Truck Driver Training

It is of said within the trucking industry that if you put more than two truck drivers together in a room you won't get agreement on any topic. Driver training is the one exception to that rule.

"The day you wake up and believe you have nothing left to learn about truck driving is the day you need to hang up the keys"

That credo, or a version of it, is usually the first pearl of wisdom an experienced driver will share with a novice driver. Drivers will debate every other issue to death but on this they agree. No two days on the road are ever the same and you never stop learning.

So it was with great disappointment that I was not able to attend the panel discussion presented by the Truck Training Schools Association of Ontario (TTSAO) on the afternoon of Wednesday February 25, 2015. The topic up for discussion was Mandatory Training Standards and how to deal with the pressing needs of the industry. There were a good number of leaders and decision makers slated to be present along with Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca.

It was a missed opportunity. I received an invitation to attend on the Friday previous but was unable to make it back from my weekly Winnipeg trip in time. If I was given the opportunity to present my perspective to the group this is what I would have liked to say.

My name is Alan Goodhall. I obtained my Ontario class AZ licence in the spring of 1999 after receiving my training from a professional truck driver training institution. Through the training school I had a job lined up immediately upon graduation and successful completion of my Ministry driving test. I spent 9 months being mentored by an owner/operator with whom I ran team. I considered that my apprenticeship into the industry. That initial experience provided the foundation for a successful and fulfilling career over the past 16 years and it's far from over.

In 2003 I joined J&R Hall Transportation and never looked back. I had found my niche within the industry with an LTL carrier that specialized in western Canadian freight and presented all the challenges I was keen to learn. A few years after joining J&R Hall I had the opportunity to start sharing my experience with newly minted AZ drivers fresh out of training school. It was my opportunity to give back and I seized that opportunity. I spent 3 years as a driver/trainer. I spent 3 months with each new driver and helped to build a good mentoring program. I completed a Certified Driver Trainer course during that period also. It was after completion of that course that I came to the conclusion I could not do it alone. I was well supported by my employer and was giving deep training and mentoring to our new drivers but I was left feeling that it just wasn't enough. The more time I spent as a trainer the more I recognized the need for a standard training program that covered all the bases in depth, measured progress, and provided follow up training. After 3 years I was burned out and needed some time away from the intensity of this type of program. I have yet to pick up the reigns again as a driver/trainer.

Entry level training institutions working in partnership with carriers have been the backbone to training, recruitment, and retention of new drivers since I joined the industry but it's well past time to step things up. The talk on the front lines among experienced drivers is about the lack of quality mentoring. This is being reflected in the habits and attitudes of drivers on the road. This isn't about what accident statistics, telematics, and big data is telling us about the state of the industry. It's about the lived experience. It's about the drivers quality of life. It's about the need for innovation in training to match the booming innovation in technology. It's about coping with the stress brought on by demand for drivers to do more with less. It's about the decline in driver morale. It's about respect and recognition.

Driver training is a partnership between training institutions, carriers, trade organizations, government, and existing drivers. Experienced drivers are often left out of the loop of the training process. But is this not where the greatest potential lies for bringing new blood into the industry? It is my contention that we need to make a much greater effort to tap into the experience of the existing driver pool. How can we implement industry standards for drivers without a pool of skilled driver trainers to deliver and maintain those standards.

I believe it's time for a graduated form of training for the trucking industry. That program needs to be universal and available to all carriers whether they have 1 or 2 trucks or a thousand. I know little about apprenticeship programs and how they are administered but I often think of my brother in laws experience in BC when he entered into the field of Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning. He apprenticed with a 1 man operation. He was paid a graduated income as he learned and his employer was subsidized. There was partnership between the new employee, the training institution, the employer, the trade association, and government regulator. All working together around a standard program of training. I recognize we may face many roadblocks but this is the type of program we need to work towards.

My vision is that in that first year after graduating from a professional training institution the new driver would spend a set number of hours in the cab with a qualified trainer, a set number of hours in the classroom further complementing the in cab training, and a set number of hours in other areas of the trucking operation such as warehousing, loading, and equipment maintenance. (shop) We can have an entry level standard and a level playing field that every carrier of every size could participate in if they wished to.

