This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett welcomes Peyton Clark from dispatch and Dustin Eagle from recruiting to talk about driver turnover and driver retention. During the episode, the group explores the high national turnover rates in the trucking industry and Oakley Trucking’s strategies to combat this issue. Key points include the importance of communication, setting realistic expectations, and building strong relationships with drivers. Peyton emphasizes face-to-face interactions to address concerns, while Dustin highlights the need for respect and support. The episode underscores the significance of a positive company culture in retaining drivers to empower them to do their best work. Don’t miss this episode!
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Discussion on Driver Turnover (1:08)
- Importance of Communication (6:01)
- Factors Contributing to Driver Turnover (7:01)
- Challenges in the Trucking Industry (9:07)
- Retention Strategies at Oakley (15:09)
- Setting Expectations for Drivers (19:30)
- Team Effort in Dispatching (23:24)
- Prioritizing Home Time and Pay (25:59)
- Respecting Drivers (28:00)
- Challenges in Finding Good Drivers (36:16)
- Maintaining Growth and Standards (38:51)
- Final Thoughts and Takeaways (39:29)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.
Transcription
Jeremy Kellett 00:12
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner operators and their families by giving them up to date information concerning Oakley trucking and the trucking industry, from business advice to safety updates to success stories, also to give an insight to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking business and family. My name is Jeremy Kellett. I’m director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking, and I’m your host for this podcast. On today’s episode, I got Dustin Eagle sitting in with me, Peyton Clark sitting in with me. We’re gonna talk. I’m gonna cover some stuff that we haven’t ever touched on. Doing this podcast, not to this extent. We’ve done a little bit of it. But, you know, we’re going to talk about driver turnover. I think that gets brought up a lot on why drivers quit a company, and we even talk about why drivers quit Oakley trucking. We’ll talk about that a little bit. But driver turnover, how it’s calculated, how you figure, how we figure our driver turnover, and what the average is nationwide. We’re also going to talk about some retention and how we retain truck drivers. That’s why I kind of got Peyton in here to help me to talk about he’s a dispatcher, and has been for five years. And we’re going to have him talk about some of the specific things maybe that dispatch does to retain drivers. And then at the end, I think we’re going to cover, you know, a little bit of why we lease trucks every week. That gets brought up once in a while. We’re going to discuss that and explain a little bit to you. So looking forward to that, we’re going to talk to these guys here in just a minute. But first, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got some spies out there. I’ll just tell you, y’all probably didn’t know where it stood you now, I’ve got some spies out there on the road, and I get these texts once in a while from my spies just randomly telling me, hey, truck, so and so, trailer, so and so looking good, clean driving in the right lane. And I get, you know, let me know who they are, so I can pass that along. So, you know, I want our drivers, our owner operators, to know that people out there pay attention, and they even employees, you know, which none of my spies are employees here at Bruce Oakley or outside, and they give me some good feedback, which I have to say are all usually really good, and I appreciate our owner operators out there taking care of your equipment, driving like you’re supposed to means A whole lot before we get started. Sponsors, of course, aero truck sales, LubeZone, I mean, I can’t say enough about these guys. They’ve been with us since day one, and are sticking with us. And you know, they have a good product. LubeZone does a good job. Sent a guy there just this past week. I talked to him. I forgot who it was. He was there this week, and we said, pull up at, oh, it was Michael Allen. He said, flip at LubeZone locations because I’m going down there to Houston, and we’ll try them out before he picks up a logo going to California or something. So I’m anxious to hear back from him. Actually seeing
Dustin Eagle 03:10
some good comments on Facebook today about LubeZone. Oh, did you some guy asked where to get a good pm at, and everybody on there was commented, I wouldn’t go nowhere else but
Jeremy Kellett 03:19
LubeZone on, no kidding. So they’ve got a good reputation. That’s good, that’s good. Aero truck sales. I mean, we’ve sent a lot of guys up there to Keith. I mean, Keith’s becoming a good personal friend. He is with all of us now, you know, and they’re opening up a place here in Little Rock, yeah, coming soon. I drive by it every day. It’s coming on so we would not, I want our listeners to know we would not support any places that don’t have, I guess, the right to standards we can, you know, and try to help the owner operator be successful. And that’s what we look for in our sponsor. And we’ve talked to several sponsors and talked to them about that, and they didn’t qualify. So it’s not for everybody, for sure. But anyway, that’s why we keep good sponsors around. So anyway, let’s get started with this episode. Peyton, I know you’ve been on before. It’s been a while.
