Thinking Like a Truck Driver

I am a Truck Driver.  

Recently I attended an insurance conference sponsored by our truck liability insurance carrier. Loads of fun, right?! (For reference I attend a couple of meetings each year, along with Safety Directors from other trucking companies insured by the same insurance carrier). These meetings are an opportunity for us to socialize, pick each other’s brains, console each other and maybe come up with solutions to common issues that we all share. So, there are some positives to these meetings.

At the most recent meeting in March, I was having a beer (or 3) with a couple of Safety Directors and an insurance rep. We each shared our opinions on a few different topics. 

"After sharing some of my feelings about certain issues, the insurance rep. looked at me and said “you always think like a driver.” 

My first reaction was wow, thanks for the compliment.  But as I thought about it for a few minutes, I realized he did not mean this as a compliment. You must understand, from his perspective he did not mean this in a negative way. 

He is an insurance guy and he looks at trucking from a thousand-foot overview. He is a big picture guy with stats and KPI’s out the wazoo to back up what he says.  And we certainly need those people in our industry. So, what I think he was saying was that I need to think more like a Manager than a Truck Driver. In some ways, he may be right. I do, “always think like a truck driver”. 

I am a Truck Driver, and I know that each time our company talks about implementing a policy change, procedural change, or personnel change, I always ask myself “how it is going to affect our drivers.”  

The upshot of this is that I realized that I am not a thousand-foot overview guy. I am a Truck Driver. I am a down in the weeds guy. I guess I am like this because this is the way I was built. 

A famous quote that I’ve heard since I was a kid is, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.”  I don’t know who said this, because I am a Truck Driver, not a bookworm. But, I understand the meaning. Sometimes you have to step out of your daily routine and look at everything that is going on around you in order to “get the big picture."

In general, I do think this is a good practice. However, the decisions I make not only affect our company as a whole, but they also affect individuals.  I never want to lose touch with how the decisions I make affect people!  I never want to lose touch with what is happening in the trees.  That is where things constantly happen, are made to happen, and are changing. And that’s where the “sausage is being made.”  

So even though I can talk junk (s***) with the best of them, I did not respond to the insurance rep’s comment. He thought he was giving me good advice, and maybe he was.  I always try to learn from other people.  But I also know that when it comes to free advice, “you get what you pay for.”  I may only be a Truck Driver but I also know that our company pays his salary thru our premiums. 

We are only able to pay premiums because we move freight. And we can move freight because we are Truck Drivers. 

So, my plan for the next insurance conference is to find this Insurance Rep and return the favor by giving him some free advice from a Truck Driver. I am going to invite him to come to our facility to spend a couple of days in the trees. 

My hope is that he will take back what he sees and learns and share it with his colleagues. Maybe a new perspective for him will help him and his colleagues to “think like a Truck Driver.” And the next time he says this to someone, it will be a compliment.

If you like anything in this article or have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time at rpatterson@puryeartanklines.com

There it is. No frills, no BS – just a great honest company looking for great honest drivers.