Abstract for: Managing the Driver Recruiting Pipeline in a Transportation Firm

In the truckload transport business, the number of truck drivers is obviously a critical resource in order to achieve business goals. The industry has high turnover rates and hiring is a continual process. This project provided some key insights into the driver hiring process within the firm. The process was appropriately simplified and represented as a simple two stage stock adjustment model. One of the key insights was that while managers understood how hiring rates and termination rates resulted in growth or decline in the number of drivers, they were often unable to determine or agree on the number of open positions needed to meet the hiring goals that the budget called for. Part of the issue was that recruiting managers were unable to articulate to hiring managers what they “intuitively felt” was needed. The model and its accompanying explanation now provide the basis to approach driver hiring more prescriptively. It also provides the critical few metrics that need to be measured in order to make the decision on how many open positions are required to meet driver capacity targets.