Peyton Clark 04:12
Yeah, probably three years, maybe, yeah, it’s been a while. How long have you been at Oakley? Five? Five years. Five years. Dispatch. October, 2019, end
Jeremy Kellett 04:22
dumps, you dispatch? End dumps, yeah,
Peyton Clark 04:25
Okay, in the whole five years in the end, right now, I’m running about 5758 trucks, good angel full, yeah.
Dustin Eagle 04:35
How do you get time to do a podcast? I don’t, I’m just here. I hope nobody’s out there waiting on the low. That’s Scott and Bucha, helping them out right now. Okay, good, good. And Eagle, you’ve been with me several times. So yes, I appreciate that I was gonna ask you. I’ve been on three or four times in the last couple months, so I guess you don’t mind the ratings going down too much.
Jeremy Kellett 04:53
No. I mean, it’s, I mean, to be truthful, it’s hard to get anybody up here.
Dustin Eagle 04:59
Yeah, you’re my last resort. Okay, appreciate it. Just
Jeremy Kellett 05:03
kidding. You always do a good job. That’s why you’re my go to man to help me when it comes to recruiting. Because talking about these subjects, turnover rate, why people quit trucking companies? You know, how do we retain truck drivers? Is something that has got a lot to do with recruiting, too, not just dispatch. So first of all, let me tell you about the turnover rate. So turnover rate is the simplest way to calculate that we I calculate turnover rate it means how many truck drivers will use truck drivers, for instance, quit in a year’s time, in a 12 in a certain you can do any period of time, but we, you know, we do it in a year’s time, and that is divided by the average, your average fleet number for that year. So for it’s easy to figure, if you have 1000 trucks, a company has 1000 trucks, and you lose 250 your turnover rate is 25% gotcha, in a year’s time, you can break that down to the month’s time too, but which, to me, is a lot, yeah, so the national average for over the road truck drivers is up around that 90% that was probably earlier in the year rate that we had, I don’t know right up to date, but it was in that 85 to 95% turnover rate. Now that is, I don’t know how other companies do. I really don’t know how they do it. It’s just a constant churning of truck drivers in and out. And, you know, there’s a lot of bad truck drivers out there, and there’s a lot of bad trucking companies out there, and we’re going to touch on that here in a minute too, on that. But what are some of the particulars? You think truck drivers quit a trucking company? I’m not talking about just specifically Oakley, we’ll get to that. But I’m talking about in general, you think truck drivers quit a trucking company? You know, I
Dustin Eagle 06:58
I was thinking about that question before we came up here, and, you know, just from what I’ve dealt with talking to some of the guys, I think sometimes they don’t feel respected where they’re at. They feel like a truck number, not not a name, you know, dispatch problem. So some you talk to, you know, and then others, you know, honestly, a bad day or a bad week, some of them jump ship just by that.
Jeremy Kellett 07:25
Yeah, and it’s so i Those are all on the list because when you Google it and you get the top reasons people, truck drivers, quit, trucking companies, it’s pay is typically up there at the top, home time issues with dispatch that you just mentioned, unmet expectations. Oh, yeah, which is really what we’re going for, that’s something we take pride in, equipment and maintenance, and then aging drivers. Now, something that wasn’t on the list, that we know is a big factor the last several few years is truck problems, truck issues. That’s probably our number, Oakley is the number one reason here lately. I mean, it seems like it, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a used truck or a new truck, and that’s a whole nother road to go down, but equipment issues have been, sure enough, been a problem, for sure. So another
Dustin Eagle 08:23
one I was thinking of, they’re always someone’s always calling them every day. Yeah, a very good point. And always an offer. And they hear an opportunity from one, one person that calls them. They think they’ve struck gold. I’ve got to leave to go do this opportunity.
Jeremy Kellett 08:39
And I don’t know of any other industry. Well, yeah, there are some, probably mechanics the same way, but there is somebody they’re getting, a text, an email, phone call, their buddies are pulling them out. It’s a constant battle of, hey, come over here. This is better. Yeah, this is better over here. You can make money over here. You can do this over here. I mean, it’s now that could, I mean, that could feel pretty good if you’re a truck driver and you got a CD and you got all these people wanting you, Oh, yeah. I mean, how many emails y’all got today of people wanting Yaw,
09:15
just you for the podcast?
