Notes and Action Items – April 2023

This is a summary of the discussions and action items from the April 2023 meeting.

Primary Take-Aways

1. The OTR industry might always wrestle with things like 1) Home Time, 2) Accurate Load Information, and 3) Proactive communication with drivers. Yet, these are challenges we always need to be working on. From the conversations, it sounds like we are making progress. We can strive to ever “narrow the gap” and never make excuses on these topics.
2. Family/Spouse appreciation cannot be undervalued. Efforts in the past were remembered and significant! We need to do more to recognize and enable each driver’s support system back home.
3. There is a desire from Road Captains to be more engaged in helping struggling drivers. But they often are not sure how to get connected with their peers. It would be good to explore ways to better connect Road Captains to those in the fleet who might benefit.
4. We received feedback to not lose focus on appreciating the ‘positive’ and resist the temptation to focus on the negative. Nussbaum should spend time reaching out to successful drivers as much as working on those who might be struggling. Pick up the phone and offer a word of praise more often. Keep the culture in place and on pace!
5. ESOP awareness is progressing, but not where it needs to be. Take the next step in building ESOP awareness and engagement.

Potential Action Item Targets 

1. Review Planned Arrival Times on the trip planning ETA calculator.
2. Rate-my-load feature might get better feedback if it had more flexibility in the workflow (has to be rated immediately as it currently works).
3. Invent a way to track ‘daylight’ hours at home on a weekend as we attempt to measure “good” vs. “bad’ weekends.
4. Create a spouse/family secondary email to use for company news/announcement communications. This way, if the driver chooses, the spouse can get information directly.
5. Have marketing spotlight and involve spouses/families of drivers.
6. Make monthly Road Captain calls more open-ended. More listening and less informing.
7. Review how to avoid having driver personal emails hit our ‘junk folder’ filters.
8. Explore additional parking locations in high break frequency areas – review break data.
9. Review routing issues – navigation does not always match turn-by-turn.