In the long haul trucking industry, driver turnover is nearly 100% per year – meaning the average driver lasts only 12 months. While focusing on driver retention should be your top priority when you have a roster of reliable and easy-to-work with drivers, hiring will always be a critical part of the job for any growing trucking business. 

In this article, we breakdown a 7-step guide across how to find, recruit, qualify, and hire the best drivers available. Importantly, we add a compliance lens to this as well, with ___ requirements you need to execute and have in place with each additional driver.

Where do I find great drivers? Two primary ways: your network and job boards.

1. Network. Have you met any you love, especially independent drivers who might want a steadier base of business and pay? It’s always best to start with your first and second degree connections to determine who you might want to bring on next. We suggest keeping a simple running sheet (Google Sheet, Excel, or elsewhere) of potential hires. We call this your “virtual bench” of talent.
2. Job boards. There are no shortage of job boards where you can post for drivers. Common generalist sites are Indeed.com, ZipRecruiter.com, and LinkedIn. There are also multiple trucking specific job boards such as TheTrucker.com and TruckersNetwork.com. Depending on your budget, you might consider a platform like Tenstreet that allows you to post to 20 job boards at once and integrate applications with verifications and driver qualification files.

Process: from your Scorecard to the driver’s “First 90 Days”

In short, here are the 8 key steps we recommend taking for hiring drivers, from the initial scorecard of the role through onboarding your driver:

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1. Start with your “Scorecard.” What are the 3-5 core accountabilities of the job? What does success look like 12-18 months from now? Be crisp and specific on the key deliverables – e.g. “The driver will have driven over 100,000 miles without an accident,” or “The driver will have received positive feedback from more than 90% of clients they worked with.” This is an internal document you can use to help keep yourself honest in the hiring process.
2. Write out the Job Description. Based on the key deliverables of the Scorecard, the Job Description becomes your public facing document. Write out a blurb about your company, the mission of the role, the key responsibilities of the driver, and the key qualifications they’ll need to be hired and to be successful.
3. Driver’s Application for Employment. Per FMCSA requirements, a driver must have a completed and signed application for employment. The FMCSA has an example you can use here, but you can customize it to your own business as long as you have the information required by the FMCSA.
4. Phone screen or in person meeting. Have a crisp 30 minute conversation with the driver to gauge cultural fit with your team, how they’ll be received by customers, and get a brief overview of work history and qualifications that might not appear on their resume (if you have one for them). Figure out who on your team needs to speak with or meet each driver before you begin the hiring process, so that you can streamline the experience and save time for all involved.
5. Driver test. It’s common when hiring drivers that you run them through a driver test to ensure that they are a safe, attentive, and responsible driver. 
6. Background and reference checks. While background checks and drug tests are essential to ensure your driver either has a clean record or you at least are comfortable with an explainable lapses in their past, the reference checks are often even more critical to ensure the candidate will be a great fit – or not – for the role. Talk to 3-5 past employers or customers who can speak in depth about their experience with the driver in question. Ask probing questions about disagreements, biggest issues they may have had, and any other potential red or yellow flag. At this stage, people are likely to not want to say anything negative, so you’ll want to diplomatically probe.
7. Prepare a driver qualification file. The FMCSA requires a list of checks and documents to be completed for each new driver prior to employment as well as an ongoing maintenance of that file. This file should include the inquiries to previous employers, previous motor vehicle reports (MVRs), medical examiner’s certificate, and other information. Be sure to research the latest requirements directly from the FMCSA to ensure your files are complete and up to date.
8. Onboarding. Congrats on finding the right driver! Have a succinct and legally-reviewed offer letter template drafted and ready to go with job expectations, compensation, benefits, and employment information clearly spelled out. Determine all the steps you’ll need to get them set up in your HR system, if you have one, to make this run smoothly for the candidate. First impressions of onboarding matters for creating a positive experience and helping on retention down the road. Be sure they are familiar with all equipment, team members they’ll be interacting with, safety protocols, insurance, and emergency procedures.

Whether you have five trucks or fifty, no one has a team with excess time. Managing a growing business and balancing that with profitability means your team is virtually always at capacity, and you tend to hire when your team is over capacity. And, training new hires on your systems is a major endeavor when you’re a small business.

When done right, finding the right trucking software can be a transformative endeavor. Great software providers can open your eyes to what’s possible. There are always more efficient and effective ways to manage your business and your customers. Software, when done right, should be a huge unlocking function for your drivers, your dispatchers, your back office staff, and you as an owner.