Peyton Clark 09:17
Yeah, you for the podcast and nothing else. That’s it.
Jeremy Kellett 09:21
I mean, it’s something I think CDL holders are, you know, don’t take for granted. There’s not many other industries in the United States that are that needed. You know that people who need them can have a job tomorrow. You know that would be a difference. And I think that employees like us, well, we’d be, you know, devastated if we didn’t have a job tomorrow. What would we do? So I think you’re right on there, eagle with it. You know, them having that and having a job anywhere, anytime. So it may limit, it may limit some of the bad situations they’re going to put up with.
Peyton Clark 09:58
I agree. As a recruiter, I mean. How do you usually ask, why are they leaving their other company? I mean, I feel like, yeah,
Dustin Eagle 10:05
all the time. I mean, it’s what we just talked about. Is
Peyton Clark 10:09
What is most common? What Jeremy said, pay home
Dustin Eagle 10:13
times big, you know? And then, honestly, you catch them at the right time. I mean, they have a bad day or bad wheat. I mean, that’s what you say quite often, honestly.
Jeremy Kellett 10:25
So let’s talk about some of the reasons that we know of. I don’t know what contributes to all the national average turnover rate, but we do know what contributes to the turnover rate here at Oakley, which I don’t know if I mentioned earlier, is 25% actually, it’s 23% I think it’s the latest number I got. There is a 23% turnover rate here at our company, which, to me, is way too much. You know, we are too good of a company to have that many guys, you know, have a 23 25% turnover rate, but it’s man, it’s just, you hate to say it’s the nature of the business, but what are some of the contributing factors that we see every week in and out on losing a truck
Peyton Clark 11:12
driver like truck trouble is number one, being an owner operator, having all that be on you, as far as your truck maintenance, payment, upkeep, all that, and then they get a few bad breaks, couple breakdowns, and they’re out of the business, or at least out of the truck. Yep, that truck. At some point, it doesn’t make sense to keep sinking money into the same truck. And a lot of guys will jump ship after that? Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 11:42
yeah, I think that’s right, Peyton, because we’ve seen it since all the trucks have changed electronic stuff. It’s just been I told guys in orientation, I said, you know, I want you to be prepared to be down for a month, yeah? When, I mean, because you’re going to have truck issues or something, and this is going to happen, I don’t want it to kill you. Be sure to save your
Dustin Eagle 12:04
money. But what some of the Well, that’s what I say, saving your money for those situations. That’s a big kill.
Jeremy Kellett 12:09
What are some of the reasons? I mean, we, you, I know we operate. When we see something come across, email, Hey, this guy’s leaving. We get involved. Oh yeah.
Dustin Eagle 12:19
I mean, you have several factors. I mean, hell is always one, you know, always going to be involved. And, and honestly, sometimes this type of work ain’t for them, right? You know? I mean, pulling an end up a hopper pneumatic is a lot different than what most truck drivers do, yep, and, but, you know, and that’s not a big one here, but it’s still involved in it. You know, obviously we have some guys that’ve been here a long time that retire from us. That factors in every year. And this year, it seems like
Jeremy Kellett 12:52
We’ve had a lot. Yeah, it does.
Dustin Eagle 12:53
It sure is and, you know, and like Peyton said, truck problems, I deal with that every day. Yep. I mean, it’s a constant battle. He probably don’t want to hear this, but sometimes it is, you know, dispatcher involved,
Peyton Clark 13:05
yeah.
