As the driver shortage continues to worsen, driver health and wellness has taken center stage.
Melton Truck Lines certainly was experiencing the driver shortage and was losing good, experienced drivers because their blood pressure was too high and they couldn’t maintain their physical cards. “They were 5 feet tall, they weighed 350 pounds, they didn’t know what their body chemistry was, and they ate bad food,” says Bob Peterson, president of the Tulsa, Okla.-based flatbed carrier.
New driver candidates would come into orientation and flunk their physicals for a number of reasons. Then in 1998 and again in 2003, Melton lost long-time company drivers to heart attacks. Those events led management to set out to change the company’s attitude toward personal health from the top down.
Peterson knew that a comprehensive health and wellness program was critical to helping improve driver health and lower Melton’s healthcare cost exposure.
Citing research that shows healthcare costs for an obese employee are 56 percent higher compared to a normal-weight employee and that one in five deaths in the United States is obesity-associated, the answer was relatively simple. But getting employees to participate in a company-led health program initially was a challenge.
Getting employees to care
In 2007, Melton established its iCare program. Initially, it involved setting up stations at the company’s six terminals where drivers and employees submitted to voluntary blood chemistry testing and body measurements.
