Outsourcing Driver Documentation
By John Bendel Technology Editor
Technology has waded into the thorny patch of driver hiring, driver qualification documentation and logbook auditing. As driver churn continues and regulatory enforcement grows stricter, more and more fleets are choosing to outsource these demanding functions.
In a final rule issued in 2004, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration specified "minimum driver safety performance history data that new or prospective employers are required to seek for applicants under consideration for employment as a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) driver; where, and from whom, that information must be sought…"
According to the FMCSA, the rule enables "prospective motor carrier employers to make more sound hiring decisions of drivers to improve CMV safety on our nation's highways."
Add that to the already daunting task of auditing and maintaining driver logs and you have what some fleets consider an excruciating paperwork headache. No wonder fleets are signing up for log and driver document management services.
Here we look at a few of the available services.
RAIR Technologies Driver Qualification Files And Log Auditing
RAIR Technologies of Milwaukee, Wis., provides a document management service that begins with document scanning to create an identical electronic image of each record. That record is then cataloged by employer, driver name and identification number. Customers may also specify another identifying parameter. Once scanned, documents are instantly accessible over the Internet. According to company president, Henry "Hank" Goldberg, the RAIR name is an acronym for Record Audit, Imaging and Retrieval.
RAIR audits each document for compliance and provides detailed exception reports. The system provides reminders before individual documents are due for update. On-line status reports can be accessed at any time. Quarterly reports monitor overall compliance.
RAIR's fastest-growing business segment is its driver log auditing service. Customer logs can be scanned at fleet offices or at truckstops and sent to RAIR electronically. Fleets can also send paper logs to RAIR for scanning. In any case, RAIR performs data collation, image and character recognition and reporting.
Fleets do not need to maintain paper records and all logs are accessible around the clock on the Internet. Goldberg said that RAIR makes a logbook scanning template for each customer and can work with virtually any logbook format. Drivers do not need to change work habits. "Fleets don't want to have to change their log forms," he said.
RAIR's image and character recognition software identifies and records driver identification number and name, vehicle identification numbers, company division, beginning and ending date (when multiple days are on the same log sheet), name of co-driver, total miles driven and the actual driver log graph.
Goldberg said that RAIR serves both commercial and private fleets of all sizes. Among RAIR's high-profile commercial customers are truckload companies Crete Carrier, CFI, FFE Transportation and Trimac Transportation. RAIR also serves LTL carrier Estes Express.
Last year, RAIR announced a partnership with Comdata Corp., the electronic transactions company. Comdata now offers RAIR log services through its Regulatory Compliance Services division. Payment for the service is transacted on the fleet's Comdata card.
J.J. Keller's Driver Management Online
J.J. Keller & Associates, Neenah, Wis., offers a program called Driver Management Online, which maintains electronic files with essential driver information, including drug and alcohol testing results, accident records and more.
According to Chad Govin, sales manager for the Keller Data Solutions business unit, documents can be entered into the system in various ways, including but not limited to scanning. Driver Management Online can store any digital document. The customer retains originals.
"It uses attachment technology. It's very flexible. It means that any type of electronic document can be attached. If you scan in a document, you can attach it. But you can also attach a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. Any kind of electronic document can be attached to the file," Govin said.
Driver Management Online runs entirely on J.J. Keller's server. Authorized users have instant access to documents from any Internet-connected computer, something that benefits decentralized operations.
Govin cited Pilgrim's Pride, headquartered in Pittsburg, Texas, the second-largest poultry producer in the U.S. and Mexico, processing more than 30 million birds a week.
"Pilgrim's Pride maybe has 2,500 drivers and they run everything from big rigs to delivery trucks. They might have 50 locations and each location has the responsibility to manage information on its own. But the system still gives corporate a way to see what's going on at all those locations," Govin said.
Another Driver Management Online customer is ConAgra Foods of Omaha, Neb. Kevin Connors, manager of fleet safety for ConAgra, manages fleets in 580 locations. Connors said that prior to implementing Driver Management Online, there were at least 150 ways that DOT compliance functions were managed at the local level. Now the web-based service maintains driver qualification file records, accident information, training files, drug and alcohol testing records and other employee information.