Dustin Eagle 13:07
I mean, we’re an open book here. I mean, it’s happening, right? It’s going to happen. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 13:12
I think it, you know, I think you’re hitting them all right, because we fight them every day. The trucks, some guys going home to be home every day. We see that pretty regularly. Hey, I got a local job at home, and then you got health problems. Is a big one that nobody thinks of a lot of times. And we see that pretty regularly. I mean, it’s a constant. We have what you call the off list, and you can go through there, and there’s just multiple people off for health problems, which puts them in a bad financial spot, right? Yeah, not working so. And
Dustin Eagle 13:45
then you go, and then you get, you know, my wife needs me home more. I need to be home for my kids, right? You know, stuff pops up all the
Jeremy Kellett 13:51
time. And then another one is terminations, yeah, oh yeah. I mean, unfortunate, but we terminate, you know guys that their safety and customer service priorities are not like ours, yeah, and you don’t really find that out until they start working. So let’s talk before we get to well, this is kind of like a retention Eagle. Let’s talk about the measures me and you take on the front end to help solve that problem, from being terminated, well, just from Yeah, being retaining, retain them from the very beginning, yeah, from them getting terminated, from them quitting, from them, yeah, knowing the job to all this,
Dustin Eagle 14:42
You know, usually when someone’s having a problem, they’re going to call us first. This is kind of how it goes. You’re because you’re the first person they met here. They trust you, and they want to call you and go, Well, this is not, this is my problem. I’m not happy, you know. So. So the first thing I do is, you know, get up, go back there and talk to dispatch or their manager and see what’s going on. Because there’s two sides to every store. Yeah, you gotta figure it out. And then there’s a truth somewhere, truth in between. So first, you know, first you want to get up and go back there and jump all over dispatch. But I’ve learned not to do that, because they’re usually, there’s another side, but not we. I like to get with them and, you know, and then we call whoever back. And we like to do it face to face. We want to bring them to an office, and we’re 100% on board with fixing the problem. We want to help the guy, any you know, the owner operator, any way we can. And that’s the first step. I mean, getting the guy in here, setting him down. I mean, me and Peyton have done it before, and we fix a lot of problems that way, face to face. I mean, it’s a lot better than a phone call. Oh, yeah. And I think most guys, when they come in here, they respect us doing it face to face. Yeah, you know.
Jeremy Kellett 15:59
I mean, you’re dispatching 50 something trucks every day, Peyton. And you got a good, you got a low turnover rate, because we keep it by dispatch or two, yeah, and you’ve got a good, low turnover rate. What are some of the things you do, I mean, every day, every week, to kick to do that. Well, I
Peyton Clark 16:15
mean, just like what he said, you know, if you do get a guy in that situation where you think him leaving, or anything like that is a possibility. Get him in here. If you think a guy is unhappy, the first move is to get him in here. Sit down, recruiter, manager, anybody, and just talk, see what’s on his mind, what’s going on, what the problem is. Does he have any problem with us? Any problems with him? And try to resolve it right there. I think just doing everything face to face is way more efficient than getting on the phone, bickering, getting into it by telephone, tough guy and each other. You know, right? Is a term we always use. Like none of that. We don’t want to do that, get in here, get in one of these rooms, talk, get everything out in the open. I think that helps. And then, you know, when we get an owner operator handed over from recruiting, most of you know, they know our expectations as far as personal appearance, customer service, communication, stuff like that. And then also, we sit them down and have a good, thorough talk as they come out of orientation. And, you know, learn about them, build some kind of base level relationship with your guy, you know, ask about his kids, you know, learn who he is as a person, not just, Oh, it’s my new owner operator I’m about to dispatch, yeah, so build something like that, and then communicate as much as you can, and expect the same out of him. Communicate problems. Expect him to communicate problems with you just the same way. I’ll communicate problems with him like that’s big. I think
Jeremy Kellett 18:01
because you get to know these people personally
Peyton Clark 18:04
very well. I mean, talk to them every single day, yeah, not as much as I wish. I mean, as busy as you get dispatching trucks. I wish we had more time to chat on the phone. I get to have to end conversations that I know I could probably go on for 20 more minutes. And I love on, like a Friday like this, where it’s not as busy, not doing quite as much, not working on as many trucks as everybody goes home for the weekend is I’m able to have those, you know, 1015, 20 minute conversations with some guys that I’ve had a while, or even the new guys, just kind of learn about them. Hey, what are you doing this weekend? You got any big plans, stuff like that? I think that goes a long way building relationships, which between dispatch and other offers. It shows respect, right? Yeah, and you hear, as a dispatcher, you get to hear the horror stories of their previous trucking company or someone they worked for 15 years ago that treated them like crap,
Jeremy Kellett 19:04
you know, still hanging on to it. Or, I mean, everybody, we all do that.
Peyton Clark 19:08
Oh yeah, people remember when I really got treated in Portland. But what
Jeremy Kellett 19:13
What do you do? I mean, I know, so we talk about pay being one of the top reasons truck drivers change jobs. What do you do? And Egle, what do you do on the beginning end, and what do you do Peyton to make sure that it happens, that they’re making money.
