Live From OTA Part 2: The Millennial Problem

Keys to Finding and On-Boarding Millennials in Trucking

Part two of the presentation held at the Ohio Trucking Association’s Annual Conference focused on finding and onboarding millennials into the trucking industry. The average age of a driver is 49 years old and there is no good farm system of young drivers. The regulation requiring a driver to be 21 years old to drive interstate (18 years old to drive intrastate) has plagued the industry and made it impossible to grab blue collar workers out of high school. Bringing in younger blood into the industry is going to require macro level changes, not just a snazzy social media campaign.

Get Involved in Changing the Laws

Jump on the bandwagon with organizations like Team 88 from the OTA who are pushing lawmakers to help the industry address the dearth of young drivers at a macro level. They have proposed legislation to reduce hurdles for military veterans who drove heavy equipment, providing retraining grants and tax breaks for companies who invest in training drivers to obtain their CDL and provide Finishing School programs. Washington is dysfunctional so start this movement with your state.

Build a Structured Finishing School Program

Fresh out graduates from a CDL school passed a test but need love and polish to become a true professional, safe driver. In order to responsibly hire these new entrants, you need to invest in a structured curriculum that includes classroom, closed course, and live behind-the-wheel training. Anyone new to the industry needs this structure. The good news is that Millennials want and crave mentors and constant feedback. They were raised with helicopter parents and instant gratification with smart phones. Mentors need to be a part of the program for general questions, guidance and advice. Successful training program needs to be set up for daily feedback and reflection for your newbies.

Advertise Where Millennials Spend Their Time

Advertising 101 says put your money where your audience is. Part one of this presentation provided a format to create unique messages to your different driver personas. After you have your messages for each persona down, the next step is implementing them on the channels that will produce the most leads for your dollars. The primary benefit of social media is how specific you can tailor campaigns to for specific driver personas. You should have different messages for senior drivers than recent grads. Social media channels make it easy to run these campaigns side by side and test your new messages.

 Learn how to recruit more millennials by watching the "Building a Driver Brand Statement" video presentation