EOX Vantage Blogs

It’s that time of year again to celebrate the people who keep the supply chain moving and the economy rolling: Truck Driver Appreciation Week (Sept. 12-18)!

One question to consider is, how best to show appreciation? More pay, special rewards and bonuses all come to mind. But the best methods might involve intangibles. Make sure drivers fit in and feel comfortable, valued and respected at your organization.

Increasing driver retention is one of the holy grails of fleet management right now. We hear a lot from our transportation clients about the importance of finding and keeping good truck drivers. One approach we’re pleased to see gaining traction is the simple philosophy of treating drivers fully as people in a demanding occupation, rather than as commodities or monetized assets.

Driving, as a job, requires a lot of time, effort and attention. The idea is to respect the drivers and their time, treat them well and make life easier for them. Here are a couple ways to simplify the driving life that also have the effect of improving your operations and hopefully your profitability.

Published in CCJ Digital | May 4, 2021

Fact #1: Vast amounts of actionable data are available to trucking companies and more is compiled all the time and from all over the place. It comes especially through telematics, but also from ELDs, dashboard cams and TMS components, even outside sources like from the company's own insurers, motor vehicle records, VIN databases or federal safety collections.

Fact #2: Today's transportation industry is placing an ever-stronger emphasis on safety. Companies prioritize and make investments into ways to improve training, avert nuclear verdicts, mitigate risks and manage insurance premiums.

Let's bring these two facts together by suggesting that data can and should be used to address all these safety concerns.

Gap analysis seeks to find and correct the reasons that drive differences between desired/projected outcomes and actual results. The gaps for each company will naturally be different. When we think of the transportation industry taken as a whole, these are a few examples of typical gaps:

It is critical to effectively manage back-office functions: the many essential, nitty-gritty everyday tasks that are necessary for any organization to function properly. For the ultra-competitive transportation industry, it can mean the difference between profit and loss, success or failure.

From data entry to quality checks to back-end workarounds that complete online information requests and such, they are in many ways the engine that drives a transportation business forward. If we're being honest, they're often not enjoyable to do and are often regarded as a slog to get through. Yet without them business can't get done, customers would be unhappy, sales would stop and the enterprise's overall outlook would appear poor.

So, making back-office activities an efficient, humming system should become a goal for any company focused on success. EOX Vantage offers two ways to address back-office tasks that increase revenues, reduce expenses and makes them more efficient.

If there's one industry that generates a lot of paperwork, it's trucking. The piles of paper include bills of lading, registrations, inspection reports, insurance documentation, receipts and accounting files, just to start.

There seems to be no end and it has become a commonly cited pain point that bogs down daily operations. Efficient document management is quickly becoming a vital survival strategy.

The transportation industry experienced a rough 2020. It got hit harder than many other sectors of the economy, as the pandemic caused problems up and down the supply chain. Going into 2021, according to a recent survey, the top concerns for motor carriers are driver compliance, driver shortages and driver retention.