Peyton Clark 19:29
I think first off, you have to get their expectations, their expected weekly take home. And that starts with us in recruiting, right? And that has to be realistic. And what you tell your recruiter needs to be what you’re expecting exactly. I
Jeremy Kellett 19:46
mean, we wait a minute, wait a minute. So you’re saying they’ll tell a recruiter one thing and then they come back there and tell you something else.
Peyton Clark 19:55
Yeah, I’ve seen it on our discount. Yeah, there’s been times. You sit down with a guy and, you know, ask him, like, so, oh, what’s happened? Yeah, man, Dustin, have done it? I mean, you go look at a sheet, and, you know, expected bring home is $3,500 a week, right? Okay, great. You go talk to him. Yeah, I really need to take home around $45 to $5,000. Okay, time out. Dustin, yeah, got a problem. Got a problem,
Jeremy Kellett 20:23
yeah, but, and that’s in the initial conversation, yes, right out of orientation, or that you’re talking to them, right? Yeah. Well, and that goes back to expectations. It does, which is what I was kind of headed there earlier. But those expectations tell everybody. We do that with every recruit that we bring into Oakley. Well, we do that more than that, but some don’t come, you know, but we go over money, home, time, health, a checklist about this long of stuff with you know, we
Dustin Eagle 20:56
got so many rules we gotta follow here. You know, it’s not just us, but we have some too. But, I mean, we spend 3045 minutes on the phone, maybe sometimes more, doing expectations. You know, our expectations. Then we ask them what their expectations are. How
Jeremy Kellett 21:13
many times you think you talk to a recruit so you get him out here? Oh,
Dustin Eagle 21:17
just depends on a recruit. But I’d say an average, 2015, 2025, man. It’s there’s something that pops up every day, yeah, but, well,
Jeremy Kellett 21:30
I can’t say enough about expectations with the recruit prior to coming. And that’s multiple conversations. That’s not just one conversation that we try to fit in. You’ve got to have multiple conversations for them to understand our expectations and on both sides, you know, to where it’s all gotta align both sides, right? And we’re trying because of recruiting. We’re trying to do everybody a favor. We’re trying to prevent these problems from happening by doing our homework on the front end and having all these conversations about money and health and home time, and you know what’s important to them? And I mean, just try to cover everything we can, because the last thing we want is problems, yeah, is to come in here and if this is a failed project? Yeah, we don’t want that. You don’t want that. No, a
Dustin Eagle 22:27
a lot of these recruits are actually surprised we spend so much time doing that, because a lot of the places they’ve been, are you approved to come to work? Yeah, don’t know anything about them.
Jeremy Kellett 22:38
Yeah, I’ve actually had a couple of them in orientation say, My gosh, I talked to Dustin so much, you know, I
Dustin Eagle 22:44
i feel like knowing before I even got like, we were in Bucha for 10 years, right? And that’s what, that’s good, that’s the way we want them. Yeah. I mean, we’re not gonna bring somebody in, you know, we don’t feel like it is a good fit here, and that we know is gonna do a good job. We’ve said it here before. I mean, we turned out a lot of guys when we’re doing expectations, because you’re not going to meet ours, or we can’t meet yours. And we’ll tell you that, yeah, they have to be realistic. Exactly
Jeremy Kellett 23:11
What I’m saying is the recruiting department really does the majority of the retention.
Dustin Eagle 23:19
Basically, they’ll just forward it, not agree, they’ll just forward it up there to our phone and let us deal with it. I got too many trucks to dispatch. Yeah, no,
Peyton Clark 23:30
no, no.
Jeremy Kellett 23:31
It’s a team effort. It is. And dispatching that many trucks everyday Peyton and having everybody run differently. Everybody works differently. Everybody has different priorities. Yep, I mean, it’s, it’s got to be hard for you to keep up with all that in it,
Peyton Clark 23:48
you know, not really, yeah, it at times, it’s kind of hard. But like, once you just kind of learn how everybody goes. And it takes, there’s a point where, you know, it takes a little while to learn how someone runs and you know what’s important to them, just like you said, what you know, the way their expectations, whether their home time, what they like to do, and all that. It takes a while to learn all that, but once you got to get your guys, and you know, I’ve had some guys for five years, I’ve had them ever since I hired on. And you know those guys, you know, but obviously, as you get a guy in here, I always talk to my guys whenever I first get them. Hey, it’s going to take me a little bit to learn from you. It’s going to take you a little bit to learn me Be patient. We’re going to learn you’re going to learn how I dispatch, and I’m going to learn how you run. And once we figure that out, it’ll be smooth sailing.
