Healthy Drivers Drive Healthy Businesses

Providing group benefits has its costs, but the cost of not providing them can punch a big hole in a small trucking company’s bottom line.

Sitting behind the wheel for hours at a time, living on a squat-and-gobble diet of sugar, salt and fat, and feeling the stress of running from one deadline to the next makes driving a truck a very health-unfriendly profession.

Yet, about one-third of truckers have no healthcare insurance, making them prone to skip routine medical care for chronic, work-related medical conditions that are much more prevalent among drivers than the general public.

A high turnover company can never be operating efficiently.--Truck News

Health-related driver turnover contributes to the staggering labor churn—estimates run as high as 9 in 10 drivers changed companies in 2019--as illness forced some drivers out of the workforce and others quit one company to get benefits at another.

Businesses Benefit by Providing Benefits: Slowing Worker Churn
Providing group coverage has its costs, but group benefits are a net-plus in a competitive, high-turnover labor market. Truck News does the math on the financial impact of industry churn:

• Let’s be conservative and say that it costs $9,000 to land and orient the driver. … If we have 100 drivers and an 80% driver turnover rate, we are hiring 80 new drivers each year. With this rate and these costs, we will be spending $720,000 per year to hire drivers – every year.
• If our company has an operating ratio of 95% (gross profit margin of 5%), we would need to generate $14.4 million dollars per year to service that annual expense of $720,000. And remember, a high turnover company can never be operating efficiently; therefore, it is much harder to get and keep clients to achieve that revenue. It’s a vicious circle.
• If we could reduce our turnover in half each year, we would reduce our onboarding cost by $360,000 per year. This would reduce the revenue needed to support this expense to $7.2 million. Keeping in mind the company’s improved efficiency with a lower driver turnover rate, we might even operate at improved margins.

Alex Shubat, the founder and CEO of the benefits consultant Espresa, highlights a soft benefit that has a positive impact for employers in a sellers’ labor market.

“I believe that benefits are all about employee recruitment and retention, which comes from people feeling valued They want to know that their employers care about their well-being and respect their time,” he says.

A Benefit of Benefits to Drivers: Getting Care When its Most Needed
The on-the-road lifestyle is hard on drivers’ health. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has the numbers:

• Drivers are twice as likely to be obese and to smoke compared to other US workers.
• Three out of four truck drivers say they do not get enough physical activity.
• One out of four drivers has high blood pressure
• 14% of truckers have diabetes, twice the rate of the US workforce

Those chronic conditions, left undetected or untreated, are the on ramp to acute illnesses ranging from heart attacks, cancers of all types, stroke and (especially among diabetics) blindness, kidney failure and amputations.

‘The performance and reliability of the fleet is often determined by driver health and wellness.’--Maris Bourdin

Without benefits to help manage the out-of-control costs of healthcare, people skip routine check-ups, do without testing and follow-up procedures, do not fill prescriptions and/or split pills to stretch the interval between refills.

Uninsured truck drivers fall right into the mix: Nearly half don’t have a regular doctor and a third defer needed care. That contributes to higher absenteeism, slams productivity and damages a trucking firms’ reputation with its clients. According to government statistics, in a company of 100 employees, two will be out on any given day. That’s a lot of slack to pick up.

As in any industry, a healthy workforce is the foundation of productivity and a positive work culture.

“Drivers are the most essential ingredient in any successful trucking company. The performance and reliability of the fleet is often determined by driver health and wellness,” said Maris Bourdin, the HR chief at the Canadian trucking company, Sutco.