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.
Dwain Hebda is a freelance journalist, author, editor and storyteller in Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to The Trucker, his work appears in more than 35 publications across multiple states each year. Hebda’s writing has been awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists and a Finalist in Best Of Arkansas rankings by AY Magazine. He is president of Ya!Mule Wordsmiths, which provides editorial services to publications and companies.