Jeremy Kellett 24:43
I mean, I had to brag to all our dispatchers, I mean, you guys, to be able to do it because on the front end, I mean, a lot of times, this probably didn’t sound good, but the owner operators are telling us what we are. Want to hear to get in here, you know, a lot of times. And then they go to dispatch, and like you said, tell you something else. But then they do things like I told this class this week, and I said, Look, guys, okay, we sold you on Oakley, but now you also sold up. You’re a pretty good salesman yourself there, and you sold us on you. So now you have to stand up and hold up. You got to hold up here into the deal with this, just like we do. So don’t come out here and lay eggs and dispatch goes all right, who hired this guy? We’ve got to but we can’t get him out of the house. You can’t get him. You know, that’s the stuff we try to prevent, and it’s so it’s really so hard to do that, because you don’t know how the person works until he goes to work. That’s just the way it is. Other things to retain guys, I guess home time was one of the top things Peyton. I mean, is that something that’s a challenge for you? I guess
Peyton Clark 26:01
not really a challenge. I mean, everybody in there, in dispatch understands, like, if it’s important for a guy to tell you when he’s needs to be home, and he’s been important to you as well, that’s the way we’re, you know, our managers, and everybody tells us, you know, this guy didn’t tell you needed to be home Friday for no reason. He needs it. That’s when he needs to be there. And we work hard to make that happen. I mean, just like the whole week this week, people who need to be on this week, I worked the whole week trying to make sure they’re on. So you have
Jeremy Kellett 26:33
to think about that at the beginning of the week. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peyton Clark 26:37
You know, putting, you know, you hear, like I said, horror stories from other trucking companies where guys have worked at about their home time was just a suggestion, and they’d tell their dispatcher, I got to be home. My kid plays football on Saturday. Next thing they know, they’re 1800 miles away from their house on Friday. And you know that doesn’t happen often here, I’m not saying it never happens. Things happen, breakdowns, customer breakdowns, stuff like that happens. But for the most part, dispatch puts a high priority on home time and money, and we keep track every single day how much money I mean each one of my owner operators makes. I keep it in an Excel spreadsheet, and I know that if by Wednesday, Thursday rolls around, we’re not at the miles we need to be at. I know I need to make an adjustment, do something dead at a guy, get him a good load, get him headed the right direction where he can make some money, because that’s why, I mean, those are the two, number one things that we are worried about in dispatch is, when I say three, customer service, driver, pay driver, home time, seems like that’s all we talk about in there. Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 27:56
I mean, and because that’s really important, that’s part of the retention, you know, keeping a guy at a company, which is, we’re there’s probably, I’m sure there’s a lot of good companies out there. I mean, I know there is. But like you said earlier, Dustin, a lot of people, a lot of companies, don’t respect truck drivers, yes, and that goes a long ways now, just showing them the respect of acknowledging that they’re in the building, that they just walked in and acknowledged who they are and telling them, Hey, I forgot your name. You know,
Dustin Eagle 28:28
I hear it all the time. They’ll walk in the back door, and I’ll be like, Hey, what’s up, Mike? And he’ll be like, how do you know my name? Yeah, right. I just, I’m like, I just know who you are. I know just about every one of you guys. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 28:39
and that goes along. That means you, you care. Because I think that you always fight a truck driver against a company deal, you know, and you don’t want to, you don’t want that. You don’t want button heads, or them thinking the company’s going one direction, and, man, they’re pulling our trailer. The owner operator’s truck is pulling an Oakley trailer, and it’s got to make a living for all of us doing that. And that’s a unique situation, because the partnerships are hard to do. That’s really what we’re doing here.
Peyton Clark 29:13
Yeah? Operator, model like that. It’s a partnership, yeah? Less, employee, employer. It’s more, you know, yeah, you’re, we’re partners, like you said, Yeah, partners.
Jeremy Kellett 29:26
I like, those are all good things you guys covered, and I may not, from the recruiting side of it, man, and getting in depth with guys. And, man, that’s hard to do. That’s so hard to do.
Dustin Eagle 29:39
Yeah, I gotta real quick I got a good story for y’all attention. Tell me. Had an owner operator call me say, why can’t I get the miles of money
Jeremy Kellett 29:48
We talked about it.