Professional training institutions can expand their role by developing programs that go beyond the entry level standard and offer specialized training in partnership with carriers. After completing a standard 1 year entry level course drivers may then want to develop new skills in a different sector of the industry and be able to receive accreditation for it. Training such as heavy haul, car hauling, B-trains, LCV's, etc. The sky is the limit in this regard. Let's also not forget about training the trainer and providing re-training on new equipment as technology changes the workplace around us and places new demands on us.

Front line drivers are frustrated at this point in time. So many drivers are saying things such as, "It's not any fun out here anymore" or "It's just a job now". Morale is low. Revitalizing our training process and re-engaging our existing drivers in the day to day activities of trucking is vital to attracting new blood and building for the future in my humble opinion.

So that is what I would say. It's only enough to open up the conversation to a host of issues we face as drivers but I strongly believe we have to work in partnership with our carriers, with enforcement (government), with training institutions, and with industry institutions of every stripe.

Let's get involved drivers. What do you think?

Who Should Pay For Driver Training?

This post first appeared in Truck News February 2015

Trucking HR Canada is in the process of developing a National Occupational Standard (NOS) for Commercial Vehicle Operators (Truck Drivers). The fourth draft of this document was released this past December requesting input from the public. I was encouraging drivers to review this before the deadline of January 16, 2015 by posting links to it via my twitter feed and through a couple of Canadian Trucking Facebook pages during the first two weeks of January. I know from my own experience that when issues are being discussed amongst the movers & shakers within our industry it is rare to find more than one or two full time drivers present to provide a drivers perspective. Getting the word out to the vast driver pool (over 300.000 of us in Canada alone) on important industry issues is very difficult. This concerns me because our (truck drivers) personal health and safety is dependent on the depth & quality of the information & training we receive.

Many drivers, probably a majority, will not be aware that this NOS is being developed and will not review the document. The drivers that do review the draft are going to leapfrog over this first step of developing the standards and get right to the heart of the big issue. How will this training be delivered and who is going to pay for it? Drivers will jump on this because there is no group within the industry that recognizes the need for standardized and professional driver training more than the drivers themselves. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of training involved in these standards both in a classroom setting and in the workplace. I’m afraid drivers will see this National Occupational Standard as a pie in the sky idea if it is adopted by the industry without the infrastructure in place to deliver the training.

So why do I think drivers will be highly skeptical about the adoption and delivery of a national training standard? Well let’s take a look at just one of the twenty nine key competencies of a professional driver listed in the NOS draft. Hours of service.

You would think with the amount of press and discussion this topic has received every driver would be an expert on the subject of hours of service. Far from it. Facebook and CB to the rescue. Most drivers in their first year on the road turn to their fellow drivers to answer their questions about hours of service. Let’s remember these are freshly minted drivers right out of school building a new career and they want to get it right. These drivers are asking basic questions about the rules and often receiving the wrong information or advice from their more experienced peers. I’ve been working in this business for over 15 years now and hours of service is a standard that drivers have been made responsible to know and they are still not receiving the depth of training they require on this topic before hitting the road.

I recognize the difficulties involved with training a work force that operates hundreds or thousands of miles away from the home office most of the time. It’s not as if a carrier can pull in a whole fleet of drivers for a weekly training meeting even though that is obviously what is currently required. Should a carrier bear the full responsibility for training their drivers to meet a nationally adopted occupational standard? I don’t think so. The financial burden would sink many small carriers. I think it’s fair to expect an employer to uphold a standard that is adopted for any profession but to make them responsible for delivering ALL of the training and bear all of the associated costs is not a reasonable option.

It’s pretty obvious that an apprenticeship program on a national level has to be adopted by the trucking industry if it is serious about meeting the occupational standards outlined in the draft document. That means partnerships have to be established between government, training institutions, carriers and drivers. I don’t see any other means of delivering a program of this depth. This system works in all other trades for companies big and small. Why can’t it work in the trucking industry?

