Panelists continue to examine driver training, other issues during 2nd Rather report

“My personal experience is that we need more training; we need more training for entry-level drivers,” said driver Miles Verhoef (green shirt), while OOIDA Vice President Todd Spencer (blue shirt) said lack of driver training like that reported earlier was “all too common across the industry. Rather is at far right. (Photo courtesy OOIDA)

The Trucker Staff

11/11/2009

Low pay, trucking as a business being at odds with safety and deficient entry-level training and what some carriers are doing about it were just a few of the topics covered by Dan Rather’s second installment on trucking on HDNet Tuesday night.

Meeting at Willie’s Place truck stop at Carl’s Corner, Texas, some 60 miles south of Dallas, Rather moderated a round table discussion with Derek Leathers, chief operating officer for Werner Enterprises; Tim Dean, a Werner driver and two-time Nebraska state truck driving champion; Miles Verhoef, an independent owner-operator from Wisconsin and life member of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA); Todd Spencer, OOIDA executive vice president; and former trucker Michael Belzer, who now is an economics professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and the author of “Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation.”

Rather’s prior controversial segment on trucking, which dealt with unscrupulous driver training schools, was recapped and part of it re-shown before the panelists got down to fielding Rather’s questions.

That earlier segment featured Desiree Wood, a driver for Covenant Transport of Chattanooga, Tenn., who discussed in detail her education at The CDL School in Miami and her training at Covenant, and Thomas Hansen, a former trainer at CRST Van Expedited in Oklahoma City, who discussed his experience in driver training at his former company.

Some in the industry thought the show, titled, “Queen of the Road” and which aired Oct. 20, painted trucking with too broad and too negative a brush and left out trucking’s positive safety stats.

Before the panel discussion started Rather took the American Trucking Associations to task for first agreeing to be on the panel but later canceling. He said ATA was promised at least 20 minutes to critique the first show and discuss “broader economic and safety issues” but that ATA spokesman Clayton Boyce said “it was one woman, Desiree Wood, who compelled them [ATA] to cancel.”

Boyce told The Trucker that “we didn’t appear on the show because of Dan Rather and his producers, no one else … .” He said they had no idea Wood would be in the audience during the panel discussion and that he told Rather he was frustrated with the first show because Wood “made unsubstantiated claims … and I objected to her libel being repeated on tape on the second show.”

Some panel members said they thought “Queen of the Road” wasn’t harsh enough against so-called driver mills.

“Obviously, any focus on training is a good thing,” said Werner’s Leathers, who added that he was hoping “it [the report] will be a lot more fair at the end of the night than maybe perhaps it was thus far, not through any fault, particularly.”

“My personal experience is that we need more training; we need more training for entry-level drivers,” said Verhoef, while Spencer said lack of driver training like that reported earlier was “all too common across the industry. Our organization for its entire 30 years of existence has advocated training for entry-level drivers; there is currently none required.”

Leathers commented that “We do not assume when we get a driver from a driver training school they’re ready to drive.”

He said at Werner each new driver is assigned a trainer who continually observes them and that the newbie is given more demanding driving assignments only as his or her driving skill progresses.

Throughout the entire process the driver and trainer are never dispatched as a team, he noted.

And, he added, “I think where we might differ is that I don’t think some of the larger companies out there providing these training programs are the bad guys.”

Panelists noted that trucking industry rates are based on “the procurement folks,” and that they’re set by bidding, with the lowest bid winning out. This has forced rates lower and lower even as the economy stalled and the process is often at odds with safety, they said.

Panelists also discussed fears that should NAFTA finally be enforced, companies wouldn’t hesitate to turn to cheaper labor from Mexico, although Leathers noted that Mexico has good drivers, just as it has bad ones. He said most Mexican companies weren’t interested in coming to the U.S. and that U.S. companies felt the same way.

Panelists agreed that truck safety must be increased, rates must be increased as well as driver pay, leaving Rather to promise that “I’m going to continue our reporting on trucking and we want to hear from you, drivers, dispatchers, fleet owners, managers. We want you to send us your stories about the big rig business.”

The Trucker staff can be contacted to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.

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