Fleet Q&A: Real-World Tips for Improving Driver Experience

During a recent webinar with fleet leaders discussing the topic of Driver Experience, attendees were able to submit questions via chat. Below are a few of the top questions that time limitations kept the panel from answering, and potential ways fleets can address these questions. 

With the driver experience in mind, how are you supporting maintenance over-the-road — while holding clear expectations and communication with drivers — specifically as it pertains to roadside breakdowns?

This is a critical touchpoint for the driver experience. A breakdown is more than an inconvenience; it's a moment of high stress, potential danger, and financial uncertainty for the driver. A fleet should build its response approach around structure, communication, and empathy.

The Process for Over-the-Road Maintenance

Step one is to treat a roadside breakdown as a high-priority safety event, not just a maintenance ticket. The moment a driver reports an issue, a clear, multi-step process kicks in:

1. Single Point of Contact: The driver makes one call to the support team. A driver shouldn’t have to Google repair shops or worry about whom to call. That one call is their only responsibility, besides ensuring their vehicle is secured safely off the roadway. This eliminates confusion and anxiety.
2. Triage and Information Gathering: The support team immediately gathers essential information, such as driver location (via telematics), fault codes from the truck's ECU (often pushed automatically), a description of the issue from the driver, and the status of their Hours of Service (HOS).
3. Proactive Communication Loop: This is where fleets earn their drivers' trust. The driver is never left in the dark. The fleet should provide confirmation, updates (via phone call or in-cab message), and coordination. The fleet should handle everything in the background, such as informing dispatch about the load status, arranging for breakdown pay so the driver isn't losing money, and working to log HOS exemptions (like using Personal Conveyance to get to a hotel, if needed).

Setting Expectations for Drivers

Our expectations for the driver are simple and are taught during orientation:

• Safety First: Get the truck to a safe location. Use your hazard lights, triangles, and safety vest.
• Report Promptly and Accurately: Call the breakdown line immediately. Provide the best information you can. A good pre-trip inspection (DVIR) often catches issues before they become a breakdown, which is an expectation to reinforce consistently.
• Stay in Communication: Keep your phone on and be available for our coordinator.

In return, the driver can expect fleet management to handle the entire event professionally, communicate transparently, and ensure they are compensated fairly for their downtime. When that truck is down, the number one priority is the driver's safety and well-being. The freight is secondary.

With all of the data that is available from the trucks regarding safety, are there any major challenges with observability, and how might some of these challenges be addressed?

Fleets are absolutely swimming in data from telematics, ELDs, engine control modules (ECMs), inward and outward-facing cameras, and Transportation Management System (TMS). The challenge isn't a lack of data; it's a "signal-to-noise" problem.

Major Challenges with Observability:

• A Lack of Context: The data itself is meaningless without context. A hard acceleration event could be a poor driving choice, or it could be a necessary maneuver to merge safely onto a busy highway. A lane departure alert could be a sign of fatigue, or it could be the driver navigating a tight construction zone. Without context, the data is just a number that can unfairly penalize a good driver.
• Alert Fatigue: Alerts can be set for almost anything, such as speeding by 1 mph, a minor lane departure, or a slightly harsh turn. When drivers and managers are bombarded with hundreds of "events" a day, they start to ignore all of them, including the critical ones. This is a huge risk.

Addressing These Challenges:

Fleets are transitioning from merely collecting data to making it intelligent and actionable, utilizing fleet management tools.

• AI-Powered Event Validation: Newer camera systems use AI to address the context problem. For example, they can differentiate between a driver-initiated hard brake and a response to an external event. The AI can validate the event before it even creates an alert for a manager, effectively filtering out the noise and false positives. This allows fleets to focus only on the coachable moments that represent real risk.
• Risk-Scoring and Trend Analysis: Instead of reacting to every single alert, fleets can focus on trends. Our safety dashboards don't just show events; they show a driver's risk score over time. Is their speeding trend increasing? Are their following-distance events becoming more frequent? This allows for proactive, data-driven coaching about behaviors rather than reactive discipline about single events. It turns the conversation from "You did this wrong" to "Let's look at this trend together and see what's going on."

How do fleet dispatchers/planners take into account the needs of the driver against the needs of the business? Are there any type of dashboards to support the distribution of work (fair assignments) across the driver team?

