Dwain Hebda

Kennedy Alvarez never envisioned a career in the transportation industry, but an internship in college working in Melton Truck Line’s social media and communications department quickly changed all that. By the end of the internship, Alvarez had been offered a full-time position with the company. Now, six and half years later, she serves as the carrier’s digital media manager, riding herd over advertising, online branding, SEO, social media, and other communications functions that serve the company both internally and externally. Along the way, the 27-year-old also completed her Master of Business Administration degree and has expanded her reach from communications and marketing into branding, employee recruitment, and customer marketing efforts. “I’d never worked in the transportation industry prior to that internship,” Alvarez said. “It’s been a really good journey for me, both educationally and professionally.” Because she was such a “green” newcomer to trucking, Alvarez says she initially faced a steep learning curve. There was a lot of technical jargon with which to familiarize herself, along with learning the “nuts and bolts” of moving machines and freight from one place to another. This was actually an advantage for Alvarez. What she brought to the role was a fresh and innovative mindset when it came to the way Melton shared its story with employees, prospective drivers, potential customers, and the public at large. “Social media specifically has changed a lot just in my six years here at Melton,” she said. “We really use it to convey our culture. It’s the greatest communication vehicle that we’ve ever seen, and so it’s something that we utilize very heavily in communicating our brand online. “When thinking about user behavior, it’s not always a Google search to your website anymore,” she continued. “It’s utilizing social media platforms as a search tool. So, it’s important for our brand to be on social media, communicating our culture just as much as our website or any other online tool. I would say we have always been a little bit of a first adopter when it comes to that.” The communication strategy driving this social media utilization, she says, is multilayered, with messages performing multiple tasks at once. Posts that celebrate individual and corporate accomplishments send subtle messages about the positives of working for Melton — which in turn supports the carrier’s recruitment efforts. The impact of social media is even more pronounced when the content is generated by Melton’s front-line employees, Alvarez said, pointing to the innovative influencer program created by her department. “We were brainstorming one day, and my vice president said, ‘There’s got to be a way we can utilize social media and expand upon what has traditionally been our most successful advertising source —word-of-mouth driver referrals,’” Alvarez said. “So, we put the two together and combined the power of social media with what was already very successful for us, and very timeless for us,” she continued. The result was the influencer program, which incentivizes the company’s drivers to make videos about their experiences at Melton. “We take our drivers’ content — their testimonials, their videos — and we use what they’ve created themselves, and their voice exactly as they say it,” she said. “We were surprised to find that these messages were just as high-converting as our driver referrals were traditionally — and they also garnered a substantial amount of engagement for our company online.” This process, Alvarez said, is much more effective than simply posting a traditional job listing and hoping prospective drivers have heard good things about the company. “Our internally managed marketing programs and social media attributions to driver hiring have increased by over 30% year to date versus the same period in 2022,” she said. “Furthermore, since the inception of my current role in May 2021, my team and I have managed to decrease our cost per hire by as much as 69% and decrease our app-to-hire ratio as much as 42%,” she noted. “This is all thanks to increasingly effective and measurable advertising strategies, amplified online brand exposure and engagement, as well as diligent collaboration with our recruiting team.” Alvarez says Melton’s social media and communications platforms also help company leadership measure employee satisfaction, providing the kind of feedback that enables company brass to learn of issues that might need to be evaluated for improvement. “It’s inevitable that sometimes you’re going to get content that isn’t super-positive about the company, and we take the good the bad and sometimes the ugly,” she said. “If there’s a common message or a common thread or a common theme that emerges online, that message is something that does not just go uncommunicated,” she added. “We’re a very feedback-oriented company when it comes to drivers, and the front office and very connected to leadership here at Melton. That’s a great thing.” This article originally appeared in the November/December 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.

