Rate My Load: The Importance of Driver Feedback
In the transportation industry, maintaining driver happiness is key to lowering turnover rates and ensuring quality service for customers. Creating an effective system for receiving and implementing driver feedback can help a carrier understand how current processes either help or hinder a driver’s work, and allows them to take the steps needed to improve the driver experience.
At Melton, we understand that flatbed trucking is hard work, and have created a system called Rate My Load that allows drivers to quickly submit feedback about the loads they transport across North America. This includes information about the shipper and consignee, as well as the load itself. All of this information is reviewed by our sales and operations teams, who use the feedback to monitor relationships with our customers and alter internal processes to make our driver’s jobs easier.
How Does Rate My Load Work?
The Rate My Load form is found within the Melton app, where drivers can find other important work-related information. After the driver indicates whether they are reviewing a shipper, consignee, or stop, they rate the following five categories:
- Convenient Location: Was the location difficult to reach?
- Safe, Driver-Friendly Facilities: Was it easy to maneuver your truck/trailer into the space provided?
- Helpful, Courteous Staff: Was assistance provided when it was needed?
- Ease of Load Securement/Tarping: Was the load dangerous to secure/tarp?
- Reasonable Loading/Unloading Time: Was loading/unloading done in a timely manner?
Receiving this driver feedback enables us to recognize and prioritize allocating trucks to customers with the best rankings. It is important to us that our drivers are respected at any shipper that works with us, so companies with the highest driver rankings will likely see more Melton trucks.
Our primary goal is to satisfy both our customers and our drivers. We greatly appreciate any shipper who goes above and beyond to meet these standards and more.
How Does Rate My Load Benefit our Customers?
Our Rate My Load submissions are mostly overwhelmingly positive. Many shippers even use our positive feedback to encourage and celebrate their own employees. However, not all ratings are positive. Although, nobody wants to see a poor rating, these could benefit shippers by bringing forth potential weaknesses, that they may have not recognized before. After sharing location-specific comments, several customers have opted to make changes to their operations and facilities, making themselves more attractive to a carrier.
About the Author: Melton Truck Lines
Since 1954, Melton Truck Lines has set out to provide quality transportation services to customers, all while treating our drivers like family. Over 70 years later, Melton remains a leader in flatbed transportation.
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