get to haul the wreaths and stuff like that. But it's not just, I mean, there's other big industry programs that kind of take, like, Trucker Against Trafficking, has really kind of taken root, and and people are using it as a way to answer the harassment question, which—
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: I was looking at that this year and going, yeah, that's not gonna count anymore. Yeah. They have to actually have harassment training.
Mark: And there's several questions that are like that where we used to give people points for certain things because so few were doing anything.
Jane: Oh, like, if you're a member of Women In Trucking, you can have some diversity.
Mark: Yeah. You get a little bit of a point. Okay. And now that stuff doesn't count anymore because so many people are doing it. It's not different anymore.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: That's not better than the average because the average has moved. There are a lot of those. I was thinking about that with of the questions I was scoring and and benchmarking and performance reviews and things like that, where we kinda have to change. We're at a point where we need to change how we approach these questions because things that used to be kind of anomalies, that would stand out as uncommonly robust programs are now pretty commonplace. So, like, in benchmarking, it's not that hard to do benchmarking anymore because everybody's got some telematics device that does it for them. Cameras are everywhere. Like, pretty much everybody has a camera. I don't know if there was anybody that didn't have a a camera. And they're not just the the flash drive cameras. They're all connected, and they monitor things, and they've got telematics tied in to tell you all kinds of things about what the truck is doing. Everybody has that. So that doesn't get you a lot of points in safety technology or benchmarking or how do you prevent infractions and collisions? Like any of those questions, that's not enough to get you many points. That's just the table stakes now. Now you're you look like you're a real laggard if you don't have that, but everybody has it.
So these are things that are going to shift and It is interesting to see what happens when everybody gets to a certain point, where is the next step to take it? You know, next year, we'll look at it and see what's the next step that people are doing beyond that because that's no longer exceptional. That's now standard. So what becomes exceptional? That's what I always look for when I'm looking at it. What is the exceptional thing beyond what people are doing?
Jane: What I noticed this year and we talked about it when we were talking about what questions to score. I can't remember which questions it was, but they kind of start getting grouped. So one question gets endless. We have three different questions on something, and then one of those questions kind of encapsulates—
Mark: feeds into everyone. Yeah. You did a few of those.
Jane: Yeah. Where I couldn't like, the social communities was one of those. It was like, what social events does the company have? And then how many drivers participate? Or how do you get drivers to participate.
That ended up— I couldn't score that separately. That kinda ended up being together. And there was some— I think it was training, and how—
Mark: New entrant was part of it because you also factored in the tuition repayments, or some of the payment plans, reimbursements, whatever the company has, that became part of the new entrance.
Jane: That was really interesting because what a lot of fees?
Mark: Just before you get into that, I'm realizing that we have basically spent this whole episode griping about the things that people aren't doing to our satisfaction. It is late. We will refer you back to the aforementioned construction. And so we are a little punchy and we're still coming out of the scoring fog. So whatever you're about to say, let's frame it in some positive way—
Jane: In a positive way?
Mark: If we can possibly.
Jane: Oh, sorry. I didn't realize.
Mark: We're both doing it.
Jane: Are we?
Mark: Well, this is what happens. You go through it, and you're like, okay. Well, this is new, and they should have done this. And this is new, and they should have done this.
Jane: Well, I thought we were talking about combining questions. Yes. So I don't think that was bad.
Mark: No. No. That was fine. But I know you're gonna talk about tuition reimbursements and how people do that.
Jane: Oh, no. I was talking about the difference between having the driver pay and then you reimburse. And then having you front the bill and then take it out of the driver's pay. And I think, there were cases of both. And I can't remember how I ended up scoring it, but taking it away from the driver after the fact was... I was not a fan of, because you get into that situation where, you know, how do you chase after them? And I know that that's gonna be happening, and is it better to just have them.. Either give them a scholarship or take it out of their pay. The whole 2-year contract thing, well, two years, I think, is way too much. But having—
Mark: I guess you kinda have to amortize it a little bit. But if you're locking them in for two years, well, you figure that the first year isn't that productive.
Jane: Well, the problem is, what if you don't like working there? So you lock them into working for you. But if it's not a good fit, then what? So they go to another company and how are you clawing back the oney that you—
Mark: Well, I think that is an excellent point. And I think it's good that people are exploring different options, that they're trying different things. And this is a case where everybody's got some different ideas and we'll end up settling on something that works. We'll end up settling on something that becomes the most reliable method of doing it. And probably in another two or three years, we'll see that everybody's kinda doing the same thing. As normal—
Jane: Yeah. That is kinda what you find. And we sort of started by talking about this, where we were talking about how fleets do all kinds of things, and then everybody kinda stops and goes to the normal, like, ELDs. For the longest time, people were all over the place with those.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And until, well, it was mandated, but I guess online training is kind of the same way, is that some people were not doing it. Some people were doing simulators and, you know, had all this kind of stuff, and they're kind of getting their costs figured out.