Over the decades Garth Pitzel has been in the trucking business, he’s seen a lot of things come and go. For instance, he can remember when his employer, industry giant Bison, could fit all its drivers under one roof. Times have certainly changed for the 2,300-driver Canadian carrier — and that includes its approach to safety. In fact, it’s hard to find a better example of a safety-first culture than Bison’s consistent multi-faceted approach. But, as Pitzel shared with Truckload Authority, the company’s reputation as one of trucking’s safest carriers — with a trophy case stuffed with accolades to match — has been a long time coming. “If you look at where we were — we focused on compliance and that doesn’t make you safe,” said Pitzel, Bison’s associate vice president of safety and driver development. “We proved that every day; we weren’t safe in the ’90s. So, we shifted from just being compliant to becoming both a safe and compliant company. “When we started on this, we wanted to design the best safety toolbox a professional driver could have,” he continued. “Give them the best safety equipment, give them the best training and skills development, and give them the best policy to support safe driving. None of this happens without people. That’s the most important part. You have to value people first.” Of the steps Bison has taken to make safety a mindset for every employee, the most impressive could be Bison’s right-to-decide policy. This company guideline puts accountability into the hands of the driver in a manner that’s largely unheard of in the industry. “Our right-to-decide policy gives the authority and responsibility to the person performing the task to discontinue that task if it’s unsafe to do it,” Pitzel said. “So, for a driver, that means to decide when not to drive due to the condition of the equipment, condition of the roadways, weather, and most importantly, the condition of the driver. “When you look at that overall safety toolbox we provide, and you look at this right to decide, it leaves no doubt that our people are the most important thing,” he added. “Safety is a partnership; from a company perspective, it’s our responsibility to make sure each driver has the necessary skills to make it home safely from each and every trip. The driver’s responsibility is to use those skills every mile they run for us so that they make it home safely.” Another element of the company’s safety processes and protocols is a corps of safety counselors, which exists to provide coaching to drivers and help ascertain when additional training is needed. While this program has been around for quite some time, Pitzel said, it wasn’t overly effective — until the company changed its approach from enforcement and punishment to being a helpful, supportive resource for drivers. “(The safety counselors’) job is to do one of two things — to hold conversations to determine if that driver just needs a coaching event or if they need further training,” Pitzel said, adding that for counseling to be effective, it can’t always be negative. “A driver doesn’t get up in the morning and say they’re going to have a bad day or have an accident,” he said. “When they have an issue, you’ve got to get down to the root cause. Once they correct it, it’s just as important to communicate with them and thank them for their efforts, rather than to just beat them with a stick. You’ve got to have some positive reinforcement.” Another aspect of Bison’s overall safety program that’s paying off is the systematic manner in which behaviors are addressed to improve performance. Pitzel cited a recent example in which the company sought to cut down incidents involving adverse weather conditions, leveraging drivers to be on the front line of improvement. “Our results were not good two winters ago. We identified a combination of factors that contributed to every accident — light load, high winds, and over-driving the conditions,” he said. “We stressed that, and we challenged our drivers to help be part of the solution. The result was 46% fewer accidents last winter than the year before. Our drivers absolutely responded, and I got out and thanked them for it.” Pitzel is quick to point out that the new approach doesn’t come at the expense of the drivers’ accountability and adherence to rules. But he’s equally emphatic about the company’s ability to see different ways to deliver messages and drive for collaborative improvement in a manner employees hear and understand. “This whole thing is like a puzzle, and the puzzle is cut in a different way for every driver. Our job as a company is to put it together,” he said. “We strive toward continual improvement. “Our major accidents, since 2020, have reduced by 27%,” he continued. “We have a safe driving award program that’s paid out $50 million to our drivers since 2005. Last year, January to October, we did almost 3,900 classroom courses and just under 12,000 online courses for our drivers. And for the first nine months of last year, we had 14,092 coaching conversations through our safety counselors — 3,752 being proactive conversations, not reactive.” All the time, money, and expertise that represents is a small price to pay for bringing everyone home to their loved ones safely, which is the constant, overriding goal, according to Pitzel. “I do a quarterly board report, and the first question I have to answer is, ‘Did everybody make it home? Yes or no?’ That’s what drives safety as part of the culture we have here,” he said. “The worst thing I have to do is phone somebody’s family and say they aren’t coming home. That’s the only thing on my job description that I’d be happy to get away with not doing.” This article originally appeared in the September/October 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.

