Now through Oct. 31, the Truckload Carriers Association will accept nominations for the fifth annual Best Fleets to Drive For contest and survey. Company drivers and owner-operators may nominate trucking companies by completing an application form on www.BestFleetsToDriveFor.com.
Best Fleets to Drive For is an annual evaluation of the best employers in the trucking industry. CarriersEdge, a provider of online driver quality improvement solutions, conducts the survey for TCA.
The survey is open to all for-hire trucking companies with 10 or more trucks, regardless of TCA membership status. Participating fleets will be evaluated against a broad range of criteria reflecting current human resources best practices, and the resulting survey data becomes a source of industry success stories in the areas of benefits, professional development, driver and community support, safety record and company culture.
For 2013, a few things have changed. After a company has been nominated by one of its company drivers or owner-operators and agrees to participate, it will be asked to provide more details electronically rather than through a telephone interview. CarriersEdge still will discuss the survey materials with the company via telephone, but the new process should greatly reduce the interview time, which was running 2-3 hours in the past. TCA says the change will create one centralized, integrated system that allows for easier and timelier communications between nominated companies and TCA/CarriersEdge.
Some new questions have been added to this year’s survey. Drivers will be asked how much they trust the company they have nominated. Companies will be asked if they have researched and understand the reasons why their people leave. The survey also asks how much companies invest in developing their drivers; do they have a line item in their budget for training and other driver development activities?
After a company has provided the necessary information electronically, interviews will be conducted as necessary with senior management and a random sampling of the company’s drivers. Top finishers will be identified as Best Fleets to Drive For, and the highest scoring fleets in each of the Company Driver and Owner-Operator categories will be named that category’s overall winner. To view best practices from last year’s survey as well as profiles of the overall winners, go to www.BestFleetsToDriveFor.com.