“Truckbase is the most intuitive and easy software I’ve found after evaluating over 20 TMS providers. Any dispatcher can pick it up within 30 minutes.” -Tom Herlache, Owner of Herlache Truck Lines

But why do so many software implementations become overwhelming, time consuming, and frustrating with months of training? 

At Truckbase, we have always aspired to build the easiest-to-use TMS for small trucking companies. Period. We serve growing fleets that have a minimum of five trucks and span upwards of fifty. We believe great software lies in the art of balancing powerful features with simplicity.

Because Truckbase was specifically built with (and for) small family-run fleets, we believe advanced features are only as useful as they are usable for busy dispatchers and operations managers. After all, software is meant to save time (not add more work to your plate).

Trucking software often becomes too complex to use for several reasons:

1. Lack of focus. As a vendor, when you try to be all things to all people, such as building solutions for 3PLs and freight brokers in addition to carriers, the waters get muddied. Truckbase solely focuses on asset-based carriers. Even within the carrier segment, focusing on too many varieties – such as last-mile in addition to long-haul and over the road (OTR) – can lead to an overly complex product. Truckbase focuses on regional and long-haul carriers, who tend to have five to fifty trucks. We also don’t try to serve companies with 500+ trucks – that’s not our sweet spot, and there are other providers who serve mega-carriers better than Truckbase.
2. Too many screens, modules, and pages. For small teams, the power of a single dashboard that houses key data and intuitively allows you to follow active loads and easily toggle to other key sections is critical for helping onboard staff to the system. We routinely hear that Truckbase is like a TMS “on a single page.” That’s music to our ears.
3. Custom implementation vs. configurable. There’s a big difference between exceptional onboarding and customizing every feature to fit your needs. Do not be swayed by promises of customization – that means an incredible amount of work from your team to test and validate, back and forth with the vendor, and onboarding times measured in months instead of days or weeks. At Truckbase, we aim to have every customer onboarded within 2 weeks across 2 meetings (with additional training & support available of course!). 
4. Manual data entry. Too many TMSes seem robust on the surface, but without automations such as load importing and driver alerts, you end up spending just as much time inputting data and making check calls as you did when using more manual systems. Ask your providers how they leverage AI and what their unique advantages are when it comes to automated alerts and messaging. At Truckbase, we love that question!

You are too busy, and your customers and team members are too important, to be spending countless hours implementing, learning, and operating in clunky software. Focus on prioritizing ease of use when selecting trucking dispatch software for your growing fleet has cascading benefits.

For any growing trucking company, endless check calls are often considered a necessary evil. They eat up your dispatcher's time, and your drivers can’t stand them. While there are valid reasons for frequent check calls (and they help build trust with brokers), there is a better way.

Twenty years ago, this would all have to be done manually, and the only way to solve it would be to add dispatchers, which reduces your profitability and doesn’t scale well. In today’s world, it is possible to reduce your dispatcher’s workload by 30% and eliminate check calls entirely through live tracking software and automation.

“Truckbase has exponentially increased our back office efficiency. They’ve helped us streamline our processes as we evolve from a company with just a couple trucks into a larger organization.” -Bruce P., VP Bumpa & Sons Trucking

What are check calls?

Check calls refer to calls and emails from a freight broker to a carrier looking for status updates on a load. For larger fleets with dedicated dispatchers, these calls and emails will often go to the dispatcher who then needs to call or text the driver. The broker can have a range of questions: Where is the driver? Have they been loaded? What is the ETA for the load? Can you send the bill of lading?

While some brokers will only make 1-2 calls a day, there are some agents who have been known to ask for updates every 15-30 minutes. This eats into your dispatchers’ valuable time.

The power and leverage of software and technology in reducing check calls

When your tool of choice is the phone or two-way radio, you are limited by time. A check that reveals no issues is complete wasted motion. You are also more prone to miscommunication, which can lead to routing mistakes and further inefficiencies, which may in turn impact customer satisfaction. The more you can reduce the “all clear” types of back and forth, the more time you can save your dispatchers, and the more you can reduce errors, the more efficient your whole operation will be – and the happier your customers will be.

