2015 PTI Driver of the Year

Jacksonville, Florida-based driver Darrell McFarland leads the Paper Transport, Inc. fleet with 2015 Driver of the Year Award.

With 45 years of professional driving and 4.5 years at Paper Transport, Inc., Darrell McFarland has logged over 536,000 miles with PTI safely, achieved an MPG of 8 or better consistently, has great rapport with his Driver Managers and Planners as well as customers, and was PTI’s Driver of the Year runner up in 2014 as well as Georgia Pacific’s Dedicated Driver of the Year nominee in 2014.

Competing with over 600 drivers across the fleet, McFarland was awarded Driver of Month four times in 2015 as well as Driver of the Quarter twice and consistently performs at the top of his division in metrics which evaluate Safety, Production, Equipment, and Administration.

“When there’s service sensitive issues, we turn to Darrell and he takes care of it. For our out-of-the-box transportation solutions – we go to Darrell.” said Wes Kornowske, Operations Director.

As Driver of the Year, McFarland is awarded a $2,000 bonus and a Driver of the Year plaque. McFarland is also the first PTI driver receive a Veteran emblem on his new Kenworth T680 truck, which honors his 2 years of military service in the Army during the Vietnam War.

“I just want to say, thank you – this is a great place to work. If I’d been a little younger, I would have been a 20-year veteran here. I started a little late, but it’s a great place to work,” McFarland said after receiving the award. “Everybody I’ve met here has been real nice to me … it’s just a great place to work.”

Paper Transport, Inc. is a truckload carrier, headquartered in Green Bay, WI and currently operates over 600 power-units and employs over 600 drivers with a focus on regional truckload service, dedicated operations, and intermodal service. They operate terminals in Green Bay, WI; Jacksonville, FL; Cedar Springs, GA; Albany, GA; Franksville, WI; Muskogee, OK; Dayton, OH; and Pontoon Beach, IL.

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Where Are All the Good Paying Jobs?

By: Joe Shefchik, PTI VP Business Development and Solutions

Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question about jobs and the workforce. While capacity in the trucking industry has had some solid growth in the past year, there are major headwinds on the horizon. With an electronic logging mandate taking effect in November of 2017 and the Federal Drug Clearinghouse making its way to becoming law, I have strong confidence the trucking industry will once again be struggling to find employees willing to take a job paying from $50,000-70,000 per year.

I have some recent experience that highlights this issue.

It’s February in Wisconsin and my furnace quit over the weekend. I was able to keep the house warm enough until Monday morning. I called 2 local furnace repair shops that serve my brand. Each of them informed me that they were not taking new customers because they don’t have enough service technicians. When I found a shop to come on a service call, the furnace was fixed inside of an hour, the parts were all covered by warranty, and I just needed to pay for the service call and labor. Totaling $295 for about an hour’s work.

With revenue that approached what I might pay for a high priced lawyer, two local employers are not able to find workers to service new customers.

Blue collar workers are well-paid, but still hard to find. I see this trend continuing in American society at large and is likely to hit the trucking industry even harder given the federal regulation the industry faces. Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe highlights this topic in his 2008 TED Talk.* For example, take how truckers are portrayed in popular movies and in memes – a low income, gap-toothed, low-IQ redneck in a “trucker hat.” It’s no wonder there are fewer electricians and fewer truck drivers. Rather than honorably portraying these skilled workers who perform services we need, we face a shortage because of the perception that it’s not what anyone could possibly be passionate about – it’s not “sexy” or considered desirable.

Our reality is this: We have teachers who turned to trucking because they needed a better income. We have nurses who left their jobs for trucking because they wanted better hours and better pay. And yes, we have drivers whose fathers drove before them because driving is their legacy and they know trucking is a reliable job to provide for what matters most: family.

For that reason, Paper Transport, Inc. continues its commitment to creating a great place to work where the best people deliver for our customers. We treat and pay our drivers like the highly-skilled, hard-working professionals they are. We believe in the future, as in the past, the company with the best drivers wins. We intend to be that team.

* Watch Mike Rowe’s TED Talk Here

4 Payroll Improvements That Impact Driver Turnover

By: John Renier, PTI Controller

In trucking, there are three basic factors that drive the success of any company that affect driver turnover: Get them rolling, get them paid, and get them home. These three items must work together and if any one of these elements is out of sync, then it can have a big impact on driver turnover. Let’s take a closer look at getting them paid.

When people think about what causes driver turnover, they tend to focus simply on the rates that drivers are paid or tacking on a huge bonus that’s paid over the duration of the driver’s time with the company. What they often fail to look closely at is this: the process that is used to pay them. We’ve invested significant resources over the past 3 years to make our driver’s payroll experience better and found significant improvements in driver turnover.

I believe the improvements listed below have helped to improve driver turnover. Not in a way that is specifically measurable, but as a part of the culture we create for all employees: understanding their needs and making improvements to meet those needs.