Look at this statement about truck drivers that appears in the very first paragraph of the Trucking HR Canada draft document. “The occupation includes more than 300,000 Canadians - - nearly 1% of the population and over 1.5% or the nation’s labour force.”

It is irresponsible to continue on the path that we are on allowing new drivers to operate on our public roads without the proper training to insure the safety of the public and the drivers themselves. We need to be honest about the fact that the cost of doing this has to somehow be built into the system. The only fair way to do that is to legislate that change.

Technology Will Not Slow Down

This post first appeared in Truck News January 2015

A new year and a clean slate. Many of us view January 1^st as the opportunity for a fresh start when it rolls around each year. It is a time of year that we re-affirm our personal goals & aspirations or perhaps make radical changes to take our lives in a completely different direction. Sometimes our lives are subject to radical change not of our own choosing and the greatest challenge we face is in our ability to adapt to those changes. This is a place where many professional drivers find themselves as we move into 2015. The signs of radical change are all around us.

Many of us are in the twilight of our careers and we have an expectation of some reward waiting at the end of the road after many years of commitment and hard work. After all isn’t that part of the deal? The decades of loyal service should allow us to reap some sort of personal reward for ourselves and our immediate family especially if we have played by the rules for all those years. But the rules are changing because the world is changing. Putting your career on cruise control and enjoying the ride to the finish is an enticing thought but the winds of change are not likely to allow us to do that. So I thought I would share some of those radical issues I feel we are facing as regular working stiffs in the trucking industry.

Technology has been driving change in our industry and there is no doubt in my mind that it will continue to do so. Some of the most telling indicators of change come from trucking industry groups that guide carriers in their decision making. Thomas Frey, a futurist and Director of the Da Vinci Institute, was one of the guest speakers at the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) annual general meeting in November 2014. Mr. Frey spoke of the digital layer of infrastructure we are creating over the physical world, how 3D digital printing may impact what or what we will not be shipping in the future, and how autonomous cars, trucks, and drones will be safer, reduce the need for drivers, result in lower fuel bills, lower accident rates, and reduce insurance costs.

So if you are a regular working stiff like me what do you read into that? They are certainly issues that have the potential to hit drivers where it hurts but they are concepts that can be difficult to get your head around. It is hard to believe they will come to pass. I’m sure that our forefathers had similar feelings about Henry Ford’s production line and how it would impact their everyday lives. We’re in the very early days of the “internet of things”. The potential changes that 3D printing & autonomous vehicles will bring to a commercial drivers daily life as well as to our society as a whole may be just as staggering as the production line, probably more so.

There are also many global issues that will affect our driving jobs directly.

The push towards reducing our dependence on fossil fuels will continue. Energy self-sufficiency through adopting solar, wind, and geothermal technologies is a growing trend. The majority of people now live in cities and the trend toward denser housing and more mass transit is building. People are driving less. The attitude of the millennial generation towards car culture is very different to the generations that came before them. An electric commuter vehicle in every driveway? Maybe. So what does all that mean to an economy such as Canada’s that for the past several decades has been built on resource extraction? Supply and demand would dictate that less demand for oil means a drop in pricing which on the surface is a good thing. But extracting oil from Alberta’s oil sands is dependent on the price per barrel of oil staying above a certain threshold in order to be profitable. This could have deep repercussions for our economy and consequently for working stiffs like you and I.

What is most interesting about the potential of these unknowns is that we tend to discuss them in terms of certainty as if we know what the outcome will be. Let’s remember that the internet wasn’t designed for social media it was adopted by it. Now billions of people benefit from it. The next big idea may not be what we expect.

The next ten to fifteen years may see our whole world turned inside out as we adopt and adapt to new ways of living and interacting with one another. Of course this is all conjecture and things may play out in a very different way than how I have presented them.

Socrates is quoted as saying that, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” Perhaps the best New Year resolution we can all make this year is to simply keep an open mind.