There are 4 main ways a trucking company can manage their check calls in 2023:

• Call, text, and email: Dispatchers can get frequent calls & emails from customers, which they relay on to drivers via text or phone call. This can add up to >30% of the dispatchers’ time and lead to frustration for your whole time.
• Third party tracking apps: Many brokerages have live tracking capabilities through 3rd party tracking apps that your driver can download on their phone. These include tools like TruckerTools, MacroPointe, Project44, FourKites. Although this does provide live tracking, it often comes with numerous challenges… 

• Drivers need to download and manage multiple apps on their personal device. 
• It’s possible for the driver to forget to enable tracking, resulting in costly penalties or decreased carrier ratings. 
• Because these tracking systems are managed by the broker, the carrier has less control over communications.
• Last, the broker control of the technology tends to give more power to broker vs. what’s possible as a more professional carrier with their own tracking system.

• ELD devices: Some ELD devices like Samsara provide the ability to generate a tracking link for the dispatcher to share the location of a truck. However, typically your ELD doesn’t have the full order/dispatch information. So, it’s often insufficient to eliminate check calls.
• Dispatch software with check call automation: Trucking dispatch software with live tracking like Truckbase provide ability to automate all information provided in check calls. The benefits of 

• Provide a single app for driver to use
• ELD integrations provides more reliable tracking than phone’s GPS (and it doesn’t interfere with drivers’ privacy
• Additional information on the order is included on the updates (including the ability to see the BOL)

While ELDs and other GPS tracking systems provided a valuable first step in being able to see where a truck is, a fully featured dispatch software (or TMS) enables trucking carriers to deepen customer trust and to fully eliminate check calls through automation.

Modern trucking dispatch software solutions like Truckbase achieve this through five primary areas: 

1. Live tracking links
2. ELD integrations
3. Customer portals
4. Automated customer updates
5. Automated driver updates

“Truckbase is the most intuitive and easy software I’ve found after evaluating over 20 TMS providers. Any dispatcher can pick it up within 30 minutes.” -Tom H, Owner of Herlache Truck Lines

Live tracking links

A live tracking link is a unique link that you can send to your customers via email to view all relevant information on the load as well as the location of the load. 

Trucking dispatch software like Truckbase provides all the relevant information and documentation your customer may want for that load in addition to the location. 

The addition of the other documents provides you more control over what gets shared (e.g., stop sharing the truck location after the load has been delivered). It also provides more information than a simple GPS tracker because check calls often include additional questions, such as “is the driver loaded?” or “can you send a copy of the bill of lading?”.

ELD Integrations

With modern dispatch software solutions like Truckbase, dispatchers are able to view and access their truck location and other ELD information through their dispatch software (or TMS). The dispatcher can rest assured that they will be automatically alerted – and the driver in turn – if there are any issues that arise. Thus you can now leverage your dispatchers to do higher level human intervention that is both more stimulating and more impactful, than having them do rote checks. 

When considering implementing live tracking, it’s important to think about your driver’s preferences for tracking on their phone vs. the truck. While phone-level tracking may seem simple, do they have any privacy concerns about tracking on their device? Are they comfortable with remembering to actively turn tracking on their device for every load? Are they comfortable with technology and using multiple apps on their phone when different customers request tracking through different apps?

In addition, do you wish to provide tracking to customers who don’t have a 3rd party tracking system in place?

Providing live tracking through an ELD integration with a TMS system allows you to provide more reliable tracking and simplify your driver’s experience with your technology.

Last, while some software systems only allow you to integrate with their own ELD or provide integrations with 1-2 ELDs, dispatch software like Truckbase allows you to connect with 30+ different ELD devices. This is key because it provides more optionality if you wish to change out devices in the future.

Customer Portals

As you grow beyond solely relying on load boards and begin to have dedicated customer relationships, a dedicated customer portal serves two overarching functions: it reflects a degree of professionalism and reliability to your customers which gives them increased confidence in giving you their business, and it can dramatically reduce customer-facing calls by allowing for self-service status update checks. By providing them similar visibility into the progress, tracking, and real-time updates that your dispatchers can leverage, your customers can rest assured that all is on track and they’ll be notified instantaneously if anything is amiss. Transparency is key to building trust and deeper relationships with customers, and they don’t want to waste their time any more than you do. 

Automated Customer Updates

Tying to the customer portal, the logical extension of real-time tracking is providing real-time updates as needed. These are tunable to the extent you would like more or fewer, positive or negative. Know where your trucks are, get updates on when the driver arrived at the shipper, is loaded, in transit, etc. 

Being able to configure these updates for different customers helps with identifying issues with detention, builds customer trust, and can improve your carriers’ rating with brokers.

