3 Methods Fleets Can Enhance Driver Communications – Fleet Administration

Roll again 40 years. Qualcomm had not but pioneered in-cab satellite tv for pc communications and interstate drivers needed to contact dispatchers, shippers, and receivers the old style approach — by payphone.

Older drivers bear in mind the times, however most Gen Xers and millennials don’t. Know-how has made it really easy for fleets to speak with drivers, and vice versa, that the higher problem is stopping lethal distractions.

Guaranteeing protected driver communications and bettering their work expertise are two of the best wants within the trucking business at this time. Beneath are 3 ways fleets can replace their communications technique and know-how to deal with these challenges.

1.  Messaging in Movement

Few, if any, fleets routinely talk with drivers by sending textual content messages to their private telephones. But it occurs, even with guidelines in place to forestall it. Drivers caught texting might be fined as much as $2,750 by the Federal Motor Service Security Administration, and fleets discovered accountable for drivers texting face fines of as much as $11,000, and their FMCSA Compliance, Security, Accountability scores take a success.

Extra regarding to fleets is the accident dangers of textual content messaging. FMCSA crash statistics present that truck drivers are 23.2% extra prone to be concerned in an accident whereas texting or utilizing a mobile phone.

Many fleets are following strict protocols, similar to messaging drivers by means of an digital logging system telematics answer that forestalls them from responding to messages whereas in movement. Some cell apps even have capabilities that permit drivers to soundly obtain messages whereas holding their eyes on the street and palms on the wheel.

Typically, fleets should ship pressing, real-time communications to drivers whereas they’re in movement. Such is the case when a driver hooks as much as the incorrect trailer, goes within the incorrect course, or is operating out of hours and placing a load in jeopardy.

Gaps in communications and lag occasions might be extraordinarily expensive in such conditions. Calling a driver and hoping that she or he solutions with a hands-free headset additionally poses a danger. If an accident have been to happen, the audit path will present the motive force acquired a name from the workplace. A plaintiff lawyer will strike gold in discovery.

An efficient communications technique for relaying pressing messages is to arrange completely different message channels in a customized cell app. Fleets may give pressing messages a particular notification sound, and have their customized app use a text-to-speech operate to learn messages to drivers in movement.

2. Segmenting Messages

Fleets have numerous causes to speak with drivers always of the day. Apart from pressing operational messages, they might have firm bulletins, driver residence time requests, human assets deadlines, and settlement data, amongst different potentialities.

Drivers can really feel inundated by messages, particularly those who don’t pertain to them. Proprietor-operators don’t must get messages from HR about advantages for firm drivers, for instance. Equally, drivers in Arizona don’t wish to obtain a message a couple of non permanent weather-related street closure in Minnesota.

Apart from risking distraction, non-relevant messages trigger drivers to tune out essential communications. The answer is to make sure drivers persistently obtain messages which are related to them.

Segmenting messages primarily based on traits — firm drivers, owner-operators, location, tools sort, fleet divisions — and extra will improve the relevance of messages. Fleets can do that with their customized cell apps. They will additionally share group-specific information with drivers by division. For example, drivers that pull reefers might get a separate information channel from drivers in a fleet’s dry van division.

Equally, a fleet might goal a message to sure drivers who’re having a typical concern, like not being present on verifying their logs. This technique will keep away from the pointless danger of irritating drivers with messages when they’re doing issues accurately. 

Selecting a Supply Mechanism

Apart from segmenting messages, fleets can use their customized cell app to create separate supply mechanisms. The kind of mechanism a fleet chooses for drivers to speak with firm departments, like upkeep and HR, could possibly be a two-way threaded chat stream. One other risk is having devoted sections in an app’s menu for drivers to obtain firm information and bulletins, view pay data, and see their very own each day “to-do” activity checklist.

Sure varieties of communications may have additional visibility. A weekly video from the security division could possibly be delivered to drivers as a short lived residence display announcement. The video might then routinely save to a media library for future retrieval.

The comfort of doing enterprise with a cell app exterior the cab makes drivers extra doubtless to make use of the instrument to expertise the advantages of the know-how. Because the thinker Marshall McLuhan famously mentioned, “The media is the message.” Within the case of customized apps, the media — a private Android or iPhone — sends a transparent message to drivers: “It is a instrument that can make your job simpler.”

From a private telephone with a customized fleet app, a driver can learn firm information, scan a lacking proof-of-delivery doc, watch the newest security video, message their driver supervisor, request residence time, and extra – from wherever.

3. Simplify Drivers’ Work

Analysis reveals that driver job satisfaction is instantly linked to the standard of fleet communications. Based mostly on driver survey knowledge within the 2023 Workhound Annual Tendencies Report, poor communications grew to become drivers’ prime concern in 2022, rising from sixth place in 2021.

To reverse this development, fleets might want to enhance the motive force expertise through the use of communication methods and applied sciences to make their work simpler. Driving is traumatic sufficient with out coping with the extra challenges of communication delays and guesswork.

In abstract, fleets can use fashionable know-how, like a customized app, to simplify work for drivers and enhance their security and job satisfaction by:

• Making pressing messages simply identifiable and safely accessible.
• Delivering related messages, hands-free, in real-time.
• Guaranteeing messages and content material are well-organized and simply retrievable.
• Letting drivers entry messages exterior the cab, anytime, wherever.

Fleets utilizing customized apps can replace their communications methods with instruments that maintain drivers related, from any location, with every thing they should do their jobs as safely and effectively as doable.

Kevin Survance is chief govt officer of Eleos Applied sciences, primarily based in Greenville, S.C.  Eleos helps trucking fleets create customized driver apps. This text was authored and edited based on HDT editorial requirements and elegance to offer helpful data to our readers. Opinions expressed could not replicate these of HDT.