News

Do your drivers measure up?

May 1, 2003

Good fleet mangers and safety directors can name their best drivers and their worst without thinking twice. They know from watching their drivers' performance over time. They can also tell you what those best and worst drivers mean to their bottom line. Top performers are safer and more productive, as well as good representatives of company values. Drivers at the bottom of the curve, on the other

Wendy Leavitt

Good fleet mangers and safety directors can name their best drivers and their worst without thinking twice. They know from watching their drivers' performance over time.

They can also tell you what those best and worst drivers mean to their bottom line. Top performers are safer and more productive, as well as good representatives of company values.

Drivers at the bottom of the curve, on the other hand, are a constant risk. At best, they are less productive, less dependable and less loyal. At worst, they abuse equipment, jeopardize fleet safety ratings and threaten carrier reputations and profitability.

But what if you could identify those “best” and “worst” performers before putting them on the payroll?

FLEET OWNER, in conjunction with Scheig Assoc., is conducting a benchmarking study of three driver populations: longhaul, regional and food-service delivery. All assessments are administered online and there are no fees required.

Participating fleets will have access to their own proprietary results and industrywide data. General results will be published in aggregate only. Here's how the study will work:

If your company is a longhaul carrier, a regional fleet or a food-service delivery operation, you are eligible to participate by having up to five of your drivers take one of the three online assessments.
Call 800-477-6635 to learn more or to sign up. Participating companies will be given instructions and confidential, secure access to the online assessment.
The assessments typically require about 30 minutes to complete. Shortly after your driver(s) finish the program, their supervisor will have access to the results.
Industry-wide data will be provided to participating companies first.

Scheig Assoc. (www.ischeig.com) developed and validated the job-specific, performance-based assessments we will be using for this benchmarking project in conjunction with groups of recognized top-performing drivers. The assessments are designed to measure an individual's responses against the responses of these top-tier groups.

Typically, the assessments are used as a pre-employment screening tools to help carriers focus their training investments on those candidates most likely to succeed and perform well. Because they are entirely performance-based, they also provide valuable insights into areas where more training or supervision might be beneficial for individual drivers or groups of drivers.

About the Author

Wendy Leavitt

Wendy Leavitt joined Fleet Owner in 1998 after serving as editor-in-chief of Trucking Technology magazine for four years.

She began her career in the trucking industry at Kenworth Truck Company in Kirkland, WA where she spent 16 years—the first five years as safety and compliance manager in the engineering department and more than a decade as the company’s manager of advertising and public relations. She has also worked as a book editor, guided authors through the self-publishing process and operated her own marketing and public relations business.

Wendy has a Masters Degree in English and Art History from Western Washington University, where, as a graduate student, she also taught writing.