DC Velocity - December 2009

The cost savings ranged from 2 to 12 percent for the first scenario, 7 to 16 percent for the second, and up to 20 percent for the third, according to the white paper. Grissom acknowledges the company’s projections are often met with skepticism from prospective customers. He says, however, that ProDrivers can prove that the savings are there, depending on the specifics of a customer’s situation.

A blip on the radar

To be sure, the approximately 2,500 drivers on the two firms’ collective payrolls are a blip on the radar screen of an estimated 3. 4 million Americans holding commercial driver’s licenses for all vehicle types. And it would be a stretch to say that many for-hire motor carriers are embracing the idea of outsourcing their driver pool.

“From the executives I speak with, I do not hear a lot of attention being directed at this issue,” says Bruce Jones, president of KSM Transport Advisors LLC, which provides financial advisory services to mid-sized truckload carriers.

Jones says most truckers understand the “inherent limitations” of managing non-employee drivers and as a result, have robust driver recruitment and retention processes already in place. He also doubts whether efficiency initiatives such as outsourcing, which may gain popularity in weak economic times, will endure when conditions improve and freight volumes pick up.

According to Grissom, management’s loyalty to its in-house drivers is the main reason companies do not pursue outsourcing. Other factors, he says, are the perceptions of loss of operational control and that drivers employed by staffing firms are less qualified and reliable than their counterparts at the carriers.

Driver staffing firms say their drivers are as qualified and as reliable as those working for trucking firms. Jeremy Reymer, president and CEO of Driving Ambition Inc., an Indianapolis-based driver staffing firm serving Indiana and Ohio, says he requires at least two years of verifiable experience, and that no driver can have more than two accidents or two moving violations in the past three years. In Indianapolis, the company’s main market, there were only six “no-show, no-call incidents” (where a driver fails to show up without an explanatory phone call) out of nearly 11,000 dispatches in 2008, according to Reymer.

Grissom says ProDrivers strives to create a positive working environment for drivers, keeps customers fully informed about driver performance, and ensures that its drivers are of the same quality as those who work directly for their carriers.

Broom of TransForce stresses the stability of his own workforce to counter concerns about driver reliability. “We’ve had drivers employed here since 1991,” he says.