Dustin Eagle 29:49
I said, Well, let me figure out the last six, eight weeks, see what you’ve done, see what you averaged. I figured it up and I sent it to him. I. Uh, Shaman said through an email to him, and he sat down with his wife that night, and he she goes, Why’d you bother him? I knew all this. And he goes, he sent me a text the next morning. He goes, and my wife makes me apologize. He she he goes, I’m making more than you told me I was gonna make. He just didn’t even realize the wonder of a probably a bad day. Yeah, he goes, why’d you short load or something you know went the wrong way, or Why’d you bother him? I already knew all this. You could ask. Pete, that’s the way I’m asked what we go through. I mean, we want to help you any way we can. So
Jeremy Kellett 30:33
Well, I think you know, being honest with these guys and knowing that we’re sincere about what we do, and because you never know what they came from, like you were talking about earlier, their other company, and I try to tell them in orientation, wipe that slate, clean. We’re not them. Yeah, we’re different. Give us a chance. Give
Dustin Eagle 30:51
use a little grace here to be not what you came from. And I do want to say we’ll be we are. We’ll take responsibility. Because not every guy is doing what we told them. Sometimes that’s right. We’ll own up to it and be like, Man, you have had a bad month, yep, but you hang in there. We’re fixing to make it right. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 31:13
we’re fixing to do better. And most of the problems look, we talk about what to do if you have a problem here, if you’re an owner operator, and you got a problem with something at Oakley. It is not going to get any better until you tell somebody. And I’m not talking about just casually throwing it out there on the phone. I’m talking about, come in here, hey, I’ve got a problem with this. Get away from the phone. Here’s my issue, dispatcher, here’s my issue. Dustin and is this? And then we went. At that point, we go, is this fixable or not? You know? Yeah, if it’s not fixable, then we say, Man, I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is over here. You know, we’re gonna haul scrap metal. We’re gonna do, Hey, it’s okay if you don’t want to do it. Then the man, go on somewhere else, and it’s all right. And then, if we know the problem, the majority of them are fixable, right? Yeah, majority and it just very few times or they not, yeah, most of the time it fixes itself. And the guy, or the owner operator, just gets it off his chest, you know, and vents a little bit of his concern. Because we want to know your concerns. We want to fix it, you know. And I always turn it around on Peyton, I say, if, let’s turn it around. And I’m talking to our owner operators. And I said, if you if Peyton, if Peyton’s phone rings and it pops up your name and Peyton goes, oh my gosh, and he don’t want to answer the phone because of some reason, you know, shaking his head, oh, God, oh no, yeah, would you not want to know that? Yeah? I mean, did he know that? And they all say, Well, yeah, we’d want to know if we’re doing something wrong or if we’re doing something to make Peyton not want to answer my call. Yeah, I need to know what I’m doing and and that works both ways, because sometimes dispatch is not real quick on getting a guy in here that’s giving them problems, because we all like to avoid a little confrontation, but the majority of it, man, when you sit down talk somebody fixed and you never usually hear from again. I mean, most of the time you’re going to have those conversations, I mean, to make things, to grow in the partnership and to make things better, yeah, I mean, you just gotta have them. So, all right, last thing I got here, would you want to add anything to Peyton on the retention side? Last thing I wanted to talk about was, and it kind of goes with the turnover we started earlier with Dustin was, I’ve had some people ask, Why do you hire truck drivers? Why do you hire somebody every week? You know, you have a class every week in orientation, and I’ll kind of try to get you to see the big picture, because we do try to one is our turnover race, 23% so you’re going to lose trucks every most, every week for, like we said, earlier, terminations, health, truck problems, local job, whatever it is. So as a trucking company, with 920 owner operators, having five or six trucks is about We average about five a week. Having five trucks a week in there is not that you’re not, that’s not a drop in the book. And the overall picture when it comes to available loads, or, you know, hurting something, I mean it, it’s something that we want to maintain our fleet, and especially we know as a trucking company, when you have these ups and downs of freight, right? You know, two years ago, I couldn’t get enough trucks, you know? And it kind of let’s go down, and it kind of comes back up, and it just rides that wave. We can’t say your truck fleet is not going to ride that wave. You can’t lose 100 then get. Gain 100 and then lose 100 then gain. You can’t do that, which you know. You have to maintain your truck fleet, because we all know that the opportunity of the freight getting slammed on us, and you never have enough trucks