Automated Driver Updates

Similarly to customer updates, your driver updates will tend to be more frequent and more detail oriented than what your customers require. With these as well, tools like Truckbase can automatically ping your driver with relevant updates or change delivery destinations and requirements. If they need to rest to remain compliant, they can be alerted automatically. 

Conclusion

Check calls remain a key frustration and barrier to growth for trucking companies, especially for those growing quickly. By harnessing the power of dispatch software like Truckbase and its various automations, you can meaningfully reduce check calls for your dispatchers, drivers, and customers. Improve the satisfaction of all involved, and scale your business without breaking your team.

This guide outlines the process for selecting the right TMS and trucking software for your business, based on your unique needs. It’s important to keep in mind that there is no such thing as a “best” trucking software for the industry. There are various factors that make certain software options better for your fleet than others: 

• What types of loads do you haul? 
• Are you 100% load-board driven or do you mostly run dedicated lanes? Short-haul, long-haul, both?
• Do you need a way to take order requests online? 
• Do you receive a lot of check calls? 
• Do you want to meld something to your current way of working, or are you open to reimagining how software may improve your overall business and operations based on innovative designs?

Step 1: Map out how your team is structured and the key “jobs to be done” in each function.

Typically, we see trucking organizations revolve around five core functions: customer relations (sales), dispatch, operations & finance, maintenance, and compliance. In large fleets, these tend to be distinct teams. In smaller fleets, fewer team members tend to wear multiple hats, so you might have one or two team members working on booking loads & dispatch and a few team members covering all other operations.

Regardless of your team’s size, the first critical step is to simply list the key tasks and responsibilities of each of your functions. We recommend doing this as a team, using sticky notes on a wall or making notes on a whiteboard. You often will surprise yourself with a number of gaps and areas for improvement. Even ahead of selecting software, this process can reveal eye-opening improvement areas for your team to get more efficient and be more effective in working together.

‍Step 2: Map out how you work today.

‍Here is a list of questions to go through while mapping out your current workflow:

1. With sticky notes, write out every step from first contact with a shipper all the way through delivery and payment. The full closed loop.
2. For each step, who on your team owns it? We suggest writing the name of the responsible individual next to each of the key steps 
3. What systems and tools do you use today? List them all out, from ELDs to software to accounting to compliance. Are you using an outdated TMS, working off whiteboards and Google Sheets, or have you cobbled together a variety of point solutions?
4. How are you handling dispatch? Are you using WhatsApp or text messages, white boards and phone calls?
5. How do they tie together, or not tie together? 
6. What are the biggest gaps or frustrations with your overall system? What does your team like, and what don’t they like?
7. How do you assign loads?
8. How do you handle billing and invoicing? 
9. How do you handle driver pay? 
10. What are the time-consuming manual steps? Where are errors most likely to appear?
11. What do you like, what don’t you like? 

Step 3: Identify your goals and get clear what you’re solving for.

If you don’t know what you’re solving for, you’re unlikely to be satisfied with a software implementation. Go through the following list and develop a short description of your goals and timeline for a software system.

Are you trying to…

• Scale from 5 to 50 trucks, and looking to support growth?
• Increase visibility into your operations?
• Find ways to decrease costs? 
• Save wasted time?
• Invoice faster, so you get paid faster?
• Enable remote work and collaborate with team members?
• Ensure your staff doesn’t get burned out?
• Have a unified tool that your team can all work in simultaneously?
• Professionalize your business and impress customers? 

Once you have identified the top 3-5 priorities, you can then start to identify solutions. We recommend writing this down in 1-2 sentences, so you have a clear sense of what your goals are.

Here are a few examples of statements of goals and how they map to potential software solutions: 

“I’m looking to support our growth from 5-50 trucks, and move off of cobbled-together tools without breaking the bank or getting bogged down in a lengthy implementation process.”

• Look for a clean, simple, all-in-one solution that is built on a modern tech stack (so it can scale with you). Solve for the next 2-3 years.
• For a 5-50 truck fleet with a small office staff, you want a manageable implementation process and timeline. It should be 1-4 weeks for a fleet this size, depending on your current operational complexity. 
• Enterprise-grade solutions like McLeod are best for fleets with hundreds of trucks, and can take many months of hands-on implementation work to customize the solution for you. For smaller fleets, this is overkill and very expensive.