Mark: Now, it's funny that you mentioned that because the simulator is something that I continue to be surprised at how little ground they're making. How little they are penetrating the industry. It's still an anomaly to see somebody with a simulator.
Jane: Well, interestingly enough, when I'm on radio, and Mark Willis says, well, maybe it's not just Mark, but the guys that I talk to on the radio often kind of give me the indication that people just hate simulators.
Mark: Well, there's some crappy ones. Yeah. But you can get a good one. And the good ones aren't super expensive. I mean, yeah, there's a sticker shock of a 150 or a 180 grand for a simulator, but you pay that for a cab, and you amortize it over five years or so, and look at the value that you can get out of that.
Jane: Yeah. And those don't get wrecked.
Mark: Yeah. And when the driver puts it in the ditch, there's no freight loss and no lives lost. It's fine. You reset and go again.
Jane: And if you don't have kids' school, if you don't have anywhere that you can really practice in real life, a simulator is a really good idea. I think they're great.
Mark: What I find funny is the people that have them, that have been invested in decent ones and have a program with it, they've sort of put some thought into how they're gonna use it. They swear by them, they say this is the best money they've spent. Because it has saved them so much in crashes, it has improved the quality of their drivers. There's so many positives, but yet they do not make any real progress. They continue to be an anomaly.
Jane: I think that is thinking about how to use them. That's the key. It's a piece of equipment and there's no real— you have to think about it. And what I find is that when carriers have to think about how they're going to implement something, when there's no recipe for it, it tends to not work until you find that recipe. And it's crazy because the simulator is way less expensive than an actual vehicle.
Mark: No. But I think you hit the nail on the head, it's all the thought that's required. So there isn't really a whole product solution. They give you basically, the simulator in a box and say, here you go. Here are some scenarios and you figure out what to do.
Jane: I think, well, yeah, and they have scenarios, but that's perfect for sort of putting with online training. So you do the theory in online training, and then you have a simulator session. So winter driving. Right? You can do the theory behind it, then you do simulator training and winter driving and something else. I don't know. But I don't see why that wouldn't be a kind of a slam dunk.
Mark: No. I can see why now. Now that we're talking about it, it's a whole product challenge. And the people that are using them and swearing by them are the early adopters. They're not the mainstream market.
Jane: So—
Mark: There isn't a way, none of the simulator people have really figured out a whole product solution that works for the mainstream.
Jane: Well, it's interesting because none of the simulator people have thought about partnering with us.
Mark: Not for quite a while.
Jane: Which I think would be really good.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: I think it would be a really good idea.
Mark: I'm going to explore that a bit more.
Jane: Are you?
Mark: Yes. As I've been thinking about the whole product and crossing the chasm and all of the elements required to get across, Yeah. It is interesting. I may write a blog about that.
Jane: Okay.
Mark: And we are coming up on time, but I do want to—
Jane: Let's like your new thing. "Coming up on time."
Mark: I'm gonna stop saying that. My New Year's resolution.
Jane: A hard break and a hard stop.
Mark: Yes. Okay. My New Year's resolution, you've all heard it here first. I'm going to stop. I have said that a bunch of times. Because I'm in meetings with people who do not ever look at the clock. And will run over all the time. So I have to have a nice way of saying shut up and let's end this thing.
Jane: Yeah. But a lot of the time we're going over because you haven't stopped talking.
Mark: I don't consider that. I don't count that.
Jane: Exactly. No one considers time when they're talking.
Mark: Yes. What I do wanna talk about is just a little bit about some details on the announcements, because the announcement is coming up. We have got the first teaser coming out tomorrow. So by the time this episode hits, we will have the first teaser out already, and they are absolutely teasers. They are not hints at all. So we are calling a spade a spade. We're not giving you any hints. We're just going to taunt you. And on Tuesday, January 28th, we will be announcing the winners. And there is still plenty of time get booked for BFCon25.
Jane: Yeah. That's right.
Mark: The Best Fleets Education and Awards Conference March 3rd and 4th, and it is shaping up to be very good. I am getting the pieces of the agenda together. And it is gonna be a good one. I think we are gonna have lots of great stuff. I've got some good content ideas. Now that we finished the scoring, the content has really started to shape up in my head. So I think with that, we can probably bring this to a close.
Jane: Sounds like a plan.
Mark: Thanks for listening.
Jane: Have a good night. Day. Whenever you're listening to it, have a good next three hours.
Mark: Have a good next three hours.