Learning by listening to drivers – Taking the Hire Road

On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Josh Hankins, senior vice president of safety, security and driver personnel at J.B. Hunt, sat down with guest host Leah Shaver, president and CEO of The National Transportation Institute, to discuss how listening to drivers and jumping in-cab helps to drive the direction he and his team take with policies, and to highlight J.B. Hunt and Carol Ekster’s new book, “Trucker Kid.”

Hankins has been with J.B. Hunt for nearly 20 years. He started part time in the driver personnel department while attending the University of Arkansas. “Back then, I was taking applications over the phone for folks who wanted to come work for J.B. Hunt,” Hankins said. 

After spending most of his career in operations, Hankins transitioned into safety, security and driver personnel at the beginning of this year. 

“One of the core elements of accomplishing the large change management projects I help oversee and steer is listening — listening to those across the organization, but especially to drivers,” Hankins said. “I try to gain a deep understanding of their experience by talking to them and jumping in-cab to see firsthand how their jobs are shaped by the changes myself and my team implement.

“As I’ve transitioned into a safety role, caring for and honoring our drivers has been at the heart of everything I wanted to do,” Hankins said. “I want to make sure everyone in our organization understands how they can contribute to that truck driver having a great day out on the road.” 

Communicating with drivers throughout any technology adoption cycle can be challenging, but many carriers are now facing difficulties with getting drivers to buy into some new technologies such as inward-facing cameras and autonomous-driving trucks.

“Something we’ve always taken pride in is being early adopters, but we don’t ever want to just adopt technology for technology’s sake,” Hankins said. “We want to do it with purpose.” 

There are a lot of massive developments in autonomous technology, and J.B. Hunt maintains relationships across that space, including collaborations and research programs. 

“Our focus at J.B. Hunt is understanding how we can put a safer truck on the road today,” Hankins said. “That’s the right thing to do, and that’s what we want to accomplish when we try to leverage these technologies – enhancing the driver experience while the driver is in the cab.”

Having seen firsthand the kind of technology J.B. Hunt is implementing, Hankins believes the company can put a safer truck on the road while the driver is still behind the wheel. 

“As those autonomous technologies evolve over time, we can look at how to enhance the driver experience and make a safer roadway at the same time,” Hankins said.

According to Hankins, autonomous driving is not a solution that removes drivers from the equation, but one that makes a driver’s job safer, easier and more secure. “I look at it as a driver-enhancement technology, not as a replacement for drivers,” he said. 

J.B. Hunt has implemented inward-facing cameras in the entire fleet. There are many benefits to this safety feature, Hankins says, including lower insurance costs and liability protections for drivers. Despite the fact that these cameras are a sensitive topic among many drivers, J.B. Hunt has gotten both drivers and operations staff on board. 

“We started the adoption of inward-facing cameras as a pilot for the technology,” Hankins said. “We got specific in targeting some of our agricultural accounts, because we thought that was a good opportunity to prevent tip-overs on rural roads.

“As we tested, we were able to validate that hypothesis. Our findings validated the support and coaching opportunities that this technology gave our drivers,” Hankins said. 

After successful studies with agricultural routes, J.B. Hunt expanded the implementation of inward-facing cameras and found similar gains across the whole fleet.

“Once we got the buy-in from our operational leaders with the numbers, we were able to go to our drivers and show how this technology impacted them in a positive way,” Hankins said.

“For example, we showed drivers a video of an event that happened on the road,” Hankins said. “Before, it would have been a ‘he said, she said’ and the driver’s record would have taken a hit. The police report would have been negative, and the automobile driver would have blamed the truck driver. Inward-facing cameras are able to exonerate our truckers and protect their careers, and that turned out to be a benefit for us operationally as well as for our drivers.”

To celebrate drivers and their families, J.B. Hunt recently collaborated with Carol Ekster to create a special edition of the children’s book “Trucker Kid.”

The book follows Athena, a young girl who is proud of her father, who works as a professional truck driver. That pride is infectious among her peers, classmates and community, and helps kids learn and appreciate the tremendous importance of jobs like trucking.

“I resonated with this book a lot, because I’m the grandson of a trucker,” Hankins said. “One of my favorite parts of the story is when Athena’s dad gets to bring his truck to her class and all the kids get excited about it. I was that kid in first grade, and I felt like my grandfather was a superhero the way that she does in the book. 

“We got to experience some of that as a society through the COVID pandemic,” Hankins said. “The country realized how valuable it was to have truck drivers delivering our goods and keeping our supply chain moving.”

Having been founded by a driver, J.B. Hunt has sought to put drivers first. 

“All of us support staff realize we would not have a job without the work they do for us,” Hankins said. “Truck drivers are the foundation of what we do.”

Get your copy of this special edition of “Trucker Kid” here.

Click here to learn more about J.B. Hunt. 

Sponsors: DriverReach, Lanefinder, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr