Arkansas Trucking Association

The Last Word

Listen, Act, Respond: Three Steps to Improving Driver Retention

By Max Farrell

We’re all reading the same things: driver shortages, driver turnover, a fire-hot freight market, etc.

Now more than ever, trucking executives are wanting to take advantage of the business opportunities provided by the industry. But there’s a roadblock: it’s tough to find and keep truck drivers.

For too long trucking companies have focused strictly on recruiting. But with recruiting metrics favoring the advertiser and not the trucking company, driver retention is being revisited.

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Up Front- Repeating History

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

In December 1982, Pres. Ronald Reagan faced a problem that feels eerily familiar. Four thousand miles of the not-yet complete interstate system was in need of resurfacing and 23,000 bridges in need of repair. The gas tax, which had been levied to fund the interstate system, had not been increased since three years before construction began. And it no longer covered expenses.

In the Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, for the first time in 23 years, Congress more than doubled the gas tax, raising it five cents to a total of 9 cents a gallon. The bill authorized $71 billion for highway construction, road repairs and mass transit.

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The Last Word

Game On

By Al Heringer, IV

Almost 25 years ago, my family expanded our business offerings to include a petroleum-hauling common carrier operation under the name of Star Transportation. After I graduated from college, I joined the business which at the time had only six trucks. Running a trucking company hadn’t been part of the plan I had for myself. Like most people who play high school and college sports, I thought I was headed to the pros – specifically, the NFL. But I found my path redirected in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I hung up my cleats for the last time.

I have a similar feeling when I think of how differently the trucking industry looks a quarter-century later.

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Up Front- Remembering the Empty Seats

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

This time of year, there’s a lot of pressure to spend weeks (and your whole paycheck) shopping for and wrapping holiday gifts for your family, but in the minutes after all the presents are opened, bellies full of chocolate oranges and surrounded by a small mountain of crumpled reindeer paper and ribbon, we can forget that the most expensive gift is the one we sometimes take for granted—living in a free country.

For all the reasons to love the holidays—presents, parties, your kids in matching pajamas on Christmas morning—the expectation to make merry and have an abundance of joy is not always the reality for the families who have an empty seat at the dinner table. The songs tell us to trim up the tree and deck the halls, but there’s a melancholy about the season for anyone remembering loved ones who have laid down their lives for us to freely celebrate whatever holidays we want.

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