“My business is increasingly based on direct relationships with customers as opposed to solely relying on load boards. I’m looking to professionalize and build trust with customers, and I want to get more dedicated lanes with a few major brokerages.”

• Look for a solution that has a customer portal and live tracking. Being able to leverage that degree of visibility, transparency, and proactivity is a great way to build trust and deepen those relationships.
• You can also differentiate your carrier with a software that automates check calls and sends the proof of delivery within minutes of each completed load. Major brokerages often track this, and it can improve your carrier rating.
• You may want to look for a system that has EDI integration capabilities. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange, and it’s a way for your software to automatically communicate with your customer’s system (e.g., order requests, location tracking, and invoicing).

“Manual data entry takes time away from booking loads, and duplicating data across systems means lost BOLs and loads”

• Your software tool should save countless hours with automating order entry, as well as billing, invoicing work.
• Be sure to ask software providers how they are leveraging AI to optimize this process – the best providers have found ways to harness AI to make the process even faster and smoother.
• If you use accounting software like QuickBooks, then you’ll want to make your systems integrate seamlessly. You might consider switching from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online as well because integrations are typically better with QuickBooks Online.

“As we grow, dispatching and communicating with drivers is getting too painful. I need a system to manage it all in one place.”

• Text-based dispatch that is driven by your software system tends to be the easiest to use. Forcing them to download apps or keep track of passwords is time-consuming and can be frustrating. 
• Keep in mind that your drivers are the lifeblood of your trucking business, so it is critical that any new system is easy and reliable for your drivers.

Step 4: Do your homework. You’ll want to evaluate TMS options along three core pillars: dispatch, invoicing, and settlements. 

It’s possible to spend over $100,000+ on trucking software if you want a highly customized suite that has enterprise features you’ll ever need and can help you scale to 500+ trucks. If you’re a smaller fleet, there are several options that are dynamic, cloud-based, and adaptable as you grow from 5 to 50 trucks and beyond. 

For a few helpful lists of trucking software, here are three worth reviewing:

• “7 best trucking software providers” (FreightWaves)
• “9 best truck dispatching software systems” (FreightWaves)
• “Top 5 Truck Dispatch Software Providers for 2023” (Transport Topics)

One thing to keep in mind is ease of use and implementation. The worst software is the one that doesn’t get used because your team can’t figure it out. For smaller fleets especially, ease of use is directly related to how successful a new software will be for your team.

As you review different trucking software providers, here are a few areas to evaluate. Keep in mind what your goals are. For the areas you’re looking to improve the most, does a specific provider have great solutions?

Here are a few features to consider for each functional area:

Dispatch

• Automated order entry
• Easy-to-use split loads
• AI tools to decrease manual work
• Driver texting
• Driver app

Customer engagement

• Live tracking & ELD integrations
• Check call automation
• Customer portal
• EDI integrations

Billing invoicing

• Simple invoicing flow
• Ability to add fuel surcharges and other costs
• Ability to send multiple loads per invoice
• QuickBooks integration

Driver pay

• Integrated driver settlements
• Multiple pay types (percentage, cent per mile, stop pay)
• Recurring bonuses & deductions
• Owner operator & company driver support
• Fuel card integrations

Maintenance

• Maintenance cost tracking
• Truck out of service tracking
• Preventative maintenance reminders

Compliance

• Driver qualification file storage
• Expiration & renewal reminders

Reporting

• Powerful search functionality, including lane search
• Performance reports for trucks, drivers, and dispatchers

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Step 5: Evaluate partnership with the specific team you’re working with at the TMS company.

When selecting a trucking software provider, the team you have access to is critical. Are you going to be handed off from a salesperson immediately after you sign? Have you met and vetted your account manager? Do you have access to a contact who can resolve issues as they arise?

It is crucial to ask for references and thoroughly examine customer reviews. Choosing a software provider is not just a transactional decision but a long-term investment. The best software providers treat their customers like partners.

Reviewing online feedback from other users offers a broader perspective on the provider's reputation, overall customer satisfaction, and potential challenges. 

‍Requesting references allows you to gather valuable insights from existing clients, enabling you to assess the software's performance, ease of use, reliability, and customer service. By reaching out to references, you can gain firsthand information about the provider's responsiveness, professionalism, and their commitment to further improvements to the software.

This comprehensive evaluation of references and reviews ensures that you make an informed decision, establishing a strong foundation for a lasting partnership with a trucking software provider that aligns with your business objectives and provides ongoing support and value.