Faster horses: deciphering what drivers really mean when they provide feedback

Published on November 20, 2024

If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

People often don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

When relying on feedback to make changes or design things, the two quotes above are pretty well-known examples of the challenges that arise. The first is attributed to Henry Ford (although it seems that he never actually said it) and the second is attributed to Steve Jobs (who definitely did say it).

Both quotes are top of mind when we review the Best Fleets to Drive For^® driver surveys each year, and it’s a challenge throughout the year for fleets trying to make the most of driver feedback to improve their workplaces.

Every fleet we interview wants to listen to their drivers and implement workplace improvements that match what drivers value. But fleets also have limited time and resources, so they want to be sure they’re prioritizing the right things. The challenge comes in trying to interpret the feedback correctly to avoid heading off down the wrong path.

After studying driver surveys for 16 years now, we’ve learned a lot about what drivers mean when they say different things, and how to sift through their comments to see what’s worth paying attention to and what’s potentially misleading.

Here are some things to think about when reviewing driver feedback and considering what to do with it:

• Compensation
• Process or communication?
• Downloading

This is usually the first thing that jumps out when people review driver surveys, because drivers will always ask for more money. While it may be the first thing that jumps out, in most cases it’s the last thing fleets should be worrying about.

There’s a simple reason for that: money tends be a fallback request and not a real problem.

In many cases, when drivers can’t think of anything else to say or anything specific to request, they ask for more money. (Not that they don’t want more money – everyone will take a raise when one is offered.) When they can think of something specific that will make their jobs better, they’ll mention it. If they can’t think of anything, they’ll make general requests related to compensation – “would like to be paid more”, “rate per mile could be higher”, etc.

In fact, when there are a lot of generic comments about money, it can actually be a GOOD thing. That often means that there are no significant, specific problems for drivers to comment on, so they’re just falling back on the basics.

So, while it seems counterintuitive, a lot of comments from drivers about money mean that money is NOT actually a problem, and there aren’t many other problems either.

There’s one caveat here, though. If drivers make very specific comments about money, then it probably IS worth looking into. Drivers asking for better waiting time pay at a specific customer or citing problems with specific lanes are definitely indicators of problems. We’ve seen comments get very specific – talking about particular truck models in the fleet that are harder to make money with, situations where bonus programs don’t work as intended, and things that are really valuable for fleets to know about. So…

Generic comments about money: not worth worrying about
Comments about specific items: worth reviewing and investigating

Something else to watch out for are comments that suggest there are bad processes in the company, but in reality, are just communication problems.

We often see comments from drivers about how certain processes or policies don’t work, or are unfair for drivers, but when we dig into it further, we discover that drivers just don’t understand what’s happening in those situations, or what the company is trying to achieve.

As an example, we used to ask fleets how they determine routes and load assignments for drivers every week. We stopped asking the question because pretty much everyone has a mature, robust process in place. Most fleets automate that now, with systems that consider driver location, available hours, and personal preferences. The system spits out assignments that balance all those things as efficiently as possible.

However, when we ask drivers if they think the company’s system for determining routes is fair, the responses are pretty negative. Year after year, this question gets the lowest average score from drivers – all drivers across all participating fleets. On the surface, it looks like a bad process, or an unfair system.

Digging deeper into it, though, it turns out that drivers just don’t understand what fleets are actually doing. They may be aware that there’s a system of some sort in place, but they’re not clear on how routing is determined. There’s also the “greener grass” bias where they tend to only notice when other drivers are having a better week than they are, overlooking the weeks when they’ve had the good loads.

That’s not an indication of a bad process, just a place where the communication needs to be improved. Fleets that take the time to show drivers how the load planning works, and review the routing rules with their driver committees or in staff meetings, have better driver satisfaction in this area.

We wrote multiple articles about downloading earlier this year (here and here), but there are also times where drivers highlight problems that should have already been solved farther up the chain. The driver comment may suggest that they’d like some consideration for the issue, but the reality is that it should be solved before they even notice it exists. What does this mean?

A common example is drivers requesting better pay for waiting extended periods at certain customers. That’s not really a pay issue as much as an operational issue – why are drivers so routinely held up at that customer that they’re asking for more compensation for it? Would a trailer pool or different scheduling solve that problem better than increased wait time pay?

In all these areas, misinterpreting the feedback can lead to changes that actually make things worse. Not only will the real issues not be solved, but things that are currently working pretty well can end up getting changed and becoming less effective.

There’s a definite art to understanding the meaning behind driver feedback. Get it wrong and things can get worse, but get it right and you can end up with much happier drivers, and a much more efficient fleet.