This balance is the art and science of fleet management. A driver who feels they are treated unfairly or can't make a living won't be with you for long, and a stressed driver is an unsafe driver. 

Shifting the mindset of our dispatchers can be a helpful approach. They are not "dispatchers"; they are "Fleet Managers" or "Driver Managers." Their primary job is to manage a portfolio of 25-35 small “businesses”—our drivers. A successful week for the company is one where our drivers also have a successful week.

Balancing Needs:

• Proactive Planning & Preference Profiles: In the TMS, every driver has a detailed profile. This isn't just their home terminal. It includes home time requests (entered weeks in advance), lane/route preferences, and financial goals (and how their hours are going for the week). 
• Transparent Communication: It's a conversation between dispatch and a driver on an individual level about route options. Empowering the driver with choice, when possible, builds immense trust.
• Dashboards for Fair Work Distribution: Dispatchers must use data to ensure equity. A "Fleet Equity Dashboard" provides a high-level view of all the dispatch pods. This dashboard isn't used to punish drivers or dispatchers; it's a management tool to identify imbalances and ask the right questions. The key metrics tracked by driver, filterable by Fleet Manager, are:
  
  • Loaded Miles vs. Empty Miles (Deadhead %): Is one dispatcher consistently running their drivers with more unpaid empty miles?
  • Revenue Per Day / Miles Per Week: This is the core metric for driver earnings, helping you quickly spot if one driver or one fleet is lagging.
  • Dwell/Detention Time: Are some drivers consistently spending long periods at the same customers? This could indicate a problem with the customer or with appointment scheduling.
  • Home Time Adherence: A simple percentage showing how often we successfully meet a driver's requested home time.

How do you measure driver satisfaction, as well as gather feedback from your drivers, and then implement changes?

Measuring satisfaction and acting on feedback is the only way to combat the industry's turnover problem. If you don't ask, the first time you'll hear about a problem is in an exit interview, and by then it's too late. A multi-pronged approach is very helpful. For example:

Measuring Satisfaction (The “What"): 

• Formal Annual Surveys: Conduct a comprehensive, anonymous survey once a year. Consider using a third-party service to encourage honest feedback. Cover everything, including satisfaction with pay, dispatch, equipment, home time, benefits, and company culture. Questions use a 1-5 scale and include open-ended comment boxes.
• Pulse Surveys: Annual surveys are too infrequent for some issues. Fleets can use their mobile communication app to send out short, quarterly "pulse surveys." It might be just two or three questions: "How would you rate the maintenance support you received this quarter?" This gives us a more current snapshot.
• Driver Retention Rate (The Ultimate Metric): Track your overall retention rate, but more importantly, track it by Fleet Manager. If one dispatcher has a consistently high turnover rate, it could be an indicator that a problem needs to be addressed through coaching or management changes.
• Exit Interviews: You can learn a tremendous amount from drivers who choose to leave. Again, use a neutral third party to conduct these interviews to get brutally honest feedback.

Gathering Feedback and Implementing Change (The "How"):

Collecting data is useless if you don't act on it. Creating change based on feedback builds trust and helps your fleet evolve in a healthy way. Here are some ideas for implementing feedback:

• Driver Advisory Board: Establish a board of 15-20 veteran, respected drivers from across your fleet that you meet with quarterly. Present them with ideas and record their unfiltered feedback from the road. 
• Open Door Policy: It sounds like a cliché, but it's real. Consider including the fleet manager’s extension on every driver's contact list. If they have a safety concern, they can call them directly.
• Closing the Loop: This is how you build trust. After an annual survey, publish the high-level results to the entire fleet. Ensure transparency. Consider sharing a "You Said, We Did" report. For example: "In last year's survey, you said communication during roadside breakdowns was slow and frustrating. You said, you wanted faster updates. We implemented a new 24/7 breakdown desk and a new policy that guarantees a callback within 45 minutes. We will track satisfaction with this new process in our next pulse survey."

By showing drivers that their voice leads to tangible change, you create a culture where they feel valued and respected. And a driver who feels like a respected partner is a safe, productive, and loyal driver.

Watch the full webinar with a panel of fleet leaders discussing how to improve driver experience now. >>

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