• Improved Frequency: Changed from biweekly to weekly pay to help drivers manage personal cash flow.
• Increase Transparency: Reformatted the driver settlement sheet to better illustrate total pay per mile, not just the linehaul rate, so that our drivers have a better understanding of what they are being paid for and make easier comparisons to what other trucking companies are paying.
• Shifted to Digital: Created a process to email weekly settlements and paystubs to drivers every Wednesday rather than mailing paper copies every Thursday. This helped our drivers get visibility to their weekly deposit amount earlier, which again helped them manage personal cash flow.
• Make Reimbursement Faster: Made it easier for our drivers to be reimbursed for load related expenses. Now they can submit the reimbursement on their tablet rather than having to go to a scan station. This allows them to submit the reimbursement faster and with more convenience.

As you can see, trucking companies can do more than just increase linehaul rates to improve driver turnover. By looking at the entire process and not just the end result we were able to make dramatic improvements. What processes are you aware of that need to be updated and what can you do to drive change?

Why Trucking Needs to Get Social

By: Ben Schill, PTI Director of Operations

I’ve always considered myself relatively technologically savvy. After all, I grew up during the monumental shift from business applications performed with typewriters to computers. In college, e-mail was gaining speed. By my senior year, no more snail-mail letters were sent home and communication with friends across the country without racking up huge phone bills was big. Savvy, right? Then came social media.

Perhaps it was turning 40 this year that I realized I am now a generation removed from many of those with whom I work and I am equally separated by the use of social media as a means of connecting in the workplace. After witnessing so many of those around me (of all ages) actively socializing on-line and keeping up with their personal and professional community, I dusted off a dormant Facebook page. Things had changed dramatically since I last logged on and it became immediately clear that opening up the social media options to a work force can be an integral tool in engaging with employees.

In the trucking industry, one of the largest voids in the trucking lifestyle is the daily socialization that many take for granted (such as chatting with your coworkers). Many companies fail to engage their drivers outside the barriers of their email servers and their physical walls, which leave their most valuable employees, professional drivers, feeling devalued. Social media can help fill this void, create transparency, and assist in creating a consistent culture from office to office, truck to truck, and office to truck. Whether on Facebook or creating mobile applications, we’re learning how to engage with our drivers wherever they are and based on their response, we’re watching it evolve into something even greater.

Regardless of your personality type, we all have a need for socialization. For those of us who have a remote workforce, embracing social media, such as Facebook, and internal communication apps that reach every employee can be the best step you can take to improve morale and strengthen your culture.

PTI Grows Central Florida Intermodal Service

Paper Transport, Inc. is bringing asset intermodal capacity to Central Florida. We created 4 truck driving jobs and established 4 trucks to our domestic intermodal business with more to come. This addition keeps PTI moving on two key initiatives:

1. Grow jobs and business that gets drivers home to their families every day.
2. Support PTI’s intermodal customers with PTI’s assets.

Moving drivers into Central Florida area ensures that PTI’s intermodal customers will get the award winning service they have come to expect. PTI expects that adding intermodal assets will continue to fuel its explosive intermodal growth.

In the face of a national driver shortage, Paper Transport, Inc. strives to be the company safe drivers want to stay with by sharing their appreciation in the driver’s pocket with a two-cents per mile pay increase.
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Thursday, July 9th – Sunday, July 12th

Paper Transport, Inc. is taking St. Louis by storm! Celebrate with us at our new terminal location in the St. Louis area:

When: July 9th – July 12th
Time: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Where: 17 Liberty Place, Pontoon Beach, IL (just off of I-270 & Highway IL-111 – north east of St. Louis)
Food will be provided!

Call 1-855-784-5627 to ask about our limited-time sign-on bonus!

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PTI Red Rewards Introduces First Annual Driver of the Year Award

Driving Excellence and Delivering Value For the Long Haul

Early March 2015, Ohio Driver Everett Evans was announced as Paper Transport, Inc.’s Driver of the Year for 2014. Evans won his division’s Red Rewards Driver of the Month award 7 times last year. When asked how he did it, he responded: “I just did my job.”
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Success Driven By Meeting the Needs of Employees

GREEN BAY – Recognized as a leader in customer service with awards such as Georgia Pacific’s Carrier of the Year and named among the Top 250 Largest Carriers by Commercial Carrier Journal, local transportation company Paper Transport, Inc. (PTI) celebrated 25 years of success on Thursday.

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Green Bay, WI – Paper Transport is increasing pay for drivers by more than 5% in both its dedicated and regional one way operations.

Paper Transport is already recognized as a leader in driver pay.  Jeff Shefchik, president of Paper Transport notes, “Through continuous review of independent surveys, we are confident that we lead the industry in pay.  We believe it’s our responsibility to do so.”

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