Page 22 - Newcom

22 BUSINESS
Private and for-hire fleets discuss the driver shortage
By Sonia Straface
MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO
While the driver shortage seems to have plagued a majority of for-hire fleets across the continent over the last few years, private fleets have managed to take cover and avoid it. Until now, that is.
At the first annual Truck Training Schools Association of Ontario (TT- SAO) conference in Mississauga, Ont. Feb. 24, a panel of private fleet execu- tives and another of for-hire executives spoke to attendees about the recent struggles both sides of the industry are facing when it comes to recruiting driv- ers to keep the wheels turning.
The private panel consisted of Andy Walker, Ontario distribution man- ager of Molson Coors, Dennis Shan- tz, director of fleet services at Home Hardware, John Harrison, director
of transportation operations at Hu- ron Services Group and Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada.
The for-hire panel included Garth Pitzel, director of safety and driv-
er development at Bison Transport, Alex MacKinnon, COO of MacKinnon Transport, Caroline Blais, recruiting manager at Kriska and Geoff Topping, director of recruiting and retention at Challenger Motor Freight.
To start, panelists were asked to de- scribe what they feel is the root cause of the driver shortage.
Topping of Challenger said
that the perception of trucking among the general public is ultimate- ly to blame.
“I believe it’s the perception of the profession,” he said. “I think (the driving profession has) unfortunate- ly been watered-down. People think of (driving) as a career of last resort. They don’t think of it as a real profes- sion and a real job, and it truly is. It is a job where someone can make a good living and look after their fam-
“
nel vision and think it’s just us, but it’s not. There’s been so much press over the years about (the industry) wanting more drivers and it being a second career, that I think we’ve cre- ated a culture for our industry inad- vertently that suggests that we are so desperate that we will take anybody. It’s hard to correct that perception and it’s hard for people outside the industry to understand that people in trucking in driving and non-driving roles are educated and intelligent.
I think as an industry we need to make the working conditions better. Today, asking somebody to work two to three weeks in a row on the road is not okay.”
try is no longer immune to the driver shortage.
“Private fleets generally never had to recruit,” said Millian. “At my last job, we never had to recruit. Our driv- ers would come in with phone num- bers of other drivers who wanted to work for us and we had a waiting list. When I left there a year ago, these numbers decreased and the waiting list was down to just one or two num- bers.”
The reason why private fleets didn’t have such an issue hiring drivers in the past was because of the advan- tages the private fleet industry has to work with.
The panelists said that private fleets have an edge over for-hire fleets when it comes to finding drivers, be- cause most have predictable routes for drivers who can build a healthy work-life balance by being home most nights of the week.
This is a desirable quality for those who know about the unpredict-
able life of a truck driver.
“Predictive routing is a really big thing (for private fleets),” said Harri- son. “When I first worked at Schnei- der I was gone for two weeks at a time and I rarely knew where I was going ahead of time and I never went to the same place twice...our guys know ex- actly where they’re going and when they’re going to be back home and
we pay well at Huron. Quite frankly, we’re above average.”
Millian agreed with Harrison
Garth Pitzel, Bison Transport
ily. And be proud of what they’re do- ing. And as an industry we need to push and continue to raise the aware- ness of that and raise the profession back to what it used to be.”
Blais of Kriska agreed with Top- ping, but added that she thinks the industry has dug itself into a hole by failing to correct those mispercep-
tions. c-100 c-0
“In our fleet, we have a number of drivers that have university educa- tions. I think people would be sur- prised to know that and we should be getting more of that out there to at- tract more of the right people that we want to have.”
On the private fleet side, panel-
ists spoke about how their segment is changing its approach to recruitment, thanks in part to the driver shortage.
All of the private fleet panelists agreed that the private fleet indus-
m-67 m-2
“In North America, every industry
is struggling to find people,” she said. “I know sometimes we may have tun-
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k-23 k-68
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