"From a corporate level, I can summarize the information any way I want. I use the service to run reports and statistics," Connors said.
Driver Management Online provides an interface to major providers of driver security and background checks, for example to USIS, formerly known as DAC Services.
"We're not providing the service, we're not charging for the service. The relationship is still between the customer and DAC. We provide them a way to order and receive information right from our system so they don't have to go to another system and type in all the information," Govin explained.
"Our core competency is compliance management, anything to do with regulations. Our application process and our recruiting tool is really designed to help qualify drivers as you hire them instead of hiring employees and drivers and they trying to figure out how to qualify them after the fact," said.
Why would a fleet hire someone first and qualify them later?
According to Govin, it happens all the time in private fleets, the market served most directly by Driver Management Online. Some fleets hire an employee for one job, warehouse work for example, and that employee ends up driving at some point, Govin explained.
Meanwhile, the company that offers an array of products, including traditional paper logbooks, provides KellerSCAN, an application for in-house driver log auditing. Users can run KellerSCAN on a PC connected to a scanner to scan, recognize, edit and audit paper driver logs.
J.J. Keller also offers the KellerSCAN Log Audit Service for outsourcing logbook scanning and management.
Logbook technology is not included in Driver Management Online, but that may change. "At some point we'll be adding logs," Govin said.
Unicru Closed-Loop Process Optimization
Unicru Inc. of Beaverton, Ore., offers a trucking-specific driver hiring solution that brings sophisticated data-mining technology to the process. What Unicru calls Closed-Loop Process Optimization helps fleets quickly sort through driver applications, identify the best candidates and engage the applicant before other fleets.
After hiring, the process tracks that person's performance on the job over time. That performance data is then analyzed and the results merged into the original driver hiring parameters. In other words, the closed-loop system gets smarter over time. It learns from itself and hopefully provides better hiring recommendations.
Stephen Lance, director of trucking sales and marketing for Unicru said typically a manager will "kiss a lot of frogs to a find a prince," sometimes one good candidate out of 100 applicants.
A large fleet that hires thousands of drivers should be able to analyze hiring criteria against actual performance, Lance explained, something that is extremely difficult with paper records.
"It's analytics and optimization, a learning system. It's data mining at the level of PHD statisticians," Lance said
"Who's staying longer? Who has best safety record? We correlate that information against our screening data. Then we tweak the process based on actual job performance."
Drivers apply for jobs on the carrier's web site, but the data and the computer functionality runs on a remote Unicru server.
According to Lance, one longstanding trucking customer is Southeastern Freight Lines of Lexington, S.C., a major LTL carrier.
PeopleScout Uses Phone Bank And The Web
PeopleScout of Chicago, Ill., offers an outsourcing service for screening and hiring employees, including drivers with CDLs. PeopleScout cites one of the country's largest truckload fleets as well as two national waste handling companies among its customers.
"We operate over the phone or the web," said Nancy Harbutte of PeopleScout. "We have 300 live recruiters who are trained to accept skill sets over the phone."
Harbutte said the service is client-specific, so the phone would be answered using the fleet's name.
"Then we would take them through a screening process," Harbutte explained. "Our client sets the bar for what that score has to be or exceed."
If the caller passed the screening process, PeopleScout schedules an interview appointment.
"We have the hiring managers' schedules loaded into our system. So we can say, 'OK, Mr. Applicant, I have appointments available on Wednesday and Thursday, which day is better? Morning or afternoon? Okay, Thursday at 3.' Instead of generating a list for the hiring manager, we actually set up the appointments for them."
Clients can access PeopleScout's system to change a schedule or look up a candidate before an interview. They can see how many people are in a pipeline. They can reevaluate the scoring to let more people in or make it more restrictive. They can change the screening questions.
According to Harbutte, PeopleScout also traces the effectiveness of advertising media in terms of overall response, quality of applicants, actual hires and how many hires are beyond 90 days.
You can find more products and services to help deal with driver recruiting and documentation. Other suppliers include Deploy Solutions Inc., Auburndale, Mass.; Prophesy Transportation Solutions Inc., Bloomfield, Conn.; and TripPak Services, Lakeland, Colo.
Their products range from outsourced recruiting and applications expediting to in-house forms and software.
