Maximizing efficiency: driver scheduling strategies for success

Scheduling your fleet as efficiently as possible is essential to securing your success. Your schedules directly impact your ability to meet customer expectations, control your costs, and maintain competitiveness in your region. However, creating optimized driver schedules is rarely an easy task. 

Drivers, fleet managers, and planners require flexibility to drive greater efficiency. But with flexibility comes complexity, and each of these areas must work in sync to optimize, not only for division goals, but overarching company objectives. Your operations team must navigate a huge web of variables like driver availability, route optimization, compliance, and countless external factors. 

If you want to overcome these challenges and maximize your operational efficiency, you’ll need to adopt more strategic driver scheduling practices and leverage advanced technologies to aid in your efforts. Today, we’ll discuss the key considerations your business must address to plan effective schedules and how innovative software solutions can help you revolutionize the way you approach driver scheduling.

Key considerations when planning driver schedules 

If you can understand and address a set of critical factors that impact your operational performance and the well-being of your drivers, you'll be much more likely to maintain a successful workflow. Plus, you'll reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and keep your work environment safe and productive for those drivers. 

Driver availability 

How often you can send your drivers on the road is largely governed by Hours-of-Service (HOS) regulations created by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). These rules vary slightly between property-carrying and passenger-carrying drivers but typically limit driving hours to 11 and 10 hours respectively within specific duty periods.

Additionally, drivers must adhere to mandatory breaks, daily and weekly off-duty time, and maximum on-duty limits. If you fail to account for these regulations, you'll face non-compliance fines and create potential safety risks for your drivers.  

You also need to consider driver preferences – their preferred cargo types, home time requirements, and favored routes. Keeping these in mind when scheduling is a good way to maintain driver satisfaction and encourage more long-term driver retention. You’ll need to balance these against your operational efficiency to ensure your objectives are met in both the short and long term.  

Work distribution 

The way you distribute workload is another critical aspect of driver scheduling. With uneven distribution, you'll see some drivers experiencing fatigue and burnout. This affects their well-being and increases the risk of accidents. According to the Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS), 13 percent of commercial motor vehicle drivers were considered fatigued at the time of their crashes.

This highlights the importance of proper workload management – dispatchers need to allocate tasks equitably and consider the unique skill sets of each driver and their capacity to perform.  

Route profitability 

Consistent route optimization ensures that each of your routes can achieve its maximum profitability. Your team should always analyze factors like distance, fuel efficiency, and potential delays, then assign drivers to the most cost-effective routes. Utilizing advanced route optimization software enables your dispatching team to incorporate traffic patterns, delivery windows, and vehicle capacities into route planning to further enhance efficiency and reduce driver fatigue.  

Customer timelines and conditions

Customer expectations also play a significant role in how you schedule your drivers. Whether you've contractually committed to delivering on time or need to honor service level agreements (SLAs), you must consider which customers to prioritize. Then, you can allocate specific drivers to the task of delivering to those customers on a more frequent basis, ensuring those agreements are fulfilled with each delivery. 

Initial steps to optimize driver scheduling 

Creating the most efficient possible schedules for all your drivers is a complex task. That's why you must utilize a strategic approach and the right tools whenever possible. If you can implement best practices and leverage advanced technologies, your transportation company can enhance customer satisfaction, cut costs across the board, and improve operational efficiency. Here's how you can start to achieve it: 

1. Consider scheduled/preventive maintenance while planning your driver schedules 

When drivers were asked what one thing they would do to attract and retain drivers, 7% said “update to new trucks and better equipment to make drivers more comfortable and reduce breakdowns” (PDA Driver Survey , 2023).  

Driver scheduling should always include preventive vehicle maintenance if you want to minimize unexpected downtimes and ensure vehicle availability. "That's going to be their livelihood. That's how you want them to make money. So, the worst thing you do is give them a piece of junk truck," Scott Dismuke of People Date Analytics said on the Semi-Related Podcast. 

If you can coordinate your maintenance schedules with driver assignments, your dispatchers can reduce the risk of breakdowns and delays, ultimately improving your operation’s efficiency and boosting customer satisfaction.  

2. Adopt flexibility in driver scheduling 

As life happens, it’s up to operations teams to quickly adapt. Drivers face sickness, traffic, family matters, weather, and more that can disrupt schedules. It’s important to embrace flexibility in scheduling your drivers because it allows your business to more easily adapt to changing conditions and maintain profitability. Software solutions, like Optym’s LoadAi, enable your dispatchers to make proactive adjustments and communicate sudden changes with your drivers seamlessly. 

3. Utilize advanced scheduling and route optimization software 

An effective way to optimize your driver scheduling is by implementing advanced software solutions like Optym’s LoadAi. sophisticated algorithms can consider a wide range of factors – driver availability, route efficiency, customer requirements, and more – to generate optimal schedules and routes. Through automation, dispatchers can save significant time and effort while minimizing the all-too-familiar risk of human error. LoadAi considers driver preferences and optimizes for both work-life balance and profitability, a key advantage for your business that improves driver satisfaction and contributes to a more reliable and productive operation. 

4. Foster open communication channels 

Communicating effectively is key for successful driver scheduling efforts. It goes beyond sharing load details and regular updates – you need to communicate to your drivers how their assigned loads contribute to their income goals and specified preferences. Drivers often feel discouraged when assigned a load that covers only 150 miles if they’re compensated based on mileage – but if you explain that such a load contributes to securing more profitable shipments in other segments of the route, they’ll feel less frustrated and less disconnected from the planning process.  