These days, Jeremy Stickling is respected throughout the trucking industry because of his deft management of Illinois-based Nussbaum Transportation. He has worked hard to grow the carrier through sound management of business fundamentals. When he first crossed the company’s threshold 16 years ago, launching his career in the trucking industry, his business card could just have easily read “Not from around here,” as he is the first to admit. “I don’t have any feel-good story about growing up and always wanting to be in trucking,” he said with a chuckle. “Honestly, it was networking. I knew somebody that knew somebody at Nussbaum, and there was a position and I decided to take it.” Stickling may have entered the field dispassionately, but it wasn’t long before he knew exactly what the trucking lifers around him were talking about when they described their love for the industry. “I don’t think you can be in trucking more than a few years without it working its way into your blood,” he said. Stickling initially applied his business background to the company’s accounting department; later, he moved over to human resources. Ten years ago, Nussbaum’s longtime safety manager retired, and those duties were also added to his plate. Today, Stickling oversees a wide swath of back-office functions, including human resources, accounting, recruiting, and safety. “I inherited a gold mine, which made (transitioning to new roles) pretty easy,” he said. “It sure has worked out well.” Despite taking over an already well-oiled machine, Sticking has never been shy about looking for ways to improve. One project that’s been particularly beneficial is revamping the company’s driver scorecard. Stickling leveraged the vast amount of data captured by modern trucks to track driver performance. This allows the company to reward great drivers and provide help to drivers in need of improvement. “There’s a lot of scorecards out there. We have an incredible IT department which has delivered a lot of custom development,” he said. “We were able to partner up with a vendor that gave us custom data feeds. With that, we put together a behavior-based driver scorecard. That was probably back between 2014 and 2016. “The thing that really sets (our scorecard) apart is we what call the Driving Habits Score,” he continued. “For example, we’re able to capture throttle data and see who’s heavier on the foot. Another feature is called Smooth Driving; we’re using G-force data that is many times more sensitive than your traditional sudden stop. With that, we can measure driving performance, just like we’re remotely filling up a cup of water, setting it on the dash and seeing who keeps the most water in the cup. That’s probably the most unique part.” Stickling is pleased that the scorecard system was created in-house. “We think what our folks built is as good as anything out there, and it’s a big part of what we do now,” he said. “Drivers embrace that scorecard because it ups their pay and makes them feel successful at work. That was one of my first big projects — and still probably the most fun I have been involved with at Nussbaum.” Stickling’s assertions are supported by the carrier’s driver turnover and retention numbers. Nussbaum’s 550 rigs remain fully seated, and the company currently enjoys a low 35% turnover rate. This keeps things moving for the company’s over-the-road, irregular-route, nonlocal customers. However, Stickling says the company’s primary success factor — technological wizardry aside — in holding onto great help relies on something far more fundamental. “I think one of our ‘secret sauces’ that we start with is, ‘How do we think, what do we believe, where is our heart at as we’re working with people?’” he said. “This isn’t new, but our recruiters have a very long list that they go through with drivers that covers the good (aspects of the company), because we have plenty of good here — but it also covers the bad and the ugly. “It’s using real numbers,” he explained. “We say, ‘Here’s real home time; here’s what it is, here’s what it isn’t. Here’s pay ranges. By the way, this is our true 40-60 percentile average. We’re not selling you on the top 20%.’ Then we go through a bunch of other things, and we send the applicant the stuff in writing after the fact. We try to have no surprises. “Our recruiters are incentivized not just on making a hire; 60% of their commission comes from retention,” he continued. “That means they’ve got to wait for a little bit, but it’s worked really well for us as a company.” Nussbaum also benefits by taking the approach of driving as just one part of a truck driver’s career, not the end-all, be-all by itself. Doing so changes how management relates to drivers at every step of the employee life cycle, and it also changes how drivers see themselves and their long-term possibilities. “Our industry, unfortunately, seems to be good at saying, ‘OK, you’ve got your CDL. Nobody cares. Just drive,’” Stickling said. “I make sure I’m the first one who meets our new drivers. I tell them there’s three things about working at Nussbaum: I talk about ownership, because we’re employee-owned. I talk about positive impact, which we believe is our company’s purpose. And third, I talk about personal growth. We’ll walk them through that, and I’ll write out a list of things we have to try to give room for personal growth, career growth.” The company’s programs — from the in-house Certified Red technical academy to master trainer certification to Road Captain mentors — are all designed to help those who are willing to perfect their craft and take advantage of future opportunities. Underpinning each program is a sincerity of intent that Stickling says people appreciate. “This is a human who’s in the truck, who we’re working for and who is working for us,” he said. “I don’t care what your program is. It can be the best design in the world, but if you don’t care about people, it’s not going to work. That means you’ve got to be patient and you’ve got to offer those things where we’re trying to get at driver fulfillment and career growth and let that build up over time. “That sounds like kind of a soft squishy thing, but if you don’t have that, you’re not going to be as successful as a company as you could be,” he concluded. This article originally appeared in the September/October 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.

