An Investigation of Effective Advertising Strategies for Recruiting Long Haul Truck Drivers
As the US economy slowly recovers from the economic recession that began in late 2007, product demand is shifting upward, increasing the need to move materials and finished goods through the various modes of transportation. Trucks or motor carriers transp
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On more than half of the items, importance levels were equal, indicating that corporate personnel are somewhat in tune with drivers’ perceptions (24/7 dispatch; 75% drop and hook; assigned equipment - no slip seating; competitive pay; flexible home time; home daily; large volume of hub group freight; no haz-mat; up to $5000 sign-on bonus; weekly pay). However, significant differences were observed on seven items: direct deposit available; lease to purchase program; trade in ability; paid fuel surcharge, loaded and empty; paid vacation; save up to 30 percent with tire discount program; and save up to $4000 with fuel discount program. On all but two of these seven items, managers felt these specific benefits were significantly more important to include in a recruitment advertisement than did the drivers. However, drivers felt it was significantly more important to include direct deposit availability and paid vacation in recruitment ads. Not surprisingly, including competitive pay in the advertisement ranked number one among both drivers and managers, with weekly pay and flexible home time also ranking toward the top for both groups. Paid vacation, another item with a significant perceptual difference, was at the top for drivers, but not for managers. We observed some interesting results regarding the types of advertising media sources used for recruiting/job searching by managers/ drivers. While the Internet, driving school recruitment, truck convention recruitment, newspaper advertising and word of mouth were all heavily used (more than 50% indicated using), only the Internet and word of mouth had use levels of above 50 percent among drivers. The Internet was the most used source by drivers and the second most used source by managers. Word of mouth was the most used by managers and the second most used source by drivers. Furthermore, specific Internet sites used by drivers for seeking a job and managers seeking drivers differ considerably. While 50% of managers use cdljobs.com, only 7.2% of drivers do. BigRigLease.com is used by more than a quarter of the managers (26.7%), but none of the drivers indicated they used this site. And while nearly three fourths of the managers use Craigslist.com, less than one-fifth of the drivers used it to look for a job, although it was the most used website among drivers who use online sites for their job search. Bestdriverjobs.com and Careerbuilder.com were each used by 17.4% of the drivers, and Monster.com was also a popular website; 14.5% of the drivers and 23.3% of the managers used it. The most frequently used magazine for seeking employment was Trucker’s News with 19.6% of the drivers using it in their job search. It was also one of the three most used by managers; Best Driver Jobs, Hiring Truck Drivers and Trucker’s News were each used by 10% of the managers. Eighty percent of the managers and 37% of the drivers also used other magazines that were not part of the magazine list. Although not directly related to recruitment advertising, we also assessed the perceived qua
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