As Scott Dismuke, VP of Operations for People, Data, and Analytics (PDA), mentioned in a recent podcast, “One of the things that’s important is to communicate with the driver and let them be a part of the planning process.” 

By involving your drivers in scheduling and explaining the reasoning behind their assignments, you’ll be able to foster a sense of ownership and improve satisfaction for each of your drivers.  

5. Monitor transportation KPIs to identify if you are meeting planning objectives 

If you track and analyze your key performance indicators (KPIs) like on-time delivery rates, driver utilization, and asset utilization, you’ll gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your driver scheduling practices. Monitoring these metrics means your company will be able to identify areas for improvement and make more data-driven decisions for optimizing your scheduling processes.  

6. Improve real-time visibility through telematics 

Telematics technology provides some striking real-time insights into driver behavior, vehicle performance, and route efficiency. If you leverage this data, your dispatchers can monitor factors like fuel consumption, speed, and maintenance needs. This enables them to make informed decisions and optimize their drivers' schedules based on conditions in the real world.  

7. Collect driver feedback 

Reach out to your drivers – simple as that. If you regularly collect and analyze their feedback, you’ll be able to identify their pain points and preferences and follow their suggestions for improving scheduling. By actively seeking their input and incorporating their insights into scheduling practices, your company can foster a culture of continuous improvement that prioritizes the needs of your most valuable asset: your drivers.  

For example, a recent survey found that 71.3% of drivers would be willing to change their trailer type for a new driving opportunity. Capturing data like this can lead to recognizing new opportunities for your business and drivers.  

Implementing advanced driver scheduling strategies 

Many trucking companies are incorporating new tactics to improve their driver scheduling process and operational efficiency. Once you have mastered the initial steps for optimizing driver scheduling, consider utilizing the following strategies: 

1. Take advantage of drop and hook trucking 

Have you found yourself constantly modifying your drivers’ schedules due to unexpected delays at loading docks? Detention time is a significant issue in the trucking industry. According to FMCSA’s research, detention time costs drivers $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in lost wages per year, and the industry loses $3 billion to $6.5 billion in driving time each year. Also, the research conducted by David Corell, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation, has shown that on average truck drivers spend an average of six-and-a-half hours per day on the road, well below the 11 hours they are legally allowed, largely due to detention at warehouses. 

Drop and hook trucking offers a practical solution to this common challenge and allows more predictable and efficient scheduling.  

This operational process involves a driver dropping off a loaded trailer and hooking up to another preloaded one. Instead of being restricted to narrow delivery windows, shippers have the flexibility to pre-load trailers at their convenience, allowing drivers to pick up and drop off according to their schedules. According to TruckStop, drop and hook operations reduce waiting times to less than an hour, compared to the three or more hours typically required for live loads.  

2. Relay/swap systems 

Relay trucking involves drivers exchanging their trailers at predetermined pit stops set by dispatchers. Here’s how the system works: 

• Relay model: Drivers cover set distances, then exchange their trailers at designated points. After they make the swap, they turn around and head back to their original directions or home terminals.  
• Benefits: Relay trucking allows drivers to spend more time with their families than traditional point-to-point approaches. When relay drivers swap trailers and head home with new loads, the trailers are closer to their final destinations.  
• Home time: True relay drivers are home every day. This makes the system an ideal option for drivers who value home time and prioritize being home nightly. By meeting other drivers at relay points and returning home for the night, relay trucking means drivers can maintain a stronger work-life balance.  

3. Establish trailer pools 

Stock strategically located sites with a reserve of trailers so you can guarantee there’s always one available. This will reduce your dead mileage and give you much more flexibility in your scheduling.  

• No more waiting: Operating with a pool of trailers, you’ll never need to wait for proper scheduling because of trailer scarcity.  
• Efficiency: Trailer pools allow for quicker load assignments, reducing the time drivers have to spend waiting for trailers to be loaded and unloaded. 
• Flexibility: When you have a pool of trailers at your disposal, you can better respond dynamically to unforeseen changes in demand and other circumstances to keep operations smooth and drivers happy.  

4. Team driving 

Looking for opportunities to implement team driving in your scheduling can help your fleet maximize their efficiency and earnings. This approach involves two drivers in one truck, taking shifts to drive. While one driver rests for the mandatory hours, the other continues the journey, ensuring continuous progress.  

• Higher earnings and efficiency: Team drivers can cover more miles in less time, leading to more deliveries and increased earnings. Trucking companies often assign critical or time-sensitive loads to team drivers, which usually results in higher pay. This approach is beneficial for both the company and the drivers. While trucking companies can meet shippers demands more effectively, drivers can significantly increase their income.  
• Not for everyone: Some truck drivers prefer to have full control of the route and enjoy having their personal space. Team driving requires close collaboration and sharing a confined space, which might not suit everyone. It might be challenging at first to find drivers willing to team up for loads, but this approach brings flexibility and simplicity when dealing with time-sensitive or critical loads. 

By combining advanced technological solutions like Optym’s LoadAi with open communication and data-driven decision-making, your company can master driver scheduling and deliver better value to your customers. 

To learn more about LoadAi and how it can help your business enhance your driver scheduling practices, reach out to a member of the Optym team today.