then, man, then it’s just good. You just have to be able to ride that wave of bringing trucks in every week to maintain your fleet, which is basically all we’re doing right now for the most part, you know? And until it Oh, you we have this problem of finding good people. So the other side of that DAG is, you hire five or six a week. You’re, you gotta weed some out. It’ll be, I mean, it’s honesty. You get guys in here that you didn’t know were liability and what now, you know, not meeting their end of the deal, that’s right, and we gotta get rid of them. And so you’re constantly I just gotta people gotta understand to find the kind of owner operator we’re looking for is a challenge. Challenge. It has been harder now than I’ve ever seen it to find the right guy. Yeah, I haven’t been doing as long as you, Jeremy, but it’s pretty tough, right? It’s tough right now to find the people that we need that have the same expectations in mind as we do with customer service and safety. There, it’s just a challenge to find them. And we do have a lot of standards. We have a lot of rules, but that’s who we are. That’s what we do. We’re trying to give a better image to the truck driver overall. So we’re trying to find that right guy. And, I mean, it is a challenge, but that’s why we, you know, plus the customers, I mean, you know, they get a demand for a lot of trucks just like that, right? Peyton, and you wish you had them on hand, yeah? Sometimes it changes. But anyway, that’s why we consistently are trying to find good guys. I mean the poor. I say poor recruiters. I mean you guys, man, we
Dustin Eagle 36:57
ride that wave too with it. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 36:59
I don’t talk to as many as you do anymore, but, man, it is hard to find those people that we connect with. That’s why we push recruiting cards, and that’s something. That’s how we get our best guys. You know, I say guys all the time. I read guys and girls. It doesn’t matter, but that’s how we get our best recruits. Is through our owner operators actually taking the time to talk to somebody. And I don’t want you to feel like, Oh, I’m not recruiting anybody to take a load away from me. That is what
Dustin Eagle 37:30
I was about to say this week. Tell me that, Oh, I see that that guy is not taking a load from you. I probably
Jeremy Kellett 37:35
No, he’s not. You need to have the mentality of, that’s a good one. And we need these kinds of people so we can get better freight, you know, and get more freight and grow. And that’s what we got to have, is the good owner operator. And we’re, we’re very picky on who we lease on, and we’re going to continue to be even though it’s getting harder and harder. That’s why we need their help. Though we’re going to hit our goal of 1000 trucks. Yeah, I’m not in one day. One day, yeah, one day. We don’t want to get in any hurry. No, not in any hurry, but one day. I mean, that would be nice , that’s the goal. I remember when we hit 300 and it, I didn’t think it was a feat we would ever get to. My wife made us a big old cake that said 300 on it. We went out to eat in the East and cooked some fish. Oh, man, had a 300 Yeah, cut a cake. Had 300 on it. Man, it was a long time ago, like there was 775, whenever I first started. Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about this before too. We don’t like to grow fast. We’re a slow growing company. And if you grow 50 trucks a year, you’ve gone too much. And we don’t ever do that. We don’t like this year. We’re not growing at all. We’re just
Dustin Eagle 38:48
maintaining this goes back to what was said, and we have high expectations and a lot of rules. We want the right person, the right future. Looks good. Yeah, looks
Jeremy Kellett 38:59
good. It’s a little frustrating on the recruiting side. So that’s why we ask for you guys help, because it’s hard to find the good ones, and we just have to. So it’s almost a numbers game. We have to take all these phone calls until we find that one that clicks a lot of times and some follow up. So
Dustin Eagle 39:15
y’all call and check on us now. Sure. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 39:19
You go ahead and counsel, yeah, oh gosh. All right. Anything else you guys need to add? Great conversation, man, thanks for having us. Yeah, great conversation. Thank you. Peyton coming up, doing that goes a long way with all our owner operators. So thanks again for listening to the Oakley podcast. I appreciate everybody doing it every week and all your feedback. You got some feedback. Hey, good or bad, we can take it. We’re tough here. Give us good and bad feedback, and we’ll be glad to reach out to you and talk to you once again. Check out the new episodes coming up. Go back and check out some really past episodes that we’ve done. We’ve had some excellent interviews of some owner operators and been really good so appreciate everybody listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Steve, thanks for listening to this episode of Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you got a question comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com, and click the leave a comment button, we’ll get you a response soon, and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.