yes! it was great! thanks Turtle! you touched on something, why is there such a turnover of drivers? to many drivers or to much time away from familys? whats the biggest pitfall? thanks again!
It's a complex issue. There's a high turnover ratio in general trucking, especially OTR trucking, largely for the reasons you've touched on, too much time away from home and family, and having to deal with home problems while out on the road. With LTL the turnover isn't nearly as bad, since a large percentage of those guys (and gals, sheesh) get home more often and more regularly.
In expediting, part of it is incorrect expectations of drivers, who get into the business thinking they'll make easy money, and they quickly find out otherwise. This is particularly true of someone who enters expediting from general trucking, who is used to running pretty much 10 hours a day, every day, and they cannot handle the sitting and the irregular income. But it's also true of former UAW workers who see expediters come and go all day long, thinking it's easy money, never considering there's a reason why a bazillion auto workers are out of a job.
Another big factor, especially in cargo vans, and especially at Panther, is Panther more than maybe any other carrier actively seeks out and caters to fleet owners, rather than individual owner/operators who drive their own vehicle. Simply put, Panther is fleet owner oriented, not driver oriented, despite what some in Seville will tell you. Actions, not words, tell the tale. They do this because it's far easier and more efficient for them to deal with a single fleet owner who's job it is to populate his trucks, than it would be to deal with an equal number of individual owners. So, you have a very large percentage of van drivers out there operating a vehicle they have no vested interest in.
This immediately puts the focus of the driver onto "what's in it for me?" when they see a load offer. They're splitting the line haul 60/40. A 150 mile load pays, say, 77 cents per mile, $115.50 (not including FSC), which is split $69.30 for the driver (assuming he's getting the 60% plus FSC) and then $46.20 goes to the owner. You then deliver the load and are sitting there at #12 on a 4-a-day board, and it's gonna be another couple of days before you get your next load, and it could very well be another 150 mile barn burner. Sooo, short loads get turned down. Many drivers won't even consider anything less than 300 miles. But if they turn down too many loads, their Acceptance Rate drops below 67% and they won't get any more load offers unless dispatch has no other choice. Or, they start taking anything their offered, because they need lunch money, since they've been running nothing but short runs and have been sitting a day or two between each run. Drivers of fleet-owned vans more often than not get about 900 miles, or less, per week. This is the ideal formula for extreme frustration and failure, resulting in driver turnover that's through the roof.
If you own the van you're driving, you get all of that $115.50, and in many cases makes that load doable and profitable. Not great, to be sure, but at least you're not losing money on the load. 250 and 300 mile loads, not to mention 800 mile loads, become extremely profitable if you own the van. If you are driving for a fleet owner, not so much.
This past week I ran 2930 loaded miles, with 318 miles deadhead (9.79% deadhead on 3248 total miles driven). Including FSC, that's $2649.33, which is 81 cents a mile all miles, which is pretty good in a van, even though a couple of the longer loads were only 12 cents for FSC. The fuel cost in a Sprinter is about 15 cents, but most fleet vans are more like 20 cents, maybe more. The FSC on these miles totaled $393.23. In a Sprinter at 15 cents fuel cost per mile (.15 X 3248) the fuel cost was $487.20, which means $93.79 came out of line haul to cover fuel. So not including any other costs, after fuel my take for those miles comes to
$2162.31.
In a fleet van where the fuel cost is 20 cents per mile, the cost would be $649.60, less the $393.23 for paid FSC is $256.37 coming out of line haul to pay the balance in fuel cost. 2930 X .77 = $2256.10, times 60% is $1353.66, less the $256.37 yields the driver
$1097.29.
$1097.29 is nothing to sneeze at, but it ain't $2162.31, either. Plus, 2930 loaded miles is rare for most owner/operators, and way more rare than that for drivers of fleet vans. The reality is half of that, or more often, less than half of that. Most get between 900 and 1200 miles a week, I'm serious, and many are thrilled with 900.
It doesn't take very long for a driver of a fleet van to see that they are putting in an awful lot of time and effort for
very little money in return.
To further compound the problems, most fleet vans are not outfitted for comfort. Many van fleet owners cannot see the long term benefit of making their vans comfortable, because most of them have a history of high driver turnover and too much wear, tear and reckless damage done to their vans by drivers with no vested interest in the vehicle. The vans are thus rather spartan when it comes to creature comforts, most are not even insulated, and the drivers end up being uncomfortable and miserable, always in a foul mood, clinically depressed, want to go home every weekend, and are getting paid squat for it all. Yay.
Pretty soon they start to envy Walmart greeters, but question their own ability to handle a job as complex as that.
