Delivery Drivers Missing The Mark? Here's What You Can Do to Help Them

The field service industry is struggling with a driver shortage crisis. In 2018, the US trucking industry reported a shortage of more than 60,000 drivers. Worse, that figure is likely to cross 160,000 by 2028.

This shortage is hurting the logistics industry and leading to missed deadlines. So, to attract more drivers and ensure timely deliveries, field service businesses are forced to increase their drivers’ compensation. According to reports, even Walmart has raised its drivers’ salaries to attract more drivers to keep its operations running. Also, a report by the American Transportation Research Institute states that almost 43% of a field service business’s operational costs consist of drivers’ wages, making it the most significant cost center.

However, despite the increase in drivers’ remuneration and the overall total cost of operations, late shipments have become common. The basic approach of raising salaries, recruiting, and retaining drivers alone cannot produce enough results, and you will need a better strategy to help your field service business grow.

But, what strategy should you adopt to handle this problem? We have the answer, and it does not require self-driving cars or delivery drones. Instead, the solution lies in improving driver productivity.

Defining Drivers’ Productivity

A large part of your business's success depends on your drivers' performance. But, as a manager, how do you identify a driver’s productivity? Based on the number of customers visited, the orders delivered or the miles logged?

Logically, the more customers a driver visits in a day using fewer dollars to get to them all, the more productive they are. Therefore, anything you can do to increase the number of deliveries or stops each driver makes in a day will help boost your drivers’ productivity and result in increased profitability.

Other aspects, such as training, safety, rewards and incentives, and vehicle maintenance, are linked to the performance of your drivers. When you are considering increasing their performance, it is essential to assess each of these aspects.

Tips to Increase Driver Productivity

When vehicles are not on roads, your drivers are not serving any customers. This equals the loss of productivity and, hence, revenue. So, your goal is to keep both your drivers and your vehicles on the road and help them get from one customer’s location to another safely and quickly.

Below are some tips for doing just that.

Ensure Vehicle Maintenance

A lack of proper vehicle maintenance results in increased downtime for drivers. So, to increase driver productivity, you must have efficient vehicles. The preventive maintenance practices may seem a chore in the short term, but their benefits will outweigh the inconvenience in the long run.

Some field service businesses also use mobile maintenance services to reduce downtime and keep drivers productive. Such services can be tailored to a vehicle’s schedule, allowing routine repairs during off-duty hours. This approach to maintenance benefits the business in two ways. First, it reduces the frequency of unscheduled maintenance and downtimes. Second, the off-duty service schedule does not impact drivers’ productivity.

Encourage Safe Driving Practices

Bad driving behavior negatively impacts productivity more than any other factor because every accident takes the driver out of the driver’s seat and your vehicle out of circulation. As a manager, you need to identify and address lousy driving behaviors to help prevent crashes in the first place and keep your drivers productive and vehicles on the road.

Also, making drivers aware of the importance of defensive driving and encouraging them to follow safe driving practices can go a long way to improving productivity.

Engage with Your Drivers

When your drivers feel appreciated and cared for, they will be more inclined to contribute to your business. You can use communication to your advantage to show them you care. You can even have a transparent feedback and communication strategy that spans across onboarding, career growth, and grievance redressal. And, be sure to give them feedback at every stage in a constructive manner. You can also set up rewards or incentives programs to recognize their efforts.

Regardless of how you engage with your drivers, you must monitor their behavior both on and off the roads and look for signs of alcohol or drug addiction. In this way, you can take early preventive measures.

Introduce Advance Route Management Techniques

Driver productivity mostly depends on how efficiently the driver can cover the assigned routes. And, if your drivers do not know what route management is or are apprehensive about adapting big brother technology, you can tell them how it will help address the routing challenge.

This is because a route planner will enable you to plan routes more efficiently by understanding the location of your drivers and using mapping technologies to determine the most efficient routes. Optimizing your routes by even a small percentage will significantly reduce fuel usage and increase driver productivity.

With route management technology, you will also reduce your costs by monitoring non-productive driving behaviors, such as unauthorized and frequent stops, idling, speeding, and route deviations.

You can also use such solutions to eliminate paperwork for the drivers. In this way, the time that would have been spent on unnecessary paperwork can instead be used to provide better customer service.

Conclusion

Drivers will be more likely to embrace these tips when you emphasize the positive aspects of improved productivity. Start by making the drivers understand how these small steps will contribute to their productivity and then explain that you will use the information obtained from the route management system as a training tool to improve driving habits, reduce costs, and enhance vehicle maintenance. However, the goal should be to encourage safer driving habits that will go a long way in improving driver productivity and increasing profitability.

Robert Gordon, a former route manager, believes in building tools around processes, rather than building processes around tools. As an avid blogger on route planning, he has published several articles on reverse logistics and supply chain management.