Shown here is a mid-1990s Mack (top right) that started small fleet owner Brian Lindley down the path toward where he is today, among other units in the operation. Lindley's LB3 business is a 20-truck reefer-hauling fleet with a focus on keeping operators employed there happy. For some dedicated contract haulers, that includes a salary-pay system aimed at smoothing out week-to-week income for predictable paychecks.
For fleet owners with more than 30 trucks, a perceived advantage in recruiting might be the biggest driver of adoption of minimum guarantee or salary pay structures, according to Overdrive’s survey respondents this Spring who noted such a pay structure in place. If you've missed it as yet, catch Part 1 of an ongoing series on the trends in driver compensation. Though the sample size among respondents at the high ends of carrier size was small, percentages who believed such a structure would be valuable as a recruiting tool were a great deal higher than those who saw value in retention, often the more primary focus of the smallest fleets over the push to recruit new people.
Of course, the dynamics of recruitment and retention overlap, so many fleets see the benefits on both ends. Big G Express, a truckload carrier based in Shelbyville, Tennessee, is one. The same week in February when Big G rolled out its $1,000 per week minimum pay program, a crippling winter storm shut down about a quarter of its hauls, said Chris Kelley, vice president of operations.
"Back in the day, these drivers would have been out of luck and not paid," he said. "We held to our word and took care of them. It really has been a great hiring and retention tool and I always tell our drivers to remember this is just a safety net, not a weekly goal."
Overdrive’s survey, which pinpointed recruitment and retention benefits, found some differences among respondents. For those fleets with 30 or fewer trucks, retention either outweighed recruiting as a motivating factor or was very close to equally weighted in survey results.
20-truck LB3 owner Brian Lindley out of Alabama is among small-fleet owners who put greater emphasis on retention than recruiting. “It’s easier to overpay a driver and keep him, if he’s worth keeping, than it is to nit-picky everything and have to start looking for other drivers.”
