While your products or services are a huge chunk of your company’s success, fleet drivers can also contribute to your success. If you rely on fleet drivers to complete deliveries or tend to appointments, you want to make sure they’re drivers you can count on. Hiring the right people to work for you is an important step and here, we offer a few tips for the hiring process:
Determine Your Needs
Before you even begin to recruit fleet drivers, it’s important to know what you’re looking for. Are you looking for tractor trailer drivers? Are you looking for local drivers? Are you looking for drivers who are willing to make overnight hauls? Determining your needs lets you hone in on your recruiting strategy and narrow down your candidates.
Screen Each Candidate
While you want to hire fleet drivers who are friendly and hard-working, you also want to hire drivers who have a good history. Before you choose your team, do a thorough screening on each candidate. This includes their driving history, employment history, criminal history, drug test history, and more. The more you know, the more confidence you can have in hiring someone.
Make Incentives Clear
Everyone wants a reason to choose a company, and fleet drivers are no different. When advertising for a driver position, make sure you explain the benefits of joining your team. If you offer incentives like bonuses, paid time off, holiday breaks, or summer hours, make these known. You want to attract as many candidates as possible to give yourself a well-rounded group to pick from.
Test Various Skills
The most important (and most obvious) skill a fleet driver should have is driving. However, it’s important for them to possess other skills as well. Before you choose your team, test your candidates’ practical skills, mechanical skills, negotiation skills, technology skills, and any other skills that may be necessary to work at your company. The more boxes a candidate can check, the more likely they’ll be to improve your success.
Bonus: Offer Fuel Cards
Fuel cards like the ones from Fuel Express can make your drivers’ jobs much easier. When a fleet driver has a fuel card, they can choose to stop at more than 320,000 gas and maintenance locations throughout the country. In addition, they can use their fleet fuel card at thousands of maintenance locations. And with our paperless, online tracking feature, they won’t have to worry about collecting or sorting through receipts. Our fleet fuel cards also have a wide variety of benefits for fleet owners. Learn more here!