    Like millions of other racing fans across the nation, Sherri Garner Brumbaugh loves the thrill of a NASCAR event. However, unlike the majority of those fans, the president, CEO and owner of Garner Trucking, Inc., wasn’t content to just take it in from the stands or infield on race weekend. That’s why the Ohio-based company entered into a sponsorship deal last season as a way to engage Garner’s 130 employees with a sport that many of them, like their boss, actively follow. “We’re a relatively small carrier that thinks big, and so we’re on a large national stage,” she said. “We work hard. I think you should play hard. Truck drivers and NASCAR are peas in a pod — or like peas and carrots. It’s been very fun and interesting seeing our #7 car branded in a Cup Series.” While much of that seems like pretty standard sentiment, Garner Trucking took things a step further to share the benefits of the NASCAR sponsorship with employees at all levels of the company. The sponsorship deal includes several VIP race day experiences, items that many companies might use to reward high-dollar clients or entice sales prospects. Brumbaugh and her team had a different idea. “My interest was getting my employees involved in a VIP experience,” she said. “NASCAR is one of the few sports that you can have such close contact with the professional athletes. You meet them, talk with them, they spend time with you, and you get a really close and personal touch.” Using the VIP ducats to treat its employees instead of as bait for new business is just one of the ways Garner is leveraging the sponsorship differently than most. The company also donated two trucks to Spire Motorsports, which owns the car — another way of building pride and fanship among employees. The sponsorship has helped company leadership to build on its relationships with employees. “One of the interesting things we found through this is, several of our drivers said, ‘If I wasn’t driving for Garner, I would drive a NASCAR hauler. That would be a dream job for me.’ So, we came up with another twist with our sponsorship that engaged our drivers,” Brumbaugh said. “(Spire) had aging trucks, and they really didn’t have the time or expertise to spec a new truck because they were hard to get,” she explained. “So, we just took that on for them and it was really something Spire Motorsports Group appreciated, and something that really connected with our employees.” The partnership is appreciated on all sides. “Sherri is the queen of the highway — everything she touches is gold,” said TJ Puchyr, co-owner of Spire Sports+Entertainment. “She’s always paying attention to detail. When you’re around her, you see how she affects her employees and customers. She just does a great job. “She’s doing stuff for us that she doesn’t need to be doing. She always over-delivers, like with these two beautiful, brand-new Freightliner Cascadias,” he continued. “Because of the sponsorship, it helps with the morale at the trucking company. It’s something everybody there can get behind, rally around, galvanize with each other and have that pride. I think that’s a pretty powerful thing.” The Garner-sponsored car — a Next-Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE — is piloted by third-generation racer Corey LaJoie, who says he appreciates the relationship not just because of the monetary aspect, but also for the way Garner Trucking conducts its business and takes care of its employees. “You try to look for (sponsor) companies with similar values and ethos as yours — of just working hard and treating people right,” LaJoie said. “Garner Trucking, and their whole family, are the epitome of that. They treat their drivers great. They are stand-up people. “It’s been a lot of fun meeting those folks and going to a couple shows with the family,” he continued. _Garner is a super tight-knit, family-run business. They’ve definitely helped us out by making our fleet look strong with those two brand new Freightliners. They make us proud to roll into the racetrack every week.” Success on the racetrack has been slow in coming, but the company is nonetheless maximizing the benefits of its sponsorship. Tim Chrulski, COO of Garner Trucking, says the relationship feels less like a business arrangement and more like family. “We had an opportunity to have dinner with the two (truck) drivers here in Findlay, Ohio, and it was an absolute pleasure to have dinner with them. Very much salt of the earth. Very much like our drivers,” Chrulski said. “We’re going to work with Spire to get their truck drivers through the shop here when they’re at Michigan,” he added. “As much as our employees like Corey, they actually get starstruck over the racing team’s truck drivers too. It’s pretty cool to see that interaction.” Photos courtesy of the Truckload Carriers Association and Spire Motorsports This article originally appeared in the July/August 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.

  Five years ago, as the new General Manager of Nebraska-based Chief Carriers, Andrew Winkler was looking for a way to break the ice with his new troops. After a self-imposed 90-day “listen-only” policy, he saw the perfect opportunity. “What I observed was that the company was very — I’ll call it ‘status quo.’ They did what they needed to do to get by. Their turnover was below industry average, but I felt like it could be better,” he said. “I certainly observed that they didn’t treat the drivers the same way they treated their office staff.” Of course, drivers and office staff have different schedules and needs, but Winkler believed improvements were in order to balance, even blend, the two groups. “We had a brand-new building; in fact, the terminal was one month old when I took over,” he continued. “So, we had this beautiful new facility, and the drivers had their own entrance. They had a drivers’ window to talk to dispatch, and they had a drivers’ window to talk to the shop, and they were kind of isolated into the driver entrance area. They weren’t allowed to move throughout the rest of the building.” In doing away with this policy, Winkler sent the message that a new era had dawned at the 75-truck carrier, which exclusively hauls flatbed loads. The move got people’s attention — and got his foot in the door for instilling a new culture for the company. And it’s paid off. Not only has Chief Carriers driven out inefficiencies, thereby substantially boosting profitability, but this year the company was also named a Best Fleet to Drive For in the small carrier division. “Our ability to set policy aside and take each issue one on one or individually and figure out what we need to do for this person, this particular time sets us apart,” Winkler said. “That’s not to say that we don’t have policies and follow them; it’s about doing the right thing for people at any given time. You can’t have policies that cover every situation. “It’s about, not only me, but making sure my leadership team and my operations group and everybody sees that they have the autonomy to step out and just take care of your people,” he continued. “I think that’s what makes us a good place to work.” In his time at the helm, Winkler has modeled the behavior he expects out of his leadership team. He still takes the time to meet with drivers individually, meetings he approaches in essentially the same way as he did when he was brand new. “When I take time to try to get to know the drivers one on one, I always have a rule where I listen twice as much as I speak,” he explained. “I want them to know that their opinions and their ideas and all those things matter; they aren’t just falling on deaf ears. We are actually trying to make real change based on what drivers are feeling.” This strategy has worked, not only in introducing innovation or clearing up operational bottlenecks, but also in forging a bond of trust between management and drivers that today allows Winkler to address concerns directly, even when the answer is “no.” “Even when you can’t give people what they want, you go straight at them and tell them exactly why you weren’t able to implement this idea or that idea,” he said. “I think where a lot of people fall short is they don’t take more time to explain the reasoning behind something. They say, ‘Well, we decided not to do this, and this is why,’ but I’ve found you need to take it a little bit deeper, so people actually have an understanding. “That’s the whole premise that led to the podcast we launched last year called ‘Drive Too Far, the Truth About Trucking,’” he continued. “That idea was to pull back the curtain and tell these drivers what’s really going on in our industry.” Winkler, now 52, learned how to adapt his communication style to better connect with his intended audience early in life. He spent the early part of his life in Omaha, Nebraska; then, in high school he moved about 150 miles west to the smaller community of St. Paul, moving from a class of 600 students to a class of only 66. Years later, in 2018, the situation repeated itself in his professional life when, after serving as a driver, dispatcher and in other positions at Grand Island Express, he joined Chief Carriers in his current role. “I didn’t know what to expect; I just knew this company was about half the size of the one I came from,” he said. “But for me personally, it was an opportunity to run my own truck line. The neat thing about Chief is they give all their general managers autonomy to run their business unit, so I was excited about the idea of not having somebody constantly looking over my shoulder and getting to execute some of the things that I wanted to do.” Now, with two Best Fleets to Drive For awards to his credit (in 2015, he helped lead Grand Island to top honors in the large carrier division) and a culture of mutual respect that permeates every level of the organization, Winkler is looking forward to even bigger things for Chief Carriers on the horizon. “I think there’s a lot of growth coming in the next couple of years,” he said. “I want us to continue to be a disrupter and a trailblazer in this industry. We’re not afraid to try new things. I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of people out there that think I’m a little bit crazy when I say this, but I just think there’s a better way to do this business.” Photos courtesy of Chief Carriers This article originally appeared in the July/August 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.