Truck Driving Forums

I am a new Fleet Manager, and I would like to know from truckers what things I can do to make my fleet of drivers more successful?

This could be key factors, situations anything.   

Thanks

Linnea

Rember that the drivers r out for a long time without seeing their family(3-6 weeks at a time)so getting home when they request is important and when they dont family problems happen and now u got an upset driver that don't care about the truck, or the company.      Sitting for along time sucks, when the 14 hr clock starts counting down u can't stop it, so if the driver got off of 10 hr brake and they have 4 hrs left to go, and as soon as they get there and it take 4 hrs to unload( it happens sometime longer) then they got to go somewere to get loaded that is an 1 hr away, then it takes 3.5 hr to load they got no more hrs to drive and then they would have to stay were they got loaded for their 10 hr brake,   so what im saying is that when a driver unloads they want out of there asap to get loaded just as fast to get on the road, the driver dont make money sitting at a dock, they get paid for the miles they turn.    The saying is " the wheels an't turning u an't earning", the drivers r human not robots, so driver managers forgot that and they also forget that the drivers CDL is their livelyhood so they can only work for 14 hrs a day,( unloading, loading, fueling, also count sitting at docks) that starts from the time they start driving that day and it dont stop until they go on a 10 hr brake, they can only drive for 11 hrs a day thats it.  To make a river happy and say good about the compay, is to treat them like the matter because they do, u wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for the driver, u also get paid for the miles ur driver turns from ur dispatch so if he is sitting for a load u an't getting ur money from them,  so u need to keep ur drivers on ur board happy,  they have problems with their trucks, get it fixed asap or get them into another truck.   As a driver myself and had this problems i almost lost my wife and kids, cus they were counting on a nice paycheck to pay the bills and but food on the table, when i saw $1100 checks go down to $400 for 1.5 months got behind on bills cus i sat at docks cus the dispatcher didn't know the different between 700 to 7a.m. they told me 7pm, and everything that happen on the road about 96% is not the fault of the driver,   So all i can say is keep the driver happy it wouldn't hurt to call ur drivers to see if everything is alright, from time to time, and sometimes the cell phone is quicker then the Qualcomm

fFirst thing you should do is pull the folder on all of your drivers...Sort them out,find out who is out there to make a dollar and the ones who are more worried about there logbook then there pay check.  Second put all of your drivers to the test,you being a fleet mgr should know what im talking about,then sort the files again,who is whinning and who is there at the dock waiting on that load. And then you should have your drivers and your wanna be's and your whinners sorted out   Hope that helped.