How ELDs can help transform driver pay
Activity-based pay in trucking tends to skew toward performance incentives that are easy to track—for instance, the number of stops a driver makes.
Jerry Robertson, chief technology officer at BOLT System, says an ELD can help change that.
“With a paper-based system, tracking the driver’s activity during non-driving time is a challenge when there are dozens or even hundreds of different jobs you want to manage.” It’s especially true in grocery and food distribution, where drivers may have to perform a multitude of non-driving jobs during a shift, like stocking store shelves, assembling and palletizing orders, or working in the warehouse.
“And not every driver’s workday is the same,” Robertson adds. “The driver hauling ice cream has a different non-driving set of tasks than the driver hauling a tanker of milk working for the same employer.”
Administering an activity-based driver pay system is feasible when you have some combination of an ELD, mobile device, and fleet management software. Because every truck now has the means to automatically capture time and tasks, fleets can take that data and fine-tune a driver compensation plan that blends pay by the mile, hour, and activity.
That’s how it works at The Mennel Milling Co. The Fostoria, Ohio, flour producer has five mills in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia and a fleet of 70 daycab tractors that make deliveries in single shipments to one customer, typically a bakery or mixing plant.
Step One: The company defined various driver activities and assigned a pay rate to each task. Mennel uses Bolt System’s fleet management system and an ELD from Trimble Transportation to document each driver’s work as it happens, align each job with the right pay standard, and transmit it to payroll for processing.
It’s a critical process: some activities, like pre-trip inspections, can be assigned a time allowance that works for all drivers in the fleet. Times required for other work can vary—for instance, two routes with equal mileage may have markedly different drive times because of congestion, speed limits, and other conditions the driver can’t control. It’s important to establish a system that’s fair and transparent.
Step Two: Work with your ELD and fleet management system providers to understand the possibilities of what each system can do. They can help you manage Step One, Robertson says.
For instance, Mennel pays drivers each time they load or unload the trailer. The company used the ELD to set up geofences around each mill to verify that the driver has reached the right location at the right time and adjusts his pay accordingly. Even the time of day can come into play. If, for example, a delivery has to be made after midnight on a Friday, a multiplier can kick in to assign additional value. The drivers don’t have to manually keep track. It’s all done though the ELD and the fleet management system.
That kind of flexibility and convenience sets a clear example of how drivers can benefit from an ELD and activity-based pay, Robertson says. The fleet benefits as well since it can bill customers for all services delivered.
