Omnitracs' Road Ahead blog

The connection between driver turnover and idle time

Gary Blohm
Gary Blohm
Vice President at Omnitracs

Many of us are accustomed to commuting to and from the office. Bumper to bumper traffic, changing weather, and overzealous fellow drivers can make the everyday commute feel like quite a challenging endeavor. Over-the-road drivers deal with all the pesky problems many of us deal with, but on a much larger scale. These factors combined lead to ample frustration for many truck drivers.

To begin, over-the-road drivers need to typically set aside around 3 hours per day for administrative work — which often goes unpaid — while still driving 11 hours on average. Some of these administrative tasks, like vehicle inspection and load status uploads, are just a part of the job. Many others, however, like switching between different apps to enter duplicate data and navigating through inaccurate directions to specific docks, are the result of poor driver workflow processes.

While some carriers pay drivers minimum wage for non-driving work, many still do not, leaving drivers especially frustrated as this is time spent working and not earning. The ample amount of various non-driving work tasks eats into the driver’s already busy workday.

With being away from home for extended periods of time being a somewhat natural and major factor in over-the-road driver turnover, back-office teams should look for ways to make drivers’ lives easier in ways they can control.

The role fleet managers and dispatchers play

The saying often goes: “People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” While a general expression, it certainly applies to many in the trucking industry. The relationship between an owner operator and driver can be fragile, but it doesn’t have to be.

With many managers being overloaded with drivers, drivers can often feel neglected and managers often overburdened. If one driver is in a time-consuming and dire circumstance of any kind, the rest of the drivers that report to that manager must wait for solutions to things like routing problems. These relationships are often set up for failure — repeated failure that causes continual driver turnover.

There is a clear connection between driver satisfaction and retention
Managers and drivers can efficiently fulfill their responsibilities by setting up trips, routes, and assignments ahead of time. They can also utilize data that is contextually fed to the driver per stop and location.

Administrative tasks associated with paperwork are best left in the past. Streamlining administrative tasks through the right platform can save drivers and back-office managers ample time and money – and it’s also an eco-friendly way of doing things. This way, drivers can send their performance data once their job assignments are complete through an appropriate backend repository. Doing so allows drivers and managers to eliminate redundant status calls.

Further, drivers can now find quicker alternative routes to avoid weather changes, construction gaps, and accidents. This approach reduces wasted idle time, which in turn can greatly improve driver satisfaction and retention.

Through our many years of customer interactions, we have witnessed driver challenges and frustrations firsthand. Whether you’re a driver or manager, you can learn more about Omnitracs Drive to see how you can utilize an efficient, industry-leading application to best handle non-driving tasks so that drivers can get back